There are some mighty fine and dazzling sites out there for those who have the technology. As discussed in "audience", you will be limiting your potential viewers by use of the higher-end web magic.

FRAMES are used very commonly - when one area of the browser window stays put while you can move around in the other area. It's commonly used to keep the navigation icons in one place while the user moves around within the site, or to force the user to keep seeing ads while they look at different pages of content.

They can cause all sorts of problems. You can get "trapped" in a frame. They can limit your Search Engine Placement, as often the engine only reads the frameset, and misses seeing your actual content. And if you're trying to print, good luck. You'll probably get each frame printed on a separate page. And as for bookmarking... *sigh* - people can end up returning to a content frame directly without the navigation frame in place. That's no fun at all. And the list goes on.

Personally, on the whole I hate frames. If someone's managing to scroll down in your content, they know how to scroll back to your nav icons. Placing navigation at both the top and bottom of a page means it's never too far away. I will (and do) use frames, but I always try to have a no-frame alternative version available to users.

ANIMATION comes in many forms. Animated gifs are the only form of animation that can be seen by the whole web population, but they're usually associated with amateurish homepages - and they can look pretty tacky. They can also be quite large files so their use is limited. Plug-Ins such as Flash make much smaller files, but will only work for a percentage of web users. The last statistics I heard were that 75% of the web are Flash-enabled, which makes it the most widespread Plug-In. But ask yourself, do you really need animation?

SOUND can be a tricky issue. Depending on the user's platform (Windows, Mac etc) and their browser settings, placing sound automatically on a web page will have very inconsistent results. Also, it can be very annoying in a workplace. I recommend avoiding it, it's just too gimmicky.

Having sound as downloadable files (eg, MP3s) is a good added extra if it's relevant to your site - only people who have the facility to use them will bother downloading. The same can be said for streamed audio. Fine and dandy, but make it an optional bonus for those who can use it.

VIDEO is even more problematic. Unless someone has great equipment, a fast connection and the Moon's in Jupiter, it won't work or will look terrible. A webcam can be a fun addition to a site, but like sound, think of it as a bonus extra for the lucky ones.