Frames allow for multiple .html documents to be displayed inside of one browser window at a time. This means that one page has no content on it, but rather tells the browser which web pages you would like to open. With the addition of CSS and PHP, frames have become outdated, but if you wish to use them, read on.
Frames are most typically used to have a menu in one frame, and content in another frame. When someone clicks a link on the menu, that link is then opened in the content page. Here is a classic example of a basic "index" frameset with a menu on the left and content on the right.
<html> <body> <frameset cols="30%,*"> <frame src="menu.html"> <frame src="content.html"> </frameset> </body> </html>
Here's the example: Frame Index
frameset - The parent tag that defines the characteristics of this frames page. Individual frames are defined inside it.
frameset cols="#%, *" - The width that each frame will have. In the above example, we chose the menu (the 1st column) to be 30% of the total page and used a "*", which means the content (the 2nd column) will use the remaining width for itself (70%).
frame src="" - The URL of the web page to load into the frame.
A good rule of thumb is to call the page which contains this frame information "index.html", as that is typically a site's main page.
Add a row to the top for a title and graphics with the code as follows:
<html> <body> <frameset rows="20%,*"> <frame src="title.html"> <frameset cols="30%,*"> <frame src="menu.html"> <frame src="content.html"> </frameset> </frameset> </body> </html>
You've probably noticed those ugly gray lines that appear between the frames. It is possible to remove these and manipulate the spacing between frames with frameborder andframespacing. These attributes appear within the frameset tag.
Note: Framespacing and border are the same attribute, but some browsers only recognize one or the other, so use both, with the same value, to be safe.
frameborder="#" - Determines whether there will be a border.
border="#"- Modifies the border width.
framespacing="#" -Modifies the border width, used by Internet Explorer.
Here's an example of the same frameset without the borders.
<html> <body> <frameset border="0" frameborder="0" framespacing="0" rows="20%,*"> <frame src="title.html"> <frameset border="0" frameborder="0" framespacing="0" cols="30%,*"> <frame src="menu.html"> <frame src="content.html"> </frameset> </frameset> </body> </html>
Here's a visual:Visual
How nice would it be to make each menu link load into the content page? We do this by naming each frame and setting the correct base target inside "menu.html".
<html> <body> <frameset rows="20%,*"> <frame name="title" src="title.html"> <frameset cols="30%,*"> <frame name="menu" src="menu.html"> <name="content" src="content.html"> </frameset> </frameset> </body> </html>
<html> <head> <base target="content"> </head> <body> <!-- Content Goes Here --> </body> </html>
Here's the Visual: Visual
We first named the content frame "content" on our frame page, and then we set the base target inside "menu.html" to point to that frame. Our frame page is now a perfectly functional menu and content layout!
It's possible to further customize the <frame> tag using the noresize and scrollingattributes.
<html> <body> <frameset border="2" frameborder="1" framespacing="2" rows="20%,*"> <frame src="title.html" noresize scrolling="no"> <frameset border="4" frameborder="1" framespacing="4" cols="30%,*"> <frame src="menu.html" scrolling="auto" noresize> <frame src="content.html" scrolling="yes" noresize> </frameset> </frameset> </body> </html>