Frameset Usage

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

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emmbec
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Joined: Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:19 pm
Location: Queretaro, Mexico

Frameset Usage

Post by emmbec »

Hi Everyone, its been a long time since I created a website, and I was wondering if FRAMESETs are still used now days??? I've seen a lot of websites that when you click a menu, it reloads the whole page, now, I know that can be avoided using a FRAMESET to only load certain sections of the site, but is there another way?? Is it bad to use frames???

Thanks!
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emmbec
Forum Contributor
Posts: 112
Joined: Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:19 pm
Location: Queretaro, Mexico

Re: Frameset Usage

Post by emmbec »

OK I just found a very good reason not to use frames. If a user wants to bookmark a particular section of your website, it will not be possible if you are using frames, so I guess that is a very good reason not to use them. Anyway, if you think of another one I would appreciate it if you could tell me.

Thanks!
matthijs
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Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Frameset Usage

Post by matthijs »

Frames have many problems. A few, in no particular order:

- Search engines don't like them. Sometimes they cannot crawl them well or return the wrong pages to the searcher (a page from within the frame is returned in the search result list, so when a visitor arrives at that page the surrounding context is missing)
- Printing them. Sometimes the wrong frame is printed
- Are ugly
- Accessibility issues? Not sure about this one, but I bet there are a few.
- Missing of good URLs. So visitors (and search engines) only see yoursite.com for all your pages. Much better to see /about/, /products/, etc

Most sites nowadays use some sort of content management system or at least are based on server side templating (php includes for example), so any of the advantages of frames are no more relevant
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