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.
Get Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.