Frames
As a web designer this is your first step before designing
frames to decide what kind of information your frame nests
will hold. Frame styled web pages needs meticulous attention
in every detail. Carefully planned frame sets are very easy
to
design and surprisingly easy to maintain.
With frames, you can display more than one HTML document in
the same browser window. Each HTML document is called a frame,
and each frame is independent of the others.
The disadvantages of using frames are:
- The web developer must keep track of more HTML documents
- It is difficult to print the entire page
The Frameset Tag
- The <frameset> tag defines how to divide the window
into frames
- Each frameset defines a set of rows or columns
- The values of the rows/columns indicate the amount of
screen area each row/column will occupy
The Frame Tag
The <frame> tag defines what HTML document
to put into each frame.
In the example below we have a frameset with
two columns. The first column is set to 25% of the width of the
browser window. The second column is set to 75% of the width
of the browser window. The HTML document "frame_a.htm" is put
into the first column, and the HTML document "frame_b.htm" is
put into the second column:
<frameset cols="25%,75%">
<frame src="frame_a.html">
<frame src="frame_b.html">
</frameset>
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Useful Tips
If a frame has visible borders, the user can resize it by dragging the
border. To prevent a user from doing this, you can add noresize="noresize" to
the <frame> tag. Add the <noframes> tag for browsers that do not
support frames.
More Examples
Mixed frameset
This example demonstrates how to make a frameset with three documents,
and how to mix them in rows and columns.
Frameset with noresize="noresize"
This example demonstrates the noresize attribute. The frames are not
resizable. Move the mouse over the borders between the frames and
notice that you can not move the borders.
Navigation frame
This example demonstrates how to make a navigation frame. The navigation
frame contains a list of links with the second frame as the target.
The file called "tryhtml_contents.htm" contains three links. The
source code of the links:
< a href ="tryhtml_frame_a.htm" target ="showframe">Frame a</a><br>
< a href ="tryhtml_frame_b.htm" target ="showframe">Frame b</a><br>
< a href ="tryhtml_frame_c.htm" target ="showframe">Frame c</a>
The second frame will show the linked document.
Inline frame
This example demonstrates how to create an inline frame (a frame inside
an HTML page).
Jump to a specified section within a frame
This example demonstrates two frames. One of the frames has a source
to a specified section in a file. The specified section is made with <a
name="C10"> in the "link.htm" file.
Jump to a specified section with frame navigation
This example demonstrates two frames. The navigation frame (content.htm)
to the left contains a list of links with the second frame (link.htm)
as a target. The second frame shows the linked document. One of the
links in the navigation frame is linked to a specified section in
the target file. The HTML code in the file "content.htm" looks like
this: <a href ="link.htm" target ="showframe">Link without Anchor</a><br><a
href ="link.htm#C10" target ="showframe">Link with Anchor</a>.
Frame Tags
| Tag |
Description |
| <frameset> |
Defines a set of frames |
| <frame> |
Defines a sub window (a frame) |
| <noframes> |
Defines a noframe section for browsers that do not handle frames |
| <iframe> |
Defines an inline sub window (frame) |
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