Screen Revolution - Zonez
Background

I have been involved in web development (professionally) since the very early days of Internet, as we know it today. It was the times before Internet Explorer, and Netscape was the only game... There were a handful of html tags. There was even a term used then "Netscape Extensions" to refer to html tags introduced and/or recognized by Netscape. One very important one - which many web developers (including I), took an immediate liking to: FRAMES! It was a breath of fresh air for web designers, in the very limited confines of the available tools (i.e. html tags) those days.

The benefits frames offered to web designers was two fold:

  1. Lay-out:
    You can slice up the screen into mini-screens with their own scrollbars, without having to worry about the Default Scrollbars of the Browsers.
  2. Targeting:
    You can target different web pages to a selected frame only, without having to refresh the whole page.

Frames have been used for a long time, and are still used now, recognized by all browsers, and W3C. However, lately frames became kaka. And, in a way, rightfully so. Perhaps the most compelling argument against use of FRAMES can be encapsulated in one simple fact: Search Engines can not find the targeted pages, since the main file is a frame control file, and - from the point of view of Search Engines, is essentially an empty file. We do not need any more justifications, do we? When Search Engines (now-a-days mighty GOOGLE) speaks, everybody listens!

OK. Frames are kaka, mainly based on fundamental dependence on the target function! ! But I was not ready to give up that is easily the on the benefits of versatility frames offered... So I went on a mind search of an alternate way. It can be said that it was similar search to that of Christopher Columbus.

Well, with the advent of CSS, especially CSS2 - even though it took long time browsers to implement the fundamental concepts, now a days the settings for the overflow property of the at least the major block level elements (e.g. div element) is recognized by all the major browsers. Which translates to the fact that we now have control over scrollbars of, at least the div element.

It was good starting point in the thought process. But came the challenge: How to control the Default Scrollbars of each Browser? I came up with an intuitive solution that worked. (I actually used in the design of a web site that was rather short lived, due to conditions beyond my control.) However, the scientific hat that I can not seem to get rid of, forced me to question myself: I had to either prove or disprove - beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this intuitive solution was the only possible solution.

This search became a very long, gruesome and frustrating journey that started a few years ago, complicated with the fact that this was a spare time project, and my spare time is very little or none. But, finally I kind of concluded this journey, I must say proving myself right, as documented fully in the section titled Screen Mysteries.

The Project

Perhaps we should start with re-stating the mission statement:

"To create page layout technique that would offer all the flexibility of frames approach offered, without having to resort to use of frames."

Now, we can start our project! Starting a project means we have to identify (i.e. name) it. After considering quite a few options, I settled on one rather quickly: ZoneZ. As you read on more (and, I hope you do) you will see why...

And of course, we also have to define the scope, based on a conceptual specification for the entire project:

Well, we did it! A very short list, but a very tall order, I must say, even in hindsight.

What is Next?

First logical step was to face the most difficult challange - taming the Default Scrollbars of different browsers, in such a way that they would not intefere with those of ZoneZ, as discussed in ˇViva La Revolución!

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