HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series)

Many usability experts are extremely critical of frames. Given the current implementation of frames, and the many designers who don't understand the potential drawbacks of framed documents, the statement often attributed to usability expert Jakob Nielsen that " frames can give designers more rope to hang themselves with" has some truth to it. However, browser vendors are addressing many of the problems of frames. With luck, designers will learn to use frames only when they provide added benefit.

The problems with frames are numerous , and include problems with design, navigation, bookmarking , URL context, search engine compatibility, and printing.

Navigation confusion is still a big issue when using frames. Under Netscape 2, the first browser to implement frames, the browser Back button didn't go back in the frame history, but instead went back in the page history. Today's browsers don't make such a mistake but frames still make the navigation model much more difficult to predict. In fact, does the user really know what will happen when a link is clicked? Some frame layouts are highly predictable, while others seem almost random. Unless the framing is kept very simple, determining which frames will change when a link is clicked might not be obvious to users. In some sites, numerous frames are updated simultaneously , which might cause users to lose their sense of navigation. Even worse , if users want to bookmark the current page, they actually have to bookmark the top-level entry frame rather than the deeper level to which they have progressed. Fortunately, Internet Explorer has fixed most frame bookmarking problems, but users with Netscape and other browsers might find bookmarking framed content difficult. Even if users are somehow able to bookmark the actual frame content, they could lose any navigation needed to navigate the site upon return.

Additional navigation problems include loss of context because the URL of the document, as displayed in the address bar of the browser, does not change when using frames; this accounts for why bookmarking doesn't work as expected because a bookmark just records a document's URL. Not letting the users see URLs can lead to trouble as some people use URLs as a way to orient themselves at a site; frames give up this clue to location. In many situations, it is difficult to print frames. Although the contents of individual frames can be printed, printing an entire document consisting of many frames can cause problems, particularly if the framed document scrolls . The newer versions of browsers allow complete frame printing, but page authors should understand that content might be clipped. With frames and resolution problems it is no wonder that many site designers have adopted special print-specific Web pages.

Finally, search engines and more limited browsers often find framed layouts troublesome . In some cases, they are not able to travel to deeper pages in a site, particularly if there is no <noframes> tag. This issue alone could keep developers from using frames on a public site.

Site designers should thoroughly consider these limitations before rushing to use frames, particularly when similar layout effects might be achieved using style sheets without such problems. While none of the frame problems are insurmountable, designers should approach the technology with caution, and not just use it to show off their technical prowess. Readers looking for more details on dealing with frames should reference Chapter 8 in the companion book Web Design: The Complete Reference, Second Edition (Osborne 2002), also by the same author, as it provides many techniques for dynamic frame building, bookmarking fixes, and frame busting.