What are Frames?

Frames are one of the most used technique in web page design today. It has many advantages, but some very distinct disadvantages. Frames, divide a web page to independent partitions. Each partition behaves like a container which can hold a HTML page.It is something like TV dinner trays where each partition is going to hold the courses for the meal; one partition for rice, one partition for chicken teriyaki and another partition for salad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

     

 

 

 

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>

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)

 

 

 

Email: Dr. Kirk P. Arnett, CCP, DBA