Okay, so this site uses frames. Why do I bring this up? Because frames have taken a beating in the web development community for the last few years.
Here are a few reasons why:
- They mess with our ability to bookmark pages. If you try to bookmark a page that is inside of a website using frames, usually you’d just bookmark the main page of the site, which wasn’t what you wanted. Irritating. However, new browsers are fixing that problem.
- Accessibility for people with disabilities and for alternate browsing technologies (like cell phones, PDAs, etc.) was questionable. Still is, as far as I can tell.
- For a while, many framed sites didn’t want to let you go when they linked outside the site. Incidentally, if you notice me doing this, it is an accident and please let me know.
I grapple with the decision to use frames, even now that I am using them. Do frames still have the problems listed above? Yes.
However, because this site is hosted on MSU’s pilot server, it doesn’t have basic web serving capabilities like accomodating dynamic content placement on sites, even using such basic technologies as server side includes. So, it is simply more convenient for me to use frames, given where I am at.
So, to all of you who are irritated by this frames based site…sorry, but deal with it.