Can someone explain to me why frames are bad?

[rottweiler]

I would like to know. I love frames I think they are very handy.

[Sanenet]

SEs can't read frames. Also, they can cause usability issues when somebody has a different sized screen - all of a sudden everything starts scrolling (or doesn't, which is even worse).

There are only two reasons to use frames: one is to display content from two different sources (ie somebody elses website with your menu bar on the left) and the other is as a "poor mans SSI".

Besides, they are sooooooo 1998 :)

[jo1ene]

There are sevral reasons; some are important and some not as much.

It used to be that frames based sites were not spidered correctly/completely. I believe this has, for the most part, changed. Anyone else know for sure?

In the past, there was also an issue of some older browsers not supporting frames. That's a minute number at this point, so I wouldn't worry about that.

The real trick is that others cannot link to or bookmark your internal pages. This could be a problem!

[rottweiler]

Thanks for the replies! But why can't search engines read frames?

[DrDoc]

Search engines can handle frames just fine...
It is no longer a problem like it used to be.

IMO, the three biggest problems with frames are:

• orphaned pages
• bookmark functionality broken
• difficult to use for non-savvy Internet users

<added>Actually, one more problem... Many developers do not use frames in an intuitive or even practical way. They use it to handle things that SSI should rightfully handle. I have seen only a few sites where frames really worked.</added>

[m_shroom]

If you are not concerned with SE's frames are ok.

But frames contain 2 or more complete html pages, many SE's will index them seperatly, then when a viewer clicks on the SE listing they see only 1 of the frames and not the whole page.

[tedster]

This topic comes up pretty regularly. Last year, we had what is probably the most thorough discussion about the pros and cons of frames that I can remember.

There's a lot of information in that thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[isitreal]

Although my feelings about frames exactly mirror vkaryl's in post 53 of the thread tedster mentions, and I've had a frame based site running since 1999, I noticed about 2 months ago the traffic to that site has started dropping noticeably, by about 50%.

I believe that google has in fact changed something in how it handles frames, before I just used the noframe tag to guide the spider to the navigation frame page, which in turn guided it to the content page, this worked perfectly, but now seems to be not working as well, the content still gets indexed, but seems to be assigned a lower value.

Iframes do not have this problem, and are probably a better solution for some situations, like gallery pages etc, but overall I think tedster is right, much as I truly love frames and that type of application quality interface, which seems like such a complete natural for all computer users, since it mirrors exactly the same interface most programs use, like outlook express, windows explorer, etc.

I'm getting ready to switch some parts of that site over, and I'll be curious to see if I get the results tedster got, it should be fairly obvious within a month or so.

[vkaryl]

Well, since that topic last year, my own attitudes have shifted slightly "out of frame" as it were.

Frames are still easy to set up (though now that I've been concentrating on css for a while, I'm finding that to be less a truism....) Frames make good sense in some cases - because a lot of the good sense of frames is still the same as it was when I had the flash of "belonging" as I first saw a framed site - IT WORKED THE WAY I THOUGHT SITES SHOULD WORK.

Frames make NO SENSE AT ALL if there is a way to provide the same site "experience" (read: functionality) with css (There have been css postulates for "loading" like one does from a menu item to a separate "main" frame - I don't think they're very elegant, or very usable generally.) I think the key is becoming a good enough designer to KNOW THE BREAKPOINT - when a framed site is a sensible utilization of the currently-obtaining technology, and when it's more "forward" to use css, because in that instance css makes more sense. (um. I think that's an ourborian concatenation.... sorry - loooonnnnggg Monday....)

I'm not yet there. I hope I'm learning so that I'll be there soon. But then, I'm occasionally a complete IDIOT (just ask my host, Sharon, about the idiocy I displayed over the weekend with what should have been a simple server move.... *SIGH*), so there are just no guarantees.

But then, who wants guarantees? A little risk is a lot of fun....

[txbakers]

I don't use frames at all anymore. PhP or ASP with includes are much easier to maintain, and don't run into the problems described above.

The only useful purpose for frames, I saw, was the cheap man's includes and the cloaking of URLs.

The problems far outweighed the benefits for me.

[tedster]

Some people like frames because "it keeps the navigation always available." I've been there. The feeling is a fear that if someone scrolls aways from your menu and then gets distracted or lost or whatever, you've lost them.

Well, as I mentioned in last year's thread, that doesn't test out as true in the real world. People apparently know when they've scrolled, and they saw the navigation when the page loaded, so they know how to find it again. On long pages especially, some text nav at the bottom is expected, even by newbies to the web - so put it there to make life easier.

And if your visitors get bored and leave, then you need to improve your content. Force feeding menu choices by keeping them always on screen doesn't redeem bad copy - people will still leave. And if you have a great site, people will explore.

[crashomon]

Also, another thing about Frames is site maintenance. I updated a site for a major office supply company and their designers simply couldn't grasp the whole 'frame' concept, but when I showed them that a SSI on the left side was their main menu and it was labelled "menu.ssi" they could understand that.

So, I wound up updating their site completely in real time, simply by using page.asp (ssi version) for the new pages and keeping page.htm (the framed version) and when they were happy with the redesign, I simply renamed their home page from index.htm to index.asp and voila! instant site update!

Since then, they've not called me once and have updated their pages many times, so I know I succeeded in giving them an easy to use solution.

Also, framed sites in Dreamweaver are nuttier than the nutty professor to work with.

my .02

Patrick (unframed) Elward

[scallihan]

isitreal wrote:

"before I just used the noframe tag to guide the spider to the navigation frame page, which in turn guided it to the content page, this worked perfectly, but now seems to be not working as well, the content still gets indexed, but seems to be assigned a lower value."

Sounds like you're losing PR from having to go through two links, via your navigation frame page, to get to an orphaned content page. Better to simply include a navigation menu in the noframes element that links to your content pages, which are set up to function outside the frameset as stand-alone pages (with navigation menus and links, home page links, etc.).

Steve

<Sorry, no personal URLs or extended sigs. See TOS [webmasterworld.com]>

[edited by: tedster at 12:27 am (utc) on June 23, 2004]

[isitreal]

scallihan, thanks, that's what I've been suspecting the change is too, the content pages have always had next/previous type navigation, plus links to index and section index, but sounds like that might do the trick, unless as suggested google is actually cutting the importance of links in the noframes tag altogether. Sadly, your idea makes so much sense I don't know why I didn't just always do it that way, I guess I was trying to avoid doubling the code or something by having two full nav bars.

[gmiller]

Personally, I hate stumbling across sites that use frames. They're sluggish to load (because they pull in so many files). Bookmarking is a pain. Linking to them is too much work to even bother with. And I can't scroll the *$@$%^& frame off the screen, so I've lost a valuable chunk of my screen real estate. Horizontal frames are the worst because of that last issue. I find them to be at least as annoying as popups.

[tedster]

Agreed, gmiller - especially before broadband came to our area, I found this very frustrating on a dial-up connection.

And even now, landing in a orphaned page without its parent frameset is mighty frustrating, especially if I like what I see.

[TheDoctor]

When I set up my first site I used frames. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I counted up the number of items that had to be loaded before the user got everything up on the screen. Horrifying! I understood why I was seeing people abandon the site before any content was loaded.

Plus I had to maintain all kinds of stuff so that the user could navigate the site if they came to an orphaned page.

A relief all round - both for me and my users - when I got rid of the frames.

[ronin]

I always found the biggest problem with frames was trying to a make a page look good across multiple resolutions. Even getting something to look good simultaneously on 640x480 and 1024x768 was difficult enough. I threw in the towel in about August 2000 I think.