Something Good About Frames

[tedster]

I'm one of the many who avoids frames, and especially entirely framed sites. But I have one client with about 4,000 framed pages and they're not about to start a total redesign, so I've been working with it.

It's better than a few years back, now that many SEs do index frames - in fact, that's what I wanted to mention.

You know how Google and others prefer the lighter pages with high content to code ratio? Nothing like a frames content page for that. Unburdened of any navigational chores or standard information, you can have a lean, mean, SERP climbing machine.

[Nick_W]

Hi Tedster, I don't usually read any threads about frames as I hate them with a passion. I had to read this however as I couldn't guess what you may have found to like abuot the dreadful things ;)

Nice one!

Nick

[rogerd]

I agree, Tedster. I've got a discussion forum that uses frames and the content pages are definitely pure & free of navigation, etc. That seems to have a beneficial effect on traffic. I don't like frames in general, and the problem of people being delivered to the frameless content must be dealt with, but there ARE a few advantages.

[Crazy_Fool]

yep, frame pages without navigation can rank quite well in search engines

and visitors are sent to the frame pages without the navigation

and then the visitors are .... stumped .... because many people just do not know how to navigate a site without links ...

[ciml]

Alternatively, just light content pages with the important relevant links (home, parent, children), but without the typical "100 links in the left hand navbar" junk.

I've come across horrid sites that load, read and navigate wonderfully by bypassing the frameset (and that look very attractive to bots).

[Mark_A]

imho it is one of the significant advantages of frames that when a client insists on rolling buttons and other non content code that you can stuff them in a nav frameset and store that in a common robot txt protected directory, leacing just text links in the contents pages.

I still think frames can be great if the issues are thought through.

[Purple Martin]

> visitors are sent to the frame pages without the navigation... ...and then the visitors are .... stumped .... because many people just do not know how to navigate a site without links ...

It's very easy to "jam" frames - that is, check whether the page is loaded in it's correct frameset or if it's "top", and then reload the frameset if needed, thus providing all the navigation.

There's a script to do this in the "handy, generic javascript coding" topic :)

[papabaer]

Though, the javascript solution does not offer help to those 11-12% of surfers who have javascript turned off.

[Mark_A]

papabaer the simplest solution is to create two pages for every page.

One the simple contents page and 2 the framed version.

Then ensure all links from the contents pages or frameset pages are to frameset pages only and you have solved this issue without use of any javascript.

The only disadvantage is that the complete page is loaded again nav elements and all but as the elements are cached this is no worse than reloading the same elements from a non framed page.

[Mark_A]

Sorry forgot another advantage of this method, set all link targets="_top" and you have removed another issue of being served one page from a frameset that may not otherwise permit you to navigate further.

Sometimes you get someones contents or nav only and links point to a window that does not yet exist on your computer so in some browsers at least the links appear not to work at all.

[papabaer]

Mark_A, while the "two versions of a page" solution might be functional, the potential problems of this approach will prevent it as a vialble option. We all know what happens when search engine spiders find pages of near duplcated content... YIKES!!!!

From a usability perspective, I would never recommend frames. Small, fast loading XTTML & CSS built pages are the way to go... imho of course! ;)

[Mark_A]

The pages need not be even similar.

One has all the contents. its a normal html page, the contents page.

The other (the frameset page) just has head and frameset statements which call the contents and nav pages.

If you like you can add noframes contents similar to the contents pages because you then have a non framed site for those still using non frames enabled browsers (are there many left).

These do not have to be the same as the contents page they can emphasise more or less or different keywords. But they are a different element <noframes> to the real contents, are you saying google for example cannot tell the difference?

If you were really worried then you could protect all your frameset pages only from SE with a robots command.