Frames

The main JayDax web page used to be made up of 'three' frames. However, the Web moves on, today frames have fallen out of fashion. CSS has replaced 'frames' although the 'iframe' is still around. This page has been kept to give you an idea of whate frames can do.

Frames worked best when each shared the same background and the frame borders were turned off, so sometimes you couldn't easily see where they were. Clicking on a link in one frame made the content of another frame alter . This is used by the right-hand and top frames as an index to JayDax web site. If you want to see a frame in a window on its own, this can be done with Netscape by right clicking where the frames are, and choosing 'open frame in new window'.
If you want to create your own frames, there was an excellent tutorial on writing the HTML involved at http://www.newbie.net/sharky/frames . This page has now gone but - try the link and thanks to 'The Wayback Machine' you can still see it. This may perhaps be a little beyond a novice to HTML, and we have to admit, we find writing the HTML code a chore. One way around this is to use a webpage editor such as Dreamweaver by Macromedia, which makes producing frames a breeze. Dreamweaver is not cheap, but, if you value your time, it's worth it!
Lets look at some HTML code for a simple HTML page which creates the following layout.
 

Title Frame
Menu Frame
Main Frame

Text in gray is not relevant to the HTML codes used to produce a frameset. They are there to show the correct placement of the frames codes.
 

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Basic Example Frameset</TITLE>
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="This is an example of a simple frameset">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="understanding frames">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="JayDax Web Design Services">
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET ROWS="100,*">
 <FRAME NAME="title" SRC="title.htm" SCROLLING="no">
 <FRAMESET COLS="20%,*">
  <FRAME NAME="menu" SRC="menu.htm" SCROLLING="auto">
  <FRAME NAME="main" SRC="main.htm" SCROLLING="auto">
 </FRAMESET>
</FRAMESET>
<NOFRAMES>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<H2>Those people who can't display frames with their browser will see this.</H2>
</BODY>
</NOFRAMES>

</HTML>
<FRAMESET ROWS="100,*"> Frameset replaces the <BODY> tag - it can have a number of parameters:
ROWS="100,*" - means 2 rows, the top being 100 pixels high, the bottom, taking up the rest of the space.

COLS="20%,*" - means 2 columns, the left taking up 20% of the available space, the right the remainder.
<FRAME NAME="title" SRC="title.htm" SCROLLING="no"> This section defines what will appear in each frame. This frame has been given the name 'title' and loads the file 'title.htm'
SCROLLING="no" - means no scroll bars will be visible. The value "yes" would always show a scroll bar - the value "auto" would show a scroll bar, only if it's necessary.

MARGINWIDTH="5" - optional parameter, which forces a 5 pixel margin at the left and right side of the frame.

MARGINHEIGHT="8" - optional parameter, which forces an 8 pixel margin at the top and bottom of the frame.

NORESIZE - optional parameter, which prevents the frame from being resized.
<NOFRAMES>Content</NOFRAMES> The <NOFRAMES> tag is used to avoid a blank page being displayed by those people whose browser can't display frames. It's also a useful place to put links so that search engine robots can read the content inside your frames - essential if this page is the index.html of your web site.