The comeback of frames

In the days when applications were delivered via desktop software and web sites were mostly content, there was a prevailing opinion on frames: while they were appropriate for desktop software they were verboten for web pages. The argument was that framed web pages broke users' mental model of a single page controllable by the browser scroll bar.

Now, with so many applications migrating to the web, frames are increasingly part of the web experience. The most effective implementations use application-like frames minus a browser scroll bar. Yahoo mail is an example of this approach (click to see full-sized image):

Google docs is another example of application-like frames--the interface has a single scrollbar on the right, which controls the text authoring/editing frame.

In contrast, the text authoring/editing experience for Typepad can result in "dueling scrollbars"-- a scrollbar for the text area in addition to the browser scroll bar. This creates unnecessary complexity in the interface...and it's too easy to grab the wrong scroll bar: