I've Been Framed!

Many sites use frames as part of their navigational strategy. If you divide each page into two or three frames, you can have your company logo and/or your navbar constantly in sight. The frame with the content scrolls, but the frame with the navbar does not, so the navbar is always right there where the user can find it.

Frames, however, have several drawbacks. All hyperlinks on a framed site must use the TARGET attribute to ensure that a page comes up in the correct frame. Nothing looks stupider than a page full of content coming up in a narrow frame that was intended for the navbar. Getting the TARGET attributes right can be quite complex, and every single link must be tested to make sure that the frame scheme works out right.

If someone (or a search engine) links to a page that is not a frameset, it will not come up the way you intended, and you'll look like an amateur. To mitigate this problem, include a "robots.txt" file in your home directory. This file contains a list of directories that should not be indexed by visiting spiders. All pages other than framesets should be in separate directories, and those directories included in your "robots.txt" file.

If you have links to other sites, these links must include a TARGET= "_parent" attribute so that the other site will not come up inside one of your frames ("_blank" or "_new_window" will also work). Never, ever have someone else's site come up inside one of your frames. This quite rightly makes site owners apoplectic, not only because it's unethical (and possibly even illegal - the jury's still out), but because it violates every principle of good design. A page designed to be viewed as a full screen will not look good inside a frame. It will scroll, you will look like an amateur, they will complain, and you will go to Hell.

Incidentally, the author objects to frames not for any of the reasons mentioned above, but simply because they tend to make a page look cramped and cluttered. There's also the question of undesired scrolling, which can really make a page look terrible. Only neophytes (or self-parodists) use more than 3 frames on a page, and those who choose to use them should make sure that they fully understand how they work, and handle them as one would a loaded firearm.

Navbars are Nifty (and Necessary)
Nav 101
A Site Map to Success