And lo on Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:58:11 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> It's a bad idea to use them anyway. Frames are evil.
>
> Depends what you use them for, really. What makes them evil?

The problem used to be that writers would use frames in the same style as  
Gail suggested - Navigation panel on the left, main page on the right;  
click on one, loads in the other and everything's sunny and the birds are  
singing. Now along comes Mr Search Engine and reads all those 'body' pages  
and offers them out to the big wide world. Somebody clicks on the result  
and is delivered the body page, except now they can't go anywhere else  
because none of the navigation was loaded; this ticks the reader off,  
which in turn annoys the company who paid for it.

Printing can also *still* be a hassle, likewise bookmarking, and different  
browsers treating frames in slightly different ways in terms of scrolling  
and sizes.

So the developer had a couple of options 1) not use frames; 2) include a  
link that would load up the page again with frames; 3) put all the same  
links contained in the navigation bar in the main page.

Now mix in server-side #includes which allows you to keep your navigation  
separate from the body, which is what a lot of frame were originally used  
for and you get the prevailing myth that frames are best avoided.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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