One most sites that use frames, they're used badly - making the site more useless than useful. More and more, I see sites graduating from a frame-based design to a more "all in one" idea similar to this site that allows the user to see all of the site at once, without having to load multiple pages.

Well, this article from Builder.com begs to differ on the unpopularity of frames on larger websites. Their suggestion revolves around a "hidden frame" (one with a size of 0), and using that frame to store information from the other frames for use later - or for precaching images/objects to be used later.

But be careful: as with most things, of course, this technique can be taken too far. I once saw an intranet application that had more than 50 hidden frames, containing every conceivable object that could possibly be displayed at some future time when navigating the application.

HTML Frames to Reduce Server Traffic suggests that you can use these kinds of things safely, but just don't over use them. It's up to you how you make your site work, but since frames cause more headaches than they do opportunities, most people have just shunned them and avoid them all together.