CREATING FRAMES

I'll show you some basic examples of frames here. If you want to get fancy, then do some experimenting on your own. Don't forget, you can always View/Source on anybody's web page to see how they made their frames.

To make a page with frames you have to create an HTML file that has only the code for the frames. The contents in the frames are from separate HTML files. So, for example, if you wanted a page with 2 frames you would need 3 HTML files - one for the frames code, and one for each of the frames. Let's start with making a frames code. Here's a simple one:

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Frames</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<FRAMESET ROWS="20%, 80%">

   <FRAME SRC="up.html" SCROLLING=no NAME="up">

   <FRAME SRC="down.html" SCROLLING=auto NAME="down">

</FRAMESET>

</HTML>
This code make a frames page like this. I guess you noticed that there's nothing in the frames. That's because there is no up.html or down.html. If you don't make the pages to put in the frames that's what it's going to look like. Go ahead and view the source code for the frames!

Now let's get into what these commands mean. FRAMESET tells the browser that we're starting a frame page. The ROWS tells it that we've got rows, not columns. Then you need to tell it how big you want the rows to be. (The total should generally equal 100%, if not the browser will adapt it to fill 100% of the page.) Note the % sign!

Next you have to tell it what you want in the frames and what you want the frames to do. Since there are two frames we have to give it two descriptions. Let's look at the first one:

<FRAME SRC="up.html" SCROLLING=no NAME="up">
SRC is the source for that frame, the HTML file that will be displayed there. SCROLLING tells the browser whether or not it can scroll on that frame. Please make sure that all the stuff in that frame is visable! I've been to so many pages that have something at the bottom of a frame that isn't viewable because it's not scrollable. I'll show you what I mean here. It's pretty aggravating isn't it? Sometimes if you hide all the tools in your browser you can see what you're missing, but who knows if there's more?! NAME is what you're going to name that frame. This is important when you are referring to your frames. We'll get into this a little later. For now, just remember to name them something that's easy to remember.

Now for the second frame:

<FRAME SRC="down.html" SCROLLING=auto NAME="down">
This frame is going to show the file down.html. However, it will be scrollable. There is going to be a lot of information on that page, so we want people to be able to scroll through the whole document. Therefore, we use the command auto. If there isn't enough information on that page for someone to have to scroll, there won't be a scroll bar, so don't be alarmed if you don't see one. The NAME of this second window is "down".

Now, don't forget to close the FRAMESET tag with </FRAMESET> and of course close the document with </HTML>. This ain't so bad is it?! Don't worry if you're having a problem remembering all this. One good way is to make a "dummy" frames.html and save it so you can refer to it whenever you're making one for your site.

Let's get a little further into this. Have you ever been to a page on someone's site where you couldn't get out of the frames? You click on a link and it opens up in one of the little windows, but if your luck's running bad it's a link to yet another frames page. When making these pages you have to target a window for your links to come up in. This is where it becomes important to name each frame. We need to go to a frames page so I can show you what we're getting into.

Next page
[ Main Page | Drink Menu | Bar fun | The Crimson Tide | The Magic City | HTML Help | Spam | S.H.U.T.U.P.! Web Ring ]

This page hosted by geocities Get your own Free Home Page


1