OIC - Google doesn't catch the index page of a framed site!

I see what google did. Google found the pages within the site, but it did not list the index page, the page where you can actually see the navigation frame on the left, and the individual pages on the right. So google won't list your index page in its results.

That means you have to make sure every page has a link to the main page on it. That will get you back to the framed section if you find a page through google.

That doesn't bother me. Why is that so bad? (I'm sure there's an answer to 'why is that so bad?' Some more experienced web designer would know, someone who struggled with frames and gave up on them in disgust and started using artificial frames instead.) Fake frames... I insist, my site will use real frames, not fake ones. No matter what people say about how 'you can do the same thing a different way using CSS or whatever,' I don't care - it's not the same at all. I've never seen an imitation frame that behaved exactly like a real frame. And why not? Frames are so great, that everyone ought to be finding out how to create an exact duplicate of them, something that works exactly the same way but without the drawbacks of frames! Why aren't more people using excellent imitations of frames? Why aren't they spending more time and effort to do this?

What do I like so much about a frame?

It doesn't disappear and reappear!

When you click links on fake frames, the ENTIRE PAGE disappears, and you sit there staring at a white screen for a few seconds, or a few minutes, depending on how bad the page is. Everything disappears completely and has to be rewritten.

On a real frame, you click a link, and the frame stays there, still visible. You can keep looking at the same point on the screen. You don't lose your place. You can keep mulling over what's written there, glancing down the list of things you're about to click on. It stays there and it never leaves. While the display page loads (and this only takes a few seconds if it's plain text!), you can think about which link in the frame you're going to click next.

Oh, it's trivial? It's trivial to be annoyed that the entire page disappears? Guess what, it's not trivial to me. Why isn't anybody making a fake frame that behaves that way - that doesn't disappear after you click on it? If it already exists, why aren't more people using it?

Well, THAT took all the wind out of my sails - I just did something in my opera browser. There is a button called 'links' in the opera browser. When you push this button, the browser gives you a frame (in the browser) with all of the links that it collected from the web page you're viewing. You can click 'lock' and it will keep all of those links no matter which page you go to. That is what I want to see on a web page.

What's the problem with just using the 'links' frame in the opera browser? Well, it gives you a zillion links in a messy, disorganized way. Those links weren't intentionally designed to be written in a particular order to be nice for viewing in a frame.

The 'links' button is useful sometimes when I can't easily see where all the links are on a page. Opera finds them for me and puts them in a column so that I can click them easily.

But it turns out that on most web pages, there are tons of links that I want to ignore and never use. Or hardly ever. All of those links are listed in the opera links frame, and they are usually at the top, above all of the 'real' links that I want to see. Okay... let me make sure I don't have any embarrassing windows open... I'm going to take a screenshot.

Uh-oh, how do I... okay, it seems to be all right.  That is supposed to be a thumbnail.  I don't use images very often because they slow down the page when it loads, but I will tolerate a thumbnail now and then.

Anyway, so that links button in opera still isn't quite what I want.  The links aren't organized well, because nobody meant for them to be lined up in a column.  So it's hard to find the links you're looking for.  But yes, that functions the same way a real frame does.  Everything else about it is good.  I just want a framed web page where the links are intended to be viewed in a column and are intended to be pushed while you watch the content loading on the right side of the screen (or the left side, or the bottom, or whatever).

Yes!  I have six shortcuts to six different versions of Opera on my toolbar!  Nothing wrong with that!  It was because of a technical problem!