Chapter 4. Frames
HTML frames
allow you to divide the main browser window into smaller subwindows
(frames), each of which simultaneously displays a separate document.
Links in one frame can open in another frame by specifying its name
as a target. All of the latest graphical browsers support
frames.
Two
tags are used to make frame documents:
<frameset> and
<frame>. The
<noframes> element provides alternative
content for nonframes browsers. This is a requirement for HTML 4.0
and later and should contain functional content, or a link to it,
instead of telling someone to get a browser that supports frames.
A
frameset is simply a collection of frames that
occupy the browser's window. Column and row
definition attributes for the <frameset> tag
let you define the number and initial sizes for the columns and rows
of frames. The <frame> tag defines what
document—HTML or otherwise—initially goes into the frame,
and is where you may give the frame a name to use for hypertext link
targets.
Here is the HTML source for a simple frame document, which is
displayed by the browser in Figure 4-1.
<html>
<head>
<title>Frames Layout</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="60%,*" cols="65%,20%,*">
<frame src="frame1.html">
<frame src="frame2.html">
<frame src="frame3.html" name="fill_me">
<frame scrolling=yes src="frame4.html">
<frame src="frame5.html">
<frame src="frame6.html">
<noframes>
You are using a browser that does not support frames.
<a href="frame1.html">Take this link</a> to the first
HTML document in the set.
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>
The first thing to notice in the sample
document is that Netscape fills the frames in the frameset in order
across each row. Second, Frame 4 sports a scrollbar because we told
it to, even though the contents may otherwise fit the frame without
scrolling. (Scrollbars automatically appear if the contents overflow
the frame's dimensions, unless explicitly disabled
with scrolling=no.)
Another item of interest is the
name attribute in Frame 3. Once named, you can
reference a particular frame in which to display a hypertext-linked
document. To do that, you add a special target
attribute to the anchor (<a>) tag of the
source hypertext link. For instance, to link a document called
"new.html" for display in our
example window Frame 3, which we've named
"fill_me", the anchor looks like
this:
<a href="new.html" target="fill_me">
If the user selects this link, say in Frame 1, the
new.html document replaces the original
frame3.html contents in Frame 3.
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