This is the HTML technique that creates a fixed element to a web page, usually containing navigation buttons for the website that will be constantly visible. Frames were a popular technique several years ago but can cause problems for search engine optimization as they restrict the ability of some crawlers to index the site. With this in mind most SEO-savvy webmasters consider "Frames" a dirty word. For just about every application you might think frames are a good idea there is almost always a better way to do it using CSS and sometimes some JavaScript.

In the ultra-competitive world of the modern web it's important to optimize your pages as well as possible. While frames might not absolutely stop a search engine crawler in its tracks the knowledge that it may be slowed down or that the frames might mean your page won't be ranked as highly for target keywords should be enough to avoid them in almost every situation.