I see lots of posts about how bad the use of frames is.... but I have no clue why

It seems like an easy way of keeping a menu static on the page, it's dead easy and looks pretty good in my opinion.

Can someone explain why not to use frames, and what the alternatives are before I design this site based on them??

Frames aren't always evil. Sometimes they can make a site look really, really good. But most of the time they aren't used right, resulting in a crappy looking site. But don't scratch them just because most people think they're evil. If you use them right, they're great (as you said, they make it easy).

http://msdn.microsoft.com

On that site, down a few directories to sections like the code area (or whatever), they have a nice frame-like setup, I think it might be dhTML though.

Like you've said, use it well, and it will save you time.

To list the most commonly cited reasons:

Usability:

Framed pages can be problematic to "bookmark" as a user

Some browsers (including some emerging web tv or supermarket access type services) do not support them

The use of frames (at the most basic level) changes the way a user interacts with a site (ie moved / oddly placed scroll bars).

Being seen:

Search engines....arrrgh. Unless you code smart, you could have search engines giving priority to one of the pages you have appearing in a frame. If all you navigation is in a seperate frame, you have users hitting a dead end.

Similarly, totally useless (on their own) frames could be indexed.

Frames can be used really nicely for effect (for a good example see www.kvetch.com), but be warned, the pitfalls are many!

H

The idea that frames suck stems back to when they first came out. Bad support and many many bugs. There are lots of reports (search google) as to why frames are bad. However if you are programming for Netscape 4.7 and IE 5.x frames work fine. Iframes are fully supported (I believe) in Netscape 6.0 and IE5.x.

The biggest downfall of frames is the bookmarking problem.

As for creating a static head footer and toc. Try using php one file for all above works really well and doesn't screw up bookmarking.

Thanks for the views guys

I think I might stick with frames for the site in question. It's only an "in-between" site really, to have some sort of .com.au presence. The main site (the .com) was done by "professionals". I just want to hack something together in a few days that has some australia content, then link to the main site for more info.

Glad you explained the reasons behind the Frame Hate campaign though, I was beginning to think it was a conspiracy

In my opinion, frames should be avoided. There are much more interesting ways to simplify the maintenance of your site, namely with php includes or any other type of includes for that matter...

On any really big sites, working with frames will automatically give you headaches as for indexing and parameters for frameset reconstruction.

It is true that well used, they can be interesting, but believe me if you start working with includes, you'll wonder why you even bothered with frames in the first place.

On the other hand, you can achieve some pretty neat tricks with iframes if your site is only supported on NS6 and IE4+. But then again, if you look up for dhtml scripts, you will be able to achieve the same (if not better) results without having to resort to them.

Definitely avoid using frames if you can; the potential problems far outweigh the benefits, in my opinion.