Why are frames bad?

[merickson]

I've seen several posts on this forum saying that one should avoid frames.
Why?
I know that keeping track of frame names and where the link is comming from or going to can be a problem.
Is there some viewer side reason to avoid frames?

[Daniel]

It's annoying.

[CareBear]

Frames are considered bad because they weren't available on every browser when they were "invented" (pretty much a non issue now).
More valid reasons are that bookmarking a specific page from your site won't work anymore since the address in the address bar won't change as you navigate in a frame.
If someone finds a page from your site on a search engine and they click then the page will open but it won't be framed so they won't have any means of navigating around the site (somewhat fixable with client side scripting).
There's always the possibility of getting "stuck" in a frameset as well. If you have a link to a page that's not a part of your site and you don't set it differently, then it'll load in the same frame as the page that contained the link was in and not in the full window like you'd expect.
Frames do have some uses but most of them can be solved through some other means as well.

[merickson]

BTW, using target="_parent" will expand external links to full screen unless you are nesting frames <target="_top"> doesn't work in some IE.
Naming your top frame will also take care of that problem.

Thanks for letting me know the user-side problems with frames.

[spec]

Frames are ugly. It has become cleche.
It is like using a default forum template. It is a quick and easy solution that solves certain problems, but looks like that, quick and easy.

[aphel aura]

Another reason why frames is bad is that the loading time is increased to the fact that multiple pages are loaded simultaneously at the same time.