off topic web design ...

I use a modified version of this - http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/menus/tutorial/

Basically, once you get past some necessary IE hacks this stuff works very, very well.  I use it on a wide variety of sites.

Something like the following code must be added the HEAD for IE:

<!--[if IE]>
   <style type="text/css" media="screen">
      /* IE Menu CSS */
      /* csshover.htc file version: V1.21.041022 - Available for download from: http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/csshover.html */
      body {
         behavior:url(/common/htc/csshover.htc);
         font-size:100%; /* to enable text resizing in IE */
      }
      /* This is required for IE to avoid positioning bug when placing content first in source. */
      #hmenu {
         float: none;
      }
      #hmenu ul {
         width: 1px;
      }      
      #hmenu ul li{
         float: left;
      }
      #hmenu em, #hmenu a{
         height: 1%;
         font: bold 1.0em/1.4em arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
      }
   </style>
<![endif]-->

Presence of frames should be irrelevant although this is perhaps a good time to mention that framed sites suck large.