Concepts Assignment - 2 - Frames

Concept 30 - Frames: the information-display challenge
“Websites can be created in many ways, using a variety of display techniques. One well-used, but also widely criticised approach is to use frames. While it is useful to understand frames technically (so as to allow users easy printing, navigating, saving and searching), it is also important to see them as an example of an underlying conceptual struggle between information and display.”(Allen, n.d.)

Frames are useful for loading dynamic content, but when it comes to statically positioned elements that have static content (which this paper is focused on) there is little if not any need for them. A major downfall of frames is their inability to maximise Search Engine Optimisation, which is extremely desirable in order to attract visitors to your page over a rivals. As we will see, CSS provides an alternative method to frames that facilitates good SEO principles.

An element that we will use to demonstrate where CSS can replace the use of frames is statically positioned navigation menus. Navigation menus act like the gateway for web crawlers (the agents sent out by search engines to index the web) to go deeper into your site structure in order to index it. What some web developers may not realise however is that frames hamper a web crawler’s ability to do this, and as a result, sites that use frames cannot be indexed correctly.

All web crawlers use hyperlinks (HREFs - the html attribute that links your pages together) to traverse through a website (Aharonovich, 2006). However because frames display outsourced content, many web crawlers cannot see the HREFs contained in that content, therefore they are unable to access and index the deeper layers of the site. SEO wise, this is not good. Some Web Crawlers are able to access a frame’s content through its SRC attribute (the reference to the outsourced content) but this poses new problems (Search Engine Marketing FAQ, n.d). When the Web Crawler indexes that page, it indexes it as an independent entity, outside of the main page structure. That means that when users click on it from a search engine, instead of taking them to the main website with the information they searched for in its containing frame, the page will be displayed by itself out of context. This is not desirable as your page will not be displayed in the way that w as intended. Thus, frames are a cause of major concern when thinking about maximising the SEO potential of a website.

CSS can be used instead of frames to position elements within a webpage. It is able to do this with the attribute ‘position: fixed’ which displays an HTML element in a static position on the screen. But unlike frames it can do this without limiting the SEO potential of a web site.

A DIV tag is one HTML than can be positioned with ‘position: fixed’. The difference between a DIV tag and a frame is that its content is already embedded within the main document and doesn’t have to be externally loaded. So when a web crawler comes to your newly designed website, it can see your navigation menu embedded within a DIV (or similar HTML element) and thus can traverse the hyperlinks that it contains.

It should be quite obvious after seeing the Search Engine Optimisation disadvantages of frames, that when it comes to important statically positioned elements such as menus, frames are not a good option. CSS is able to offer the full potential of Search Engine Optimisation, while still maintaining the ability to statically position elements. Therefore CSS provides an alternative method to frames that facilitates good Search Engine Optimisation principles.

Site 1:
Why frames and search engine optimization don’t mix. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2009, from Pandia: http://www.pandia.com/sew/500-frames.html

For further investigation into why frames are bad to use, pandia.com points out clearly the way frames can destroy the external linking capabilities of a site by doing a sort of case study on an online store. In an online store, external linking is an absolute must in order to drive sales from different referrals. We see framesets in context and by clicking through the shop you can see how the URL doesn’t change for each particular item, thus eliminating any possibility for external buyers to be linked to any particular product. This is a good case of a store struggling between information (it’s products) and display (it’s stores presentation).

Site 2:
Kyrnin, J. (n.d.). What is Ajax? Retrieved January 21, 2009, from About.com: http://webdesign.about.com/od/ajax/a/aa101705.htm

I’m including this website because even though CSS can replace frames for statically positioning elements, it can’t replace the functionality that frames offer. The ability to dynamically load content is probably a framesets biggest strength. Dynamic loading of content is very important in Web 2.0, and this site explains that there is a way in which this can be achieved without frames while still being able to maintain SEO principles. For people who want SEO maximised, while still having the benefits of dynamically loading content, then this site should be investigated.

Bibliography
Aharonovich, E. (2006, November 28). How Web Crawlers Work. Retrieved January 25, 2009, from The Code Project: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/tips/Web_Crawler.aspx

Search Engine Marketing FAQ. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2009, from SEO Logic: http://www.seologic.com/faq/frames-html-links.php