kamelon [Personvernsiden] [ Jon Haugsand] [(jonhaug@ifi.uio.no)]

Why you shouldn't use frames

"Frames" is regretably a part of the new recommended standard HTML 4.0 (see e.g. here). This is very bad because "frames" is not suitable for html structuring of documents. There are many reasons for this, and some of them follow below (point of greatest importance):
  1. HTML is a language for structuring of documents, that is, information. A browser, like netscape, or any other tools, may read in this document, make some analyses, or present it for the user in the best possible way. The information may be restructured, storet for different uses. "Frames" ends this tradition and moves the html document from structure to design. The document is fragmented into pieces that has to be put together as a jig-saw puzzle and viewed simultanously for it to be readable.
  2. "Frames" makes you loose the control in any information hierarcy. I wish to have control of where I am and to where I am transferred when I follow a link. I do not want to experience that some frames open and closes.
  3. Framed information is difficult to download automatically.
  4. Not all browsers support frames.
  5. A homepage with frames is impossible to bookmark.
  6. A framed homepage is much more difficult to read, because, among other things, of the lack of white spaces.
  7. When using "frames" you may link subpages to other sites. This leads to the bizzarre effect that your homepage frames another persons information.
  8. "Frames" can make the browser to make another instant of itself. This I do not like. I want myself to be in charge of when my browser is allowed to multiply.
  9. "Frames" suggest clumsy and unreadable html coding. I know of no good home pages using frames.
"Frames" is HTML's answer to GOTO
kamelon [Personvernsiden] [ Jon Haugsand] [(jonhaug@ifi.uio.no)]

(Sist endret: 18.12.2001 )