Any advantages to frames?

[milly]

I am involved with a group trying to help out an orphanage in Uganda, Bwindi Orphanage Development Centre. We have made a free website for them using googlepages - I have learned html and css and made a simple site for another group but I am still learning so we cheated to make it quicker!

Someone is making a site for the UK support group but is using framesets. I am not comfortable with this for reasons of accessibility & SEO but is there a good reason they might prefer to use frames? They are a professional company and they have offered free domain name, hosting and design (which we appreciate very much!) so I don't really want to ask them to change things unless I have to.

All the advice I have seen recommends using CSS <div> instead of frames and SSI for menus etc. Is there any reason the web design people would want to do it with frames - once they have designed the site we will be able to add content so I wondered if it was something to do with that.

I don't want to offend them, their design is great and we really appreciate it. I don't really want to be difficult especially as they are the 'experts' and I don't know much about web design!

[VanessaJW]

I can't think of any good reason why they would use frames. You are in a difficult position though, like you say if they are doing it for free it's harder for you to start dictating how they should do it. Why not start by just asking them why they are choosing to use frames, not in an accusatory way, but just as a simple question to see what they have to say, and then take it from there.

[alexgeek]

Here's some reasons why not to use frames, which should convince you that there aren't any good reasons
http://web.mit.edu/is/isnews/v12/n04/43459.html

[Lchad]

Maybe that's just what they know how to do? Are they IT guys doing this or real professional designers?

I don't think there is any advantage.. maybe a slight boost in load time but with most people on high speed internet that's not a concern.

Good luck!

[milly]

They do sites for businesses too - but I had a look and they seem to be frames too. I will have to do a tactful enquiry I think. I have never used frames, maybe I could 'translate' them later?

Oh dear, I will try not to upset anyone. But the SEO thing is quite important and I am personally abit militant on accessibility in any form (wheelchair user!!) ... and English is not their first language which makes the wording of the tactful email even trickier.

Thanks for your help, you have confirmed what I had feared

[karinne]

They are probably using frames because they don't have to include the menu or footer in every pages.

If that is the case, I would ask them to use includes instead. PHP includes or SSI ... See this thread

It's your site after all ...