UKNM: Moving on to Frames, or preferably away from it

[Ray Taylor]

..and avoiding further confusion with the other "F" word, I have to say

that one of my happiest moments since I took my children to Disney/Paris

at Easter came about when a client told me that they were dropping 

frames altogether and developing an entirely noframes site. I was so 

overjoyed at the news that I forgot to ask the reason, but I believe 

they were unhappy with the look and feel.


The reason I was so happy with the news is that, like most of my clients 

at the moment, they make heavy use of frames which means that trying to 

get any kind of presence on the search engines is a major nightmare. 

Lots of time spent trying to work around the fact that Frames hides the 

text away from the search engine robots.


Of course you can do some very useful things with Frames, but in most 

cases Frames is used without thinking. In the school of bog-standard Web 

design, the first lesson is "Use Frames without question" and has been 

for the last three years.


Fact is that most of what you see done in Frames could be done pretty 

much as well without, to the great benefit of download time and robot 

indexing. Often what you see done in Frames is done badly anyway.


99% of all sites that use Frames seem to use it to keep the navigation 

buttons in the same place on the left hand side when you scroll down. 

Does it matter that much if you lose them when you scroll? Couldn't you 

shorten that text and get the whole page in without scrolling? The 

number of sites that have more than one scroll bar running because the 

designer has not allowed for different window sizes is plain silly.


I don't claim to any knowledge or professional qualifications in web 

design. But I could still do a better job than many of the crappy Frames 

sites you see masquerading as state-of-the-art these days.


So it's hip to slag off frames, is it? I wouldn't know about that. The 

latest fashions in technonerdery, or latest fashions in anything else 

for that matter, are not my strong point.


But if Frames _is_ going out of vogue, all I can say is - 'BOUT TIME 

TOO!


Frames, like all good technological innovations, should be used 

sparingly, sensitively, and with all due recognition to the 

alternatives.


Ray Taylor

taylornmcadplan [dot] com

NMC/Adplan - Online Media Planning and Buying

+44 181 639 0015


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