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Richard Knight
Posts: 48
From: France
Status: offline
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Why Not to Use Frames - 1/8/2002 11:39:18
I've just been asked this and although I know there are a fair few resons why it's better not to use Frames, I can't for the life of me remember!
So...... what are the reasons!
Thanks people,
Richard
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puiwaihin
Posts: 1378
From: Taiwan
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/8/2002 14:32:37
Here are some good reasons not to use frames:
- Most search engines don't index them or index them poorly
- It can cause difficulty with scripting, especially if you are trying to just 'cut and paste'
- Some people still use browsers that don't support frames, so you need to make a NOFRAMES version in addition to frames
- Some people don't like them and turn off frame support, so you need to make a NOFRAMES version in addition to frames
- You have to be mindful of the target frame in all links
I'm sure there are more drawbacks. But if you can overcome those problems or they are less of a factor for you than the benefits, there is still a place for frames in design.
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Who put the self-destruct button THERE?!
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adambrooks
Posts: 145
Joined: 1/8/2002
From: Charlotte / Matthews NC USA
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/8/2002 15:49:02
Actually, there is very little reason why frames should cause you any trouble. The only thing you really have to worry about is making sure that your documents point to the appropriate target frame. The whole thing about a search engine dying at frames is ancient history. In fact, you can edit the html code of a frame document like any other document. Any browser or search engine that comes to the frame document can then acess the resat of the site via any provided links. This also allows bot engines to "crawl" your site without any complications.
Adam
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paperfish
Posts: 184
From: None
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/9/2002 7:15:14
Printing can be a problem with frames - i.e. the user gets a hard copy of the navigation frame rather than the information they wanted to study.
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abbeyvet
Posts: 5095
From: Kilkenny Ireland
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/9/2002 9:14:44
You need to be quite careful that people do not end up in 'Orphan pages' - that is pages unframed - and thus lost. Include some text navigation in these pages just in case.
Another thing is that people cannot easily bookmark pages within your site, nor can you easily give them URLs to other than the whole site, as the URL remains the same. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on what you are trying to do.
I would think the most compelling reason is that a lot of people dislike them. While the reason many people use them is to keep the navigation 'always there', I know I am not alone in finding this quite irritating. I am quite capable of scrolling up or down a page to find navigation.
There are of course times when frames are necessary and/or useful, but their potential drawbacks makes them a poor choice in cases where this is not so.
Katherine
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www.inkkdesign.com
"Dogs have owners, cats have staff"
Meeeooow!
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tommygoat
Posts: 15
Joined: 12/30/2001
From: Sunland ca USA
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/9/2002 11:52:08
I was going to convert my site to frames, but then did a some 'searches' and found most of the pages listed/linked in the engines we're not the index page. So converting to frames would have created more work for my existing site. Sure, I could creat a 'work around' and redirect those pages, but after much consideration... I agree that 'always present' navigation on a small site is more of an annoyance, not to mention a waste of space. I put my links across the page top and bottom, plus I don't make the pages too long.
Of course, your experience may vary...
^T^
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puiwaihin
Posts: 1378
From: Taiwan
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/9/2002 18:12:00
quote:
Actually, there is very little reason why frames should cause you any trouble. The only thing you really have to worry about is making sure that your documents point to the appropriate target frame. The whole thing about a search engine dying at frames is ancient history. In fact, you can edit the html code of a frame document like any other document. Any browser or search engine that comes to the frame document can then acess the resat of the site via any provided links. This also allows bot engines to "crawl" your site without any complications.
Adam
The problem is not that all search engines "die" at frames pages, but that they rank them poorly because of their lack of real content. It requires both a consciousness of the problem and extra work to overcome.
A person who is proficient with scripting can get around the complications frames can cause and adapt many of the free scripts available, but it causes extra work and not everyone knows how to make the adjustments.
You can design the site for people who do not use frames enabled browsers, but this takes careful planning and often creates a need for redundant pages and navigation.
Using Frames is not automatically bad, but it isn't for every web designer. You really need to carefully consider the specification of your design, the developers abilities and limitations, and your audience before deciding on whether to use frames or not.
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Who put the self-destruct button THERE?!
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adambrooks
Posts: 145
Joined: 1/8/2002
From: Charlotte / Matthews NC USA
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/10/2002 9:43:39
re: puiwaihin's post
====
search engines do not penalize a developer for using frames. typically, if there are poor search engine results, it is because the developer did not properly implement the frames on the site.
obviously, your want to include your standard meta tags, a brief paragraph about the site for indexing and a link to continue to a non-framed homepage or bot-friendly page to optimize your results.
what i have done on sites using frames is exactly what i outlined above, however, i often times make the frames document the bot friendly document on the site. this has given me excellent results.
Adam
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puiwaihin
Posts: 1378
From: Taiwan
Status: offline
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RE: Why Not to Use Frames - 1/10/2002 17:05:20
Perhaps what I wrote was a bit ambiguous. Let me clarify:
As Adam stated, search engines do not penalize someone for using frames. The use or lack of frames is invisible to search engines. I don't even know of any search engine at all that will look for <frames> tags and score them lower if found.
On the flip side of that, many search engines match keywords in a meta tag with the content of a page to generate a relevancy score. The reason Frames pages don't score well if a search engine uses this algorithm is that the Frames page itself does not have a body of text to match with the key words. In some cases, pages are even penalized in the rankings for having meta-tag keywords that do not occur in the page body. Here, the fact that spiders/robots don't look for a Frames tag works against you.
As Adam said, you can work to make your frames page search engine friendly. In addition to just adding meta tags, you should also make the <NOFRAMES> section of the frames document contain relevant content that matches what you include in the keyword.
Frames can almost always be made to work as good or better than non-frames pages. But, it will certainly require additional effort and thought.
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Who put the self-destruct button THERE?!
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