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If you go to any homepage in the internet that
leads to more than just a few documents, changes are that you will encounter
frames. Just try the link to the
homepage of this script! |
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Use the scroll bar on the right hand side: Only parts of what
you see moves; some parts of the screen are not involved. |
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What you do when using frames is to divide the
screen in a number of independent areas - the "frames".
Obviously, there must be at least 2 frames, but you can make as many
frames as you like - with fixed sizes and positions on the screen. |
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What you see inside each individual frame is something you
decide; the frames as such are completely
independent of each other. |
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Often, however, there are some small frames and a main frame.
What you do in a small frame, e.g. clicking on some kind of index, then changes
what happens in the main frame. |
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But that does not contradict the above statement: The
frames are indeed independent of each other
- the dependency you see concerns the contents of frames, and this dependency was
designed by creating links between
frames. |
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That has some important consequences: |
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If you want to display a document on your screen by loading it
via a link, you must tell the browser in which one of your independent frames
the document should be displayed. This information is an attribute to a link tag! |
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If you load a document from somewhere else that may have
frames of its own via a link, you will get frames
within frames: One of your frames - the one the other document is
loaded into - now is divided into more independent parts of the screen - the
frames of someone else that you now have within one of your frames. So again,
you must specify an attribute to the link tag to avoid this. |
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Now lets see how a frame is made. |
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Constructing a frame in source code is fairly
messy; but HoTMetaL provides an easy to use short cut. So let's start: |
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You must construct a frame on an empty page, but not on
any empty page. |
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Open a new page (Do not click on the "empty page"
button, chose "New" in the File menu, and go to
"frames page" in the choice that
pops up. |
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You now have a choice for some standard frame sets - that is the word for the collection of
frames you are to establish. |
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Select one - e.g. the frame set with a head frame, a side
frame, and a main frame (called "header and contents"). |
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You will now get a page with the frames displayed |
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Now look at the symbols at the bottom of the page.
You see a new key that is activated - the "frame
on view" key. Now press the "tags
on view" key. |
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All you see now is a page with some tags saying
<Frameset>, <frames>, and <noframes>
within a comment tag. The comment tag, again, is
for keeping browsers in line that cannot support frames. |
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The other two remind you that a frame
set is something different from a frame; it must be specified independently. |
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Lets look at the frame
set first. The best way to find out, is to put your cursor in the
corresponding <frameset></frameset> tag and press
F6. |
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The first attributes are "ROWS" and "COLumns"; there might be a number followed by a
comma followed by an asterix in "ROWS". e.g."100,*". |
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This obviously gives the width of the vertical frame on the
left hand side in pixels. It actually gives the width of both columnar frames;
the asterix simply tells the browser to take whatever is left for the frame to
the right of the attributed one. |
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If you have more than two vertical frames, you have more than
two numbers; if you give all numbers (no asterix), you might confuse the
browser because you might specify something that can't be done. |
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If you look at your frame set in the source code, you will
find the "100,*" entry there too. It is clear that you change
the size of this frame within the frame set if you change the number. |
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Since there are easier ways to adjust the size of your frames
compared to doing it the direct way, we will not discuss this here. |
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Now lets see what kind of attributes we find for
the <frame></frame> tag |
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The first thing we should do is to give the frame a
name. If you are not sure which tag
contains which frame, go to the "frame
view" instead of "tag
view" and simply click in the frame you want to specify. the
border lights up; now hit the F6 key. The attribute list now popping up
is the list for the frame you selected. |
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Good names are, e.g. "headframe" for the one at the top,
"sideframe" for the one at the
side, and "mainframe" for the big
one. You can use any names you like, but do give names now. |
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We will come back to the other attributes, but we have must do
something else before. |
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We must store our frame set! And there is
a rigid rule for that! |
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Since a frame set is practically always the first page of a
HTML project that a browser should load, it
carries the fixed name for that page which
is "index.html" or "index.htm" - the trend goes to the four letter
prefix. |
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The term "html
project" has also a defined meaning: It is the ordered and
internally linked collection of HTML documents (including style sheets,
graphics, videos, audios, and everything else) that has to go over the net to a
user. |
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And since the first page must be on the top of the hierarchy
of folders and files, you store your frame set with the file name
"index.html" in your top
file. |
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If you do that, any browser, if only given the
basic address of your project ending in a slash (/), will automatically
open the page named "index.html" - which is what you want. |
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Now we have a frame set, but so far it is empty.
Lets try to get some text inside the frames. |
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Go to your frames and try to write something into a frame.
This seems to be not possible, because there is no cursor in the "frame view" display. Well, try the tag view and try to write in the frame tag. Not
possible either. |
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That is so, because the contents of a frame
are always loaded into the frame via a link
to the document you want to have in the frame. |
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We will discuss how you link documents and frames
in the next subchapter, here we finish by learning
how you format the frame set. |
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The essential points are the sizes of the frames, the kind of border between frames, and what the browser is
supposed to do if what you load into a frame does not
fit into the available space. |
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Changing frame sizes
is easy: Just move the borders with the mouse. In his case - in contrast to tables - it is a good idea to do it
this way. After you found the sizes you like, you may want to give it in
percent and not on pixels - it is up to you; just change the settings from,
e.g., "70,* to "10%,*" (with F6 in the
proper frame set tag) and resize again by directly moving the borders |
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Setting border line width and
color is done by clicking into the frame you want to adjust, using
F6 directly, and writing the borderline size for the attribute
"BORDER" and by selecting the color the usual way for the
attribute BORDER COLOR. You must chose "ALL" in the
attribute menu to see those options! |
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The last important attribute is "SCROLLING".
If you set it to "no" in your
mainframe (where your stuff is supposed to be), nobody will be able to see
anything that is not on the screen - there will be no scroll bars. Same if you
enable "noresize" for the
"NORESIZE" attribute. So be careful with these
attributes! |
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