Lesson 4 - Framesets

welcome to Wreamweaver 8

Dreamweaver makes it super easy for you make a frameset. Having said that, what the heck is a frameset?

What are Framesets?

Framesets are a 'picture within a picture' view through your Web browser. You get to see more than one page at once, and can even navigate through an entire website without having to hit the 'back button'. Framesets are a very early implementation in HTML, and have been around for over a decade. While many designers would just as soon never have to deal with frames, they do serve a valuable purpose, and anyone who uses a Web based email service has used frames.

Introduction to Framesets

When I first taught HTML 10 years ago I included frames as part of our required elements, and developed a number of tutorial files that helped students work though the construction of frames. If you don't know what frameset code looks like, or if it's been a while, you should take a look at the files

Frameset Files

Take a look at a series of very basic files and framesets. Starting with frame_1 you can see how 5 files, called cell_1.htm, cell_2.htm, cell_3.htm, cell_4.htm, and cell_5 .htm, are all combined into one file. Next you'll look at frame_2.htm, similar to frame_1.htm, but includes a scroll frame. In frame_3.htm, we add a header and a footer to the frames. In the next section, we'll see how we can target our links to load pages into a named frame.

A Frameset Directory

The final frameset we look at is both straightforward to code, but somewhat complicated to explain. In directory.htm, we create a list of links (companies) in a file called companies.htm. When you click on a link in the scrolling list, you target the page to appear in the right hand frame of directory.htm. Each of the 20 company pages can appear in that names frame. We also have a header and a footer, called top.htm and bottom.htm. Take a look at these files and see if you can follow how the framesets are coded. Then load them into Dreamweaver, and follow how you navigate to each file in order to make changes. Try 'sand boxing' these files in a folder (back it up) and make changes to the individual files.

While you might not ever design a site with frames (never say never) I guarantee you that someday you will be maintaining a website that uses frames, and then you'll be very happy that you took this time to learn how to use them. And even happier that you have a tool like Dreamweaver to make changes and edits to the frameset files.

When to use (or not use) Framesets

So when do you design with frames, and when wouldn't you? Use frames when you know your site visitor will do a lot of exploring back and forth between a linked list and a small target page, and especially when you don't want them to be using the back button. Frames take up space, so unless you have a huge monitor, or one with ultra resolution, recognize that frames can significantly reduce the amount of space you can work with on a page.