Frames > Deciding whether to use frames

Deciding whether to use frames

The most common use of frames is for navigation. A Web page can use one frame to hold the navigation menu and another frame to hold the page content. Since the navigation menu is in a frame, a visitor to your site can click a menu item and the content will appear in the content frame, but the navigation menu does not change at all. This can keep the user oriented within your site.

Frames can be confusing to implement, however, and you can often create a Web page without frames that accomplishes the same goals as a page using frames. For example, if you want the navigation on the left side of your page, you can either split your page into two frames, or just include the left navigation on every page in your site. The difference is that with frames you only have to create the navigation one time. If you do decide to go ahead and use frames in your Web site, make sure that you understand the relationship between frames and framesets because linking with frames can be confusing.