Read at your own risk
2011 October 1/10:32 PM
This document dates from the early web period, and is kept for archival purposes only. It is no longer updated, and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.Frames have their uses, but these uses are much fewer than most people think. Frames have far more problems: they reduce the screen real-estate and they enable cluttering the screen with more buttons than the average user knows what to do with. Do you really want the main part of your page displayed in a 4-inch square? Do you really need a row of buttons along the top, the left, and the bottom?
From the standpoint of leaving the reader in control for automatic translation, frames are horrible. They make it harder for the browser to determine the correct order of the information being displayed.
Believe it or not, it’s generally easy to fix. Each “frame” in a framed page is a separate web page. You, or your html editor, lays out the frames and then “points to” a web page for each frame. (These web pages don’t even have to be on your site.)
Most web editors, by default, put in a message for people who aren’t viewing frames. It goes something like “I’m sorry, but this page requires frames. Upgrade your browser or turn frames on and reload this page.” Translated from computerese, this says: “I’m sorry, but the webmaster on this page is either a complete idiot or just doesn’t want you viewing their page. They could easily have replaced this text with something useful, but didn’t deign to do so.”
Remember: each frame in a framed page is a separate web page. So all you need to do is replace that default non-framed text with a link to either (a) your main page, or (b) each frame’s page, but displayed as a simple list. In the order of importance.
In Internet Explorer, readers can actually turn off the viewing of frames. It’s in the preferences. I do it: the vast majority of framed pages are poorly designed and not worth my time to figure out, especially over a modem line. But I still get the message that I should “upgrade” my Internet Explorer to a browser that supports frames. My browser does support frames, and when a web page tells me otherwise, it just shows poor design on the part of that page’s designer. My opinion is that framing is almost always a sign of someone who doesn’t know how to design a web page. You can prove me wrong, but you’ll have to provide alternate text to do it.
