HTML frames - Background information

Netscape introduced frames to the web in 1995 and they have since become part of the HTML standard maintained by W3C.

They give the author the ability to break up a single browser window into multiple sections, referred to as ‘frames’, each displaying a different HTML page. Each of these pages can be manipulated separately by the user, and hyperlinks in each separate frame can target another frame.

The development of frames made it easier for Web managers to incorporate a corporate look and feel into websites. On a standard webpage an organisation’s logos and navigational areas will usually be displayed at the very top. This is fine until a user has to scroll down a page to retrieve some information. When the page scrolls down, the logo and navigational area will disappear from the browser screen.

view screenshots showing the use of frames

Using frames, the designer can ensure that both of these elements remain visible, when the user scrolls down the page displayed in the main content frame.

The main content pages within the website need only contain the substantive data because all the organisation and navigation information is contained within the non-scrolling frame(s). The following illustration shows how a departmental name and logo will always be displayed within a browser, even when the page has been scrolled downwards:

Using frames to build websites in this way has been popular. It has eliminated the need to repeat section within pages and helped browsers avoid repetitive rendering of graphics. However, there are potential problems with this approach:

* The frames would only be set up if the user came through the homepage. Users entering through search facilities or links from other websites would not get the frames set up and therefore may not be able to navigate further through the website.
* The time taken for a browser to display the initial set-up of a website using frames would be longer because there would be multiple HTML files to fetch from the server and render rather than just one.
* Bookmarking pages of interest is more difficult for users as only the page establishing the frames would normally be recorded.
* Printing documents is more complex, as the browser would not necessarily know which frame or frames are to be printed.
* Individual page titles are lost as because only the title element of the page that sets up the frameset is displayed.
* Badly managed links can result in frames being rendered within parent frames.
* Differing user monitor sizes can result in large proportions of the screen being used by the frames containing logos, navigation and whatever, leaving very little screen space for the substantive data.

Many of these issues, such as bookmarking and printing, have become easier with the development of more advanced browsers. Use of the right-hand mouse button allows particular pages to be specified for both functions.

Scripting techniques can also be used to improve the usability of websites that use frames. For example, it is possible to have a script in each page that detects whether it is being displayed outside of the intended frames set-up and, if so, re-establishes the required frameset. This technique can be used to resolve the problem of user’s bookmarking or following links to individual HTML pages that would otherwise be displayed out of the frames context.