They had merit. Targeting content from one frame to another for example. And <noframes> helped but as noted made extra work. Then there were silly features like coloring browser and frame chrome, adding iframes into iframes. Honestly, it was very interesting and often just fun!

Frames could absolutely be crafted to be accessible to most especially if <noframe> content was made available. 12 frames with animated GIFs however did not my photosenstive epilepsy accomodate. One size never truly fits all, alas. :)

On Compuserve? Love it. Ah, The Well, GEnie, Prodigy, Delphi - multilne BBSs. Single line BBSs. Then Gopher, Telnet, Usenet, (FREENET FFS) - GREYBEARDS! Time for us to sit on rocking chairs and make statements like "these kids today!" Marco ;-)

Wow! My first home computer was a Commodore 64. 300 baud Hayes modem (not coupler, I was cutting edge lol). QLink was Commodore's BBS. I saw live, international chat for the first time and my life changed forever. :)

SO awesome, Marco. Pre Web, a friend of mine who was blind from birth became a computer professor at Syracuse University in New York State. He used external hardware as voice output along with to me unknown software.