28 replies to this topic

[rob86]

I remember when almost every website around used frames to organize their websites. Now you very rarely see a website with frames. Why? Is it because with the increase in average internet speed frames are no longer really necessary or beneficial? Are they considered ugly and obtrusive? I find frames rather useful on my slow connection and considered using them on my website, but it seems like it would be out of place and scare away users in today's frame-less world wide web.

[truefusion]

There's some talk about search engines not "liking" frames, but i'm not entirely sure what frames do to search engines. But there are better ways to achieve similar effects. For example, when using frames, the navigation is often placed on its own, separate page. What does this do? What if you want to view the page in a new window or tab? The navigation is now gone. The better way of going about it is to use server-side scripting for a template system. You could also use AJAX to dynamically include content from other pages into the page that is currently being viewed. But what about disabled users? Can the software that helps them browse the Internet work well with frames? But this concerns desktop and laptop computers; what about handhelds? How would frames be useful for those?

On an aesthetic level, the border (though can be "removed") makes things look ugly or old. Some websites still use frames, though these pages (at least now-a-days) are often pages that not many people would be interested in. There are probably other reasons why not to like frames for your website, but i can't think of anything else right now.

[mm22]

rob86, on Aug 18 2009, 06:39 AM, said:

frames are no longer really necessary or beneficial? Are they considered ugly and obtrusive?

I think nowadays most things that can be done with frames can also be done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which allow for greater flexibility. When I first looked at web design frames looked to me like the natural solution to placing content where you want on the page. Another obvious way to do that is by using tables and encapsulate our content in there. Well, both ways are now deprecated by most designer because they say slow down rendering of the page and, in the case of frames, might be interpreted differently by different browsers.

However cross browser compatibility is also an issue when using CSS. So I think the real disadvantage of frames is that you end up with several pages having the same URL which will affect your ranking in search engines and also the possibility of bookmarking every single page of your site. That is because the URL may be that of the html page containing the frameset and encapsulating other html pages. As the content changes in one of the frames this does not reflect on to the URL seen in the browser address bar which will continue displaying the address of the frameset.

I have found a few websites that still use frames and I think in some cases they really help or at least simplify design. One of them is http://zhongwen.com/ where frames are used to independently move sections of the page up and down, which is particularly useful for a dictionary. Yet in this website it is not possible to directly address one particular word in the dictionary, when browsing to different words the URL will keep on displaying the URL of the homepage. This limits the functionality of the dictionary.

[rob86]

One of the reasons I saw somewhere for not using frames was because many users don't like being in the dark as to what url they're on. Copy and pasting the url becomes more difficult, bookmarking doesn't work correctly and some people even feel uncomfortable browsing a website where the full url is hidden.

There seem to be lots of alternatives to frames now which is probably why they're becoming out dated but for a simple website with a specific purpose, like that dictionary, I think frames could still be beneficial.

[Nameless_]

I don't know much about frames with my basic internet website knowledge, but I know that most people find frames hard to manage and difficult to incooperate into the site. Also, as frames are actually two different URL and web pages stuck together in the same page, search engines will find it hard to crawl over it (as mentioned before in a previous post), and some people and users of the site might also find it difficult and annoying with a things stuck on the sides or on the top of the page that doesn't move at all...

And I think most users and visitors to your site don't really care about whether your site has a frame or not. If a frame works well, well, it's a Bonus, or people might not really care anyway. If it doesn't, it's plain annoying, and if there aren't frames at all, well, it's the same as a good working frame. So why go through all the bother making frames and all that when people don't really care about good functioning-properly frames?

[rayzoredge]

I used to be a big frame person when I first started doing HTML, but I've always hated those fugly gray borders. Never knew you could remove them, but there was always the problem of users only bookmarking the frameset page and not the content that he or she wanted, so every time they access the bookmark, they're taken to the main page. It was also a pain in having to set things up in the correct cells and the framesets didn't always show up correctly in browsers... but then again, that's the struggle we have with web design anyway. At least with CSS and JavaScript, we can define a style sheet and a navigation bar that's written the same way every time AND it avoids the fugly border bars, the scroll bars, and the bookmarking/URL deal. From a web design and user perspective, frames had their use until Web 2.0 showed its prettier face.

[k_nitin_r]

Hi!

HTML frames were great back in the early days of the Internet, but the web browsers did not handle them very well. If you tried to save a web page containing frames, the web browser would only save the parent page containing the frameset divisions but not the individual child pages loaded within the frames. You had to manually right-click on the frame and save it, which means that you have to know that a website was using frames to be able to save the page. People back then were not as computer-savvy as they are today, so something that was confusing or hard to use went the way of the dinosaurs.

Also, if you landed on a page through a search engine, it would be missing the site navigation so the users would not know how to browse through the other pages of the site. Some people would try taking off the page filename from the URL in an attempt to find the default page, but when the websites had subfolders this would simply lead to a directory listing or even a Not Authorized error for the web servers that had directory listing disabled.

I did find the handling of back and front navigation by web browsers for websites with frames quite impressive though. If you changed the page loaded in a frame and clicked the back button, you would see the browser only load the previous page of that particular frame, rather than loading the previous website considering that the parent page of the website hadn't changed.

Regards

[mm22]

k_nitin_r, on Aug 19 2009, 10:46 PM, said:

Also, if you landed on a page through a search engine, it would be missing the site navigation so the users would not know how to browse through the other pages of the site. Some people would try taking off the page filename from the URL in an attempt to find the default page, but when the websites had subfolders this would simply lead to a directory listing or even a Not Authorized error for the web servers that had directory listing disabled.

Yes that was undoubtedly a big problem, not easily solved unless something was done by search engines to prevent indexing single frames. But then again you would lose information in that case as the URL would be the same for many different pages.

Quote

I did find the handling of back and front navigation by web browsers for websites with frames quite impressive though. If you changed the page loaded in a frame and clicked the back button, you would see the browser only load the previous page of that particular frame, rather than loading the previous website considering that the parent page of the website hadn't changed.

Didn't know that, surely smart of browser designers. After all frames were one of the first concept being introduced into web page design so early browsers must have been well prepared for them.

[nolan]

Hi. To answer your question, you have to make an important distinction first: that is, the difference between frames and iframes. Using either -could- have negative consequences on your search rankings, but iframes allow web capabilities to be expanded in ways that CSS cannot always compensate for (I say this because someone recommended using CSS as an alternative). As an example for a good use of iframes, you can build an upload form that loads in an iframe. This way when the user submits a file for uploading, the primary page never has to refresh or change locations.

Back to the search issue, there is a reason that frames (that aren't superficial, such as uploading form iframes) can affect your search rankings. This is due to the fact that your content is divided across two independent pages, which are in turn indexed separately by the search engine. This means that instead of getting "points" for the combined contents and page relevance of the one page displayed to visitors, you end up with two individually indexed pages that may or may not seem relevant to your site's purpose when taken out of context.

Furthermore, this isn't touching on some of the accessibility issues that can arise from using frames (e.g., for people who use screen readers).

Hope that clarifies.

rob86, on Aug 17 2009, 04:39 PM, said:

I remember when almost every website around used frames to organize their websites. Now you very rarely see a website with frames. Why? Is it because with the increase in average internet speed frames are no longer really necessary or beneficial? Are they considered ugly and obtrusive? I find frames rather useful on my slow connection and considered using them on my website, but it seems like it would be out of place and scare away users in today's frame-less world wide web.

[contactskn]

Dear friends with the increasing use of dynamic server side languages like PHP and databases etc. use the frames are decreasing a lot. More over we also have CSS for playing with the looks of the website etc. So the need which was fulfilled by frames previously is now replaces easily and more professionally with these new languages and tools to develop web sites. More over if it is right that it is not search engine friendly then why should developers use it anymore as everyone wants their respected sites to get a good position in search engines.