Problems with Website Frames

Frames can improve navigation since the navigation piece always stays in one place while the rest of the content scrolls. However, we recommend avoiding the use of frames for the following reasons...

• The URL of the page you're on doesn't display at the top of the browser.
• You can only bookmark the index frame, not the specific page you may be interested in.
• Sometimes the framed borders take up too much of the screen, which can severely limit the amount of space available for the rest of the page to load.
• Frames make a web page look bad if they are used improperly.
• It is hard to print a framed site.
• Unless you are careful, search engines won't see the content in a framed site.
• Any secure forms in the site will often not display as secure if they are in a frame.

Although there are some solutions for many of these problems we have tended to stay away from frames, and instead provide text-based navigation at the bottom of each page and back to top links.

The use of a splash page is hotly debated, and in general the consensus is not to use them. This is a good rule of thumb, but we have written an article about splash pages and when their use may be appropriate.