FRAMES

Please ensure you are comfortable with making web pages as in my basic tutorial before proceeding with this section.

Frames are useful for when you have quite a few pages available for the viewer to choose from. If you only have one or two pages its easier to leave them without frames.

Not all browser are able to display frames, but they are few and far between. As both Netscape and Microsoft allow free downloads from their sites, these non frame browsers are usually in network sites where the user is not able to upgrade the system, without administrative approval. Leaving then with very old browser versions.

As with my original page, you will not HAVE to learn any HTML to make a frame page. Although you will learn a bit more about how it works.
 
PLAY IT SAFE WITH YOUR WORK. Make a new folder to put all this in, so if you don't like it, or you can not get it to work, your originals are still available for you to change everything back again.

The frame page, has nothing on it itself, it only calls up the pages needed to fill the frames.

I have made a frame page which you can download. It is a zip file, so it knows to download it, and not open it in the browser. Unzip it to your new folder.

You can use this "as is" if you want.
It is already called index.html (you can change this if you want, makes no difference)
The left hand frame (Frame "a" ) calls for a file called "nav.html"
and the right hand (Frame "b" a file called "welcome.html"


You will need to make your nav and welcome pages.
The nav.html is the navigation page, keep in mind that it will be quite narrow on the page. The welcome.html is where you put a basic introduction.

They are the same as any other page, with the only major difference being in the links. You must tell the browser where to display the page. Using regular type links it will appear in the same window as it was called from.
 

WHEN YOU MAKE THE LINK press the button labelled EXTRA HTML and type in this box
TARGET="b"
This tells the browser to open this link in frame "b"


Other targets you may use are

TARGET="_blank" This tells the browser to open the link in a new browser window, leaving the other open under it.
TARGET="_top" Tells the browser to replace the frame page the link is called from.


EDITING THE FRAME PAGE.
If you open the Index.html file you downloaded in Composer you will only see
 
This page is designed to be viewed by a browser which supports Netscape's Frames extension. This text will be shown by browsers which do not support the Frames extension.

Not much to edit?? But there is.

From the EDIT menu choose HTML SOURCE. It will ask for your HTML editor, browse to your Windows folder and choose NOTEPAD, this works as good as anything, provided you are carefull what you do. Its also, like everything here free.

or you can open a new blank page in composer, open the EDIT HTML SOURCE and copy this into it.

It will bring up a file like this
 


<HTML>
<!--DESCRIPTION: Basic Frame Page-->
<!--This file created 10:43  -->
<HEAD>
   <TITLE>Frame Page</TITLE>
   <META NAME=GENERATOR CONTENT=>
   <X-CLARIS-WINDOW TOP=42 BOTTOM=613 LEFT=4 RIGHT=534>
   <X-CLARIS-TAGVIEW MODE=minimal>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET COLS="100%" FRAMEBORDER=1><NOFRAMES><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">

<P>This page is designed to be viewed by a browser which supports Netscape's Frames extension. This text will be shown by browsers which do not support the Frames extension.</P>
</BODY>
</NOFRAMES><FRAMESET COLS="20%,50%" FRAMEBORDER=1><FRAME SRC="nav.html" NAME=a MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0 FRAMEBORDER=1><FRAME SRC="welcome.html" NAME=b MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0 FRAMEBORDER=1></FRAMESET></FRAMESET></HTML>
 

Now you can see a few things.
The page name, which is shown here as Frame Page. To edit this name replace the bit between the <TITLE>With the name you want</TITLE>
Notice the detail to be shown to browsers that do not support Frames.
You will also see the called for files names, nav.html and welcome.html
If you want to use other names change these file names here, and save the changes, and that's it be sure to leave "the" marks there
You will also notice the referance to Claris, which is the Editor I used to make this Frame set.

TESTING YOUR FRAMES PAGE
Couple of ways here.
If you can make a new folder in the server where you have your pages ( as an example folder test). Not all servers allow this, then copy everything to this new folder. To see it enter your usuall URL only tack the new folder on the server name (http://www.--------/test )
Should work perfectly, when you happy with it, simply replace your pages with these new ones.

OR.
Change the name of the frame page from index to something else, index2 for example. this means you will need to enter
/index2.html
to view the page. It will however need no other changes to your site as it was. When you happy with it, change you original index.html to something else ( e.g. index3.html ) and the index2 back to plain index, and your in bussiness.