Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Disadvantages

Also keep in mind these disadvantages:

• Frames may make site production more complicated because you need to produce and organize multiple files to fill one page.

• Navigating through a framed site may be prohibitively challenging for some users (especially users with disabilities who are using alternative browsing devices).

• Documents nested in a frameset may be more difficult to bookmark.

• A large number of frames on a page may significantly increase the load on the server because so much of the load on a server is initial document requests. Four requests for 1K files (the frameset and the contents of three frames) is more work for your server than a single request for a 4K document.

• Multiple documents for each web page makes the site more difficult to manage and update.

• Framed documents can be a nuisance for search engines. Content-level documents may be missed in searches. If a contained document is found by a search engine, it will probably be displayed out of context of its frameset, potentially losing important navigational options.

• It is more difficult to track actual page (or ad) impressions when the pages are part of a framed document.

With the pros and cons in mind, take a look at how framed documents are constructed.