Frame Concepts

I have to say here that I don't particularly want to go too deep on this. It's kind of like getting complicated with tables. You can get a headache if you think about it too much.

However, that being said, frames are being used with greater frequency if only for assisting the viewer in navigating around your site. Essentially, frames are used to split up the browser screen into separate units. The most common situation is to have a a navigation frame at the top of the screen or at the left hand side. Each frame then accomodates a separate page. Here's what the script looks like:

<HEAD></hEAD> <FRAMESET cols="120,*" FRAMEBORDER="yes" border=0> <FRAME Name="nav" SRC="nav.html" Scrolling="no"> <FRAME Name="main" SRC="main.html" Scrolling="auto"> <NOFRAMES> <BODY> This web site needs FRAMES capabilities to be seen. Please up date your browser soon </body> </NOFRAMES> </FRAMESET>

To see the results of this script, click here. To return hit your BACK button.

When you clicked on "here" you were sent to a script called "framex.html". In that script (which is above) two frames were created in the "cols="120,*"" line. The script said to create a frame 120 pixels wide and then leave the rest for the other frame. If I'd wanted my frames to be top and bottom then I would have typed "rows="120,*"" and two frames would have been created vertically.

Now, when I click on any of the links in the navigation frame they not only go to another page or site but they should also put it into the "main" frame. That way the designer of the page has more control of the movements of the viewer. The script for the links is similar to the ordinary links script with a small difference. The link also has to be told where to go on the page. It looks like this:

<A HREF="here.html" target="main">Here</A>

Note that there is an extra attribute in that line. The "target="main" tells the browser where to put the page that has been linked to. If you want the page to come up in its own screen then "target="top" is inserted. If you do not specify a target then the browser will create a new page on top of the one you were on. This is starting to be popular because in creating a new screen the old screen is still in the background and is easily accessible. It can be startling for the first time user who is not sure of themselves on the browser.

As a last comment, you will have to create an extra page for your navigation aids. The frame with the "Here, There, and Everywhere" links is a separate page.

Now let's check out FORMS...