The Evils of Frames

<CENTER><FONT SIZE=+2>Does Anybody <B>Like</B> Frames?</FONT></CENTER> <P><BR> Yes! Lots of webmasters and HTML authors.<P> But the evidence shows that web surfers hate them!<P> I maintain a small web site for my employer. Surfers who visit our site can choose between framed and unframed versions of our home page. During a recent and typical month, the unframed home page took almost 500 hits, while the framed version was visited only 30 times.<P> Maybe my anecdotal evidence isn't enough for you. Fine; you're welcome to gather other statistics. But I'm convinced: given a choice, people prefer not to hassle with frames.<P> In theory, frames are a great idea. But in practice, they rarely live up to their potential. I've seen maybe three sites where frames served a useful purpose. In most cases, they are nothing more than a hindrance to navigation.<P> So why do we see so many annoying pages with frames? Because they give webmasters more control over what you see. Commercial sites want the power to dictate how you view their pages, and frames provide one of the tools in their arsenal.<P> Interesting, isn't it, that the present generation of browsers from Netscape and Microsoft do not even allow you to turn off frames?<P> How to fight back? Use an older browser. I used to use Netscape 1.22 for most of my browsing. It works well, but hangs on client-side image maps. MSIE 2.0 is good. There are a few other browsers that work well, but do not support frames. These browsers are great for fast, frame-free surfing. When you hit one of those insufferable sites that refuses to offer an unframed alternative, you have two options:<BR> <CENTER>1. Move on to something else. You can assume the webmaster is a Beauxeau with nothing of value to offer. 99.9 percent of the time, you'll be right. Or,<BR> 2. Fire up one of the big, bloated browsers with frames support and see for yourself.</CENTER> <P> There is another alternative. <A HREF="http://opera.nta.no">Opera</A> is a new shareware browser from Norway. It's not free. The downloadable evaluation copy will time out, if you don't pay to register it. But after using Opera, you may well be sufficiently hooked that you won't mind paying the modest registration fee.<P> Unlike other browsers, Opera gives <B>you</B> maximum control over your surfing. Turn frames on or off, kill animations, deny cookies... you're in charge!<P> I have no connection with Opera, and I'll even go a step farther and point out that it still suffers from a few imperfections. There are a few pages it can't handle. On very rare occasions, I still fire up one of the Big Two browsers to see a page in all its glory. But Opera is by far my favorite browser. It gets me where I want to go faster and with fewer hassles.<P> <BR> Aside from frames, here are a few other dirty tricks webmasters play on us, in order to force us to see things their way:<P> Some pages have fonts and background set to the same color. The background <B>graphic</B>, however, is a contrasting color. You can't read the text without loading the graphics. Solution: most new browsers allow you to set font and background colors. Opera also allows you to load the background graphic only; I don't know if other browsers provide this useful feature.<P> Some pages have enormous amounts of text embedded in a single table. This defeats browsers that are supposed to load text before graphics. None of the text will display until the entire table is loaded; meanwhile, unless you've turned off graphics, the graphics files are downloading and some of them will probably appear onscreen before the text... if nothing else, it's <B>very</B> likely that the advertising graphic at the top of the page will appear first. Solution: if an alternate version of the page, without tables, is available, use it. Otherwise, turn off graphics.<P> Especially deplorable are pages that present crucial text in the form of graphics, without providing alternate text. You cannot even <B>read</B> the information on these pages, unless you load the graphics. Like the equally offensive practice of using imagemaps without providing an alternate, text-based menu, this is an insult to users of text-only browsers as well as to blind surfers who depend on text vocalizers. Solution: none.<P> <BR> As time passes, the World Wide Web is becoming less democratic. More and more of the information available on the web is controlled by a few large companies, who seek to extend their control all the way across the net, to our own computers, if we let them. In the long run, there may be no effective way to fight this trend. But for now, we can at least choose our tools wisely. "Free" browsers may be more expensive than we think, if they deprive us of the right to decide how we use the resources of the web.<P> <BR> <CENTER>Back to <A HREF="computer.htm">A Garden of Silicon Delight</A>.</CENTER> <BR> The content and opinions expressed on this Web page do not necessarily reflect the views of nor are they endorsed by the University of Georgia or the University System of Georgia.