The idea of html frames was originally thought up to solve navigation problems for larger websites with hundreds of pages and a lot of content. They didn't help – in fact, they created more problems than they solved – but the worst of it was that frames got adopted by all sorts of amateur website designers who were building sites with none of the navigational complexities which frames were created for in the first place.

The basic idea of a frame is that instead of having one homogeneous page in which all of your content, navigation and functionality appears, you split the page up into several frames or sections which contain different content. The most prevalent use of frames in a site is to have the navigational buttons or links in a heading or sidebar frame, and the content appearing in a much larger central frame. What happens is that when a link is clicked, the page loads in the central frame, rather than taking up the whole page.

I know it's hard to imagine, but people thought this was a good idea. This was purportedly for three main reasons. Firstly, your navigational links went everywhere with you: you always knew where to click for the homepage, because exactly the same navigational links were in exactly the same place, regardless of the content you were viewing. A second benefit was that adding content was really easy: just a page of text could be added, because again, the frameset containing the header and navigation was always the same. Thirdly, framed sites were also thought to be quicker to download because the navigation and banner did not need to be reloaded every time a new page was viewed.

However, the benefits of frames can all be achieved using other technology. PHP or server-side includes can give you a static, every-page navigation bar, as can CSS. Download times are far less of a problem nowadays, when a lot of people have broadband, and even people on dialup won't have to wait too long for a 50K page to load. CSS keeps style and content separate, meaning that updates of content or design are easy and quick to implement. (CSS Zen Garden has some beautiful and astonishing examples of how CSS can radically change the look and feel of a website in seconds, whilst navigation and content remain fully intact.)

That's not to mention the serious disadvantages of framed websites. Frames significantly reduce the usability of a website. Unless you remember to put target="_top" into every hyperlink on your site, your visitors will not be able to bookmark internal pages or use the Back and Forward buttons of their web browser. No such problem with CSS.

If your visitor is using an old browser that doesn't support frames (unlikely, but not impossible), your site will be illegible. Compare this with CSS: a CSS website degrades gracefully, meaning that if someone's browser doesn't support it, they'll still be able to read the text of your page, and it will look reasonably clean.

Accessibility is also severely compromised by frames. Screen reads, for example, will only be able to read the first frame of the page, which is never the content frame; the content of your page will be invisible to the software. This means that visually impaired visitors may well have problems with your page. Printing from a framed site is virtually impossible. Framed sites are generally not web standards compliant. CSS, meanwhile, is fully standards compliant.

Learning to use frames is really difficult, and designers using frames are sometimes forced to use JavaScript or improper html to get the effect they want. In contrast, CSS actually does what you want it to do, its codes are simple to understand, and its correct use is clearly and publicly documented.

This is all old news, of course. It's now generally accepted that frames are a bad idea. In fact, it was decided that frames were a bad idea about a decade ago. The instance of framed websites nowadays is, I am pleased to say, very small, and most people agree that they were a horrible idea. But I have explained some of the main problems with framed websites, because there are valuable lessons to be learned about why they were rejected by designers. Although framed websites are no longer popular, other trends in web design cause many of the same problems. All-Flash websites are some of the worst offenders: as with framed websites, browser commands are rendered worthless, internal bookmarking is impossible, they don't comply with web standards, style and content are hopelessly entangled…

A web designer will almost certainly scoff if you suggest that they build your site using frames. But will they do the same when you suggest some other element or design that will only make things harder for you and your visitors?

By Helena Henderson

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