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Framesets and frames - your opinions - the pros and cons 1

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Foamcow

Foamcow

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Nov 14, 2002
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Since this comes up from time to time and normally hijacks someone elses question I thought I would start a thread especially.
Use this thread to give your reasons for recommending or not recommending the use of framesets.
Personal opinion is perfectly valid, but try to back it up with at least some logical reasoning.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK
 
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I wonder what effect, if any, the ever-increasing size of LCD screens has on the use of frames.
 
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My point is that your design isn't as capable as you try to present here. The palliative care site is a typical example of some of the frustrations I've had in the past with framed sites, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. The Tubularity site barely fits the left frame into the browser window, and that wouldn't be true if I had any of the browser add-ons that are so common now. Speaking from a user's point of view, viewing a graphic partially chopped off and not allowing me to scroll down to see if there's anything below is poor design (with browser add-on tool bars, this would be more pronounced). If you'd done that site without frames, this wouldn't have happened, and the "tradeoff" of not allowing a vertical scrollbar wouldn't have been an issue at all, since the right hand frame has one in my browser.

While the framed Tubularity sites I've seen have been some of the better ones I've seen with frames, they still only fit my usability wishes about the same as a low mediocre site without frames. When I get to the content of a page, that's all I'm interested in, and anything else is clutter.

Apart from the supposedly academic discussion about frames that most of this thread has covered (sounds more like a discussion on religion or politics, and the title of the thread asks for OPINIONS, too), the reason I almost never use frames (a few iframes at times to load pages with data from other sites) is that I grew to despise them back in the 90s when they were all the rage. The vast majority of the time they interfere with access to the main content of the page, pure and simple.

The MSDN library site I mentioned above is an example of this. I'm just as likely as not to copy and paste the text of one of those pages into a text editor so I can see more of it at once, move back and forth more easily in the real content of the page.

I'm no young whippersnapper, either, just a few years younger than you, CliveC, and not inclined any more in life to smile at BS and pretend it's chocolate candy just to be agreeable.

I remember when automobiles started using electronic fuel injection, and I'd enjoyed so much tinkering with carburetors on the cars I'd had. I still enjoy working with someone from time to time on an old car with a carburetor (and points), using little tricks I learned back in the "olden" days. But, except for nostalgia purposes, I wouldn't design an auto engine with one because the time period when that was the standard is past. As far as I'm concerned as a user, I'm glad frames are for the most part in the past.

Lee
 
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No, my browser is set to 800 x 600. I have the menu bar at the top displayed, large buttons with text labels, and the address bar on a separate line. If I had any browser add-ons with separate lines or the links bar turned on, I'd have a smaller window to view web pages.

Lee
 
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Lee, Ok then. Did you go to a course in PCC and have the same problem.

The problem that you described in Tubularity could be solved by putting scrolling="auto" in the left frame. Unfortunately the bug in IE will cause both horizontal as well as vertical scroll as in the Microsoft site that Sheco linked to. I have discussed approaches to solving this problem in recent threads.

The real problem here is that I have made the contents of the right frame fixed width, which doesn't leave much room for a scroll bar at 800 * 600. If it really bothers you I will fix it.

Clive
 
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CliveC

If you hadn't used frames on the palliative care site, there wouldn't be anything to mention.

I went to the first course on the palliative care site, and the menu scrolled fine. So now you have the vertical scroll bar taking up page space that would best be used for actual content. While I understand that you use the menu on the left to get to anchors on the page, I'm not sure I see the point of having as many links to as short a sections. The links to the main sections are understandable, but the page really isn't broken up enough to need those even. And without the space taken up on the left, the real content would be MUCH more readable. I visit web pages for the subject content, not to admire the menus. I want the easiest access to the content as possible, and will put up with some minor inconvenience to get back to the menu when I want. I spend much less time navigating the menu system on a website than reading page content.

In languages with words written left to right or right to left, it's much easier to read wider pages on the Internet than those with more lines. Framed pages often don't allow that.

Sheco

That URL is one of the worst designs I've seen on Microsoft's sites.

Lee
 
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If my monitor gets any wider then i'll be purposely resizing browser windows to make them thinner.

It seems that when reading text it really can be too wide... makes the eyes move too much left to right... especially back left again.
 
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Yes, lines that are too wide do require more effort to read. With the range of choices in browser resolutions now, it's difficult to design a page that looks well at 800 x 600 as well as twice those dimensions.

Lee
 
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I felt the urge to get all creative, for some reason. Must be the caffeine!

Code: 
F ......
R idiculous
A nd 
M assively
E xtravagant
S ystem (for)
E gregious
T imewasting
 
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Clive, I tried dragging the frameborder. It's a bit hard to find sometimes, as the edge of the frame doesn't coincide with the graphic. Similarly when you widen the browser window the contents of the left frame drift over the graphic and the site looks broken.

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