Creating the Content Pages for Your Frameset Most commonly, framesets provide navigation bars that keep navigational elements in view as the user scrolls through the contents of the docu
Trang 1Working with Frames
<frame src="document2.html" />
<frame src="document3.html" />
</frameset>
</html>
This example defines a frameset with three horizontal frames of equal height (see Figure 14.10) The contents of document1.html are displayed in the first frame, the contents of document2.html in the second frame, and the contents of document3.html in the third frame
Output
Figure 14.10 You use the <frame> tag to define the contents of each frame.
[View full size image]
Tip
When you're creating frameset documents, you might find it helpful to indent the <frame>
tags so that they're separated from the <frameset> tags in your HTML document This has
no effect on the appearance of the resulting web pages, but it does tend to make the HTML
source easier to read
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Trang 2The <noframes> Tag
What happens if a browser that doesn't support frames navigates to a frameset document? Nothing You get a blank page Fortunately, there's a way around this problem
A special tag block called <noframes> enables you to include additional HTML code as part of the
frameset document The code you enclose within the <noframes> element isn't displayed in
frames-compatible browsers, but it's displayed in browsers that don't support frames The <noframes> tag takes the following form:
<html>
<head>
<title>Frameset with No Frames Content</title>
</head>
<frameset>
your frameset goes here.
<noframes>
Include any text, hyperlinks, and tags you want to here.
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>
Using the frames' content and tags inside <noframes>, you can create pages that work well with both kinds of browsers Later today, you'll add some <noframes> content to a frameset
Note
The way the <noframes> tag works is actually kind of interesting It works because web
browsers are designed to ignore tags that they don't understand So, browsers that don't
support frames ignore the <frameset> and <frame> tags They also ignore the <noframes> tag
and just display whatever is inside it Browsers that do support frames know to render the
frames and ignore the text inside the <noframes> tag
Trang 3Changing Frame Borders
Changing Frame Borders
Notice that all the frames in today's lesson have thick borders separating them There are a number of attributes that can be set to control the appearance of frame borders or prevent them from appearing altogether
Start with the <frame> tag By using two attributes, bordercolor and frameborder, you can turn borders
on and off and specify their color You can assign bordercolor any valid color value, either as a name or
a hexadecimal triplet frameborder takes two possible values: 1 (to display borders) or 0 (to turn off the display of borders)
Note
If you turn off the border, frames-compatible browsers won't display its default
three-dimensional border However, a space will still be left for the border
HTML 4.01 currently lists only the frameborder attribute The bordercolor attribute qualifies
as an extension
For example, the following code adds a deep red border (defined by #cc3333) around the middle frame in the frameset:
<html>
<head>
<title>The frame Tag</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="*,*,*">
<frame src="document1.html">
<frame frameborder="1" bordercolor="#cc3333" src="document2.html">
<frame src="document3.html">
</frameset>
</html>
Although HTML 4.01 doesn't provide either of these attributes for the <frameset> tag, you can use both
of them to define default values for the entire frameset in current browsers
Of course, there's room for confusion when colored borders are defined In the following frameset
definition, a conflict arises because the two frames share a single common border, but each frame is defined to have a different border color with the bordercolor attribute:
<html>
<head>
<title>Conflicting Borders</title>
</head>
<frameset frameborder="0" rows="*,*,*">
<frame frameborder="1" bordercolor="yellow" src="document1.html">
<frame bordercolor="#cc3333" src="document2.html">
<frame src="document3.html">
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Trang 4</html>
In addition, the frameset is defined as having no borders, but the first frame is supposed to have a border How do you resolve this problem? You can apply three simple rules:
● Attributes in the outermost frameset have the lowest priority
● Attributes are overridden by attributes in a nested <frameset> tag
● Any bordercolor attribute in the current frame overrides previous ones in <frameset> tags
Additional Attributes
Table 14.1 shows a few extra attributes for the <frame> tag These attributes can give you additional control over how the user interacts with your frames Other attributes control margins or spacing
between frames and whether scrollbars appear when required
Table 14.1 Control Attributes for the <frame> Tag
Attribute Value Description
frameborder 1 Displays borders around each frame (default)
frameborder 0 Creates borderless frames
longdesc URL Specifies a URL that provides a longer description of the contents of the
frameset Primarily used with nonvisual browsers
marginheight pixels To adjust the margin that appears above and below a document within a frame,
set marginheight to the number indicated by pixels
marginwidth pixels The marginwidth attribute enables you to adjust the margin on the left and right
sides of a frame to the number indicated by pixels.
name string Assigns a name to the frame for targeting purposes
noresize By default, the users can move the position of borders around each frame on
the current screen by grabbing the borders and moving them with the mouse
To lock the borders of a frame and prevent them from being moved, use the noresize attribute.
scrolling auto (Default) If the content of a frame takes up more space than the area available,
frames-compatible browsers automatically add scrollbars to either the right side
or the bottom of the frame so that the users can scroll through the document scrolling no Setting the value of scrolling to no disables the use of scrollbars for the
current frame (Note that if you do this but the document contains more text than can fit inside the frame, users won't be able to scroll the additional text into view.)
scrolling yes If you set scrolling to yes, scrollbars are included in the frame even if they
aren't required
Trang 5Changing Frame Borders
src URL Specifies the URL of the initial source document that appears in a frame when
the frameset first opens in the browser
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Trang 6Creating Complex Framesets
The framesets you've learned about so far are the most basic types of frames that can be displayed In day-to-day use, however, you'll rarely use these basic frame designs On all but the simplest sites, you'll most likely want to use more complex framesets
Therefore, to help you understand the possible combinations of frames, links, images, and documents that can be used by a website, this section will explore complex framesets
Task: Exercise 14.2 Creating the Content Pages for Your Frameset
Most commonly, framesets provide navigation bars that keep navigational elements in view
as the user scrolls through the contents of the document By far, the most common place to
present the navigation bars is on the left side of the browser window Each time the visitor
clicks a link in the left navigation frame, the content in the main frame displays the selected
page The (very silly) frameset that you'll create in this exercise demonstrates this
technique Although it's not a really practical example, it's simple, fun, and demonstrates the
very same techniques you would use for a navigation bar
When you design a web page that uses frames, you normally design the frameset before you
go through all the trouble of designing the content that goes into it That's because you'll
want to know how big your frames are going to be before you start designing graphics and
other page content to put into them
I'm doing things a little backward here, but for good reason It may help you to better
understand how things fit together if you see real content in the frames as you design the
frameset For this reason, I'll have you design the content first
The following content pages don't include any of the frameset tags discussed so far There
are eight pages in all, but I promise that I'll keep the code for these pages really brief
Ready?
Tip
When you lay out the basic structure of a frameset, you don't normally want to
be bothered with details such as the actual contents of the frames However,
your frameset won't be displayed properly when it's loaded into a
frames-compatible browser for testing unless you define <frame> tags that include valid
documents If you want to design a frameset before you create the content, you
can create a small empty HTML document called dummy.html and use it for all
your frame testing
The frameset that you'll create in Exercises 14.3 through 14.7 consists of three frames The
layout of the frameset will be as shown in Figure 14.11 The frameset page loads first and
instructs the browser to divide the browser window into three frames Next, it loads the
three pages that appear in the top, left, and main frames Finally, if a user browses to the
frameset without a frames-compatible browser, an alternative page will appear
Trang 7Creating Complex Framesets
Figure 14.11 You'll create a frameset that consists of three frames:
top, left, and main.
[View full size image]
The top frame always displays the same web pageaway.html The choices.html page that appears in the frame on the left side contains a list of links to six different pages named reason1.html through reason6.html Each of these six pages will load into the main frame on the bottom-right portion of the frameset
Start with the page displayed in the top frame This page will always appear in the frameset Here you can include any information you want to display permanently as visitors browse through your site Real-world examples for the content of this frame include the name of your website, a site logo, a link to your email address, or other similar content Type in the following code and save it to your hard drive as away.html:
<html>
<head>
<title>I'm Away from My Desk Because</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#cc6600" text="#000000">
<h3>I'm Away from My Desk, because </h3>
</body>
</html>
Figure 14.12 shows this page
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Trang 8Figure 14.12 The top frame in the frameset.
Next, you'll create the left frame in the frameset On real websites, this is typically the frame used for text or image navigation links that take your visitors to several different key pages
on your site For example, a personal site might have a navigation bar that takes its visitors
to a home page, a guest book, a links page, and other sections of interest A corporate or business site could contain links for products, customer support, frequently asked questions, employment opportunities, and so on
The contents page in the following example works exactly the same way that a realworld navigation bar does When the appropriate link is selected, it displays one of the six pages in the main frame of the frameset The contents page contains links to six pages, reason1.html through reason6.html, which you'll create next
After you enter the following code into a new page, save it to your hard drive in the same directory as the first page and name it choice.html:
Input
<html>
<head>
<title>Reason I'm Out</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#006699" text="#ffcc66" link="#ffffff" vlink="#66ccff"
alink="#ff6666">
<p>Select a reason:</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="reason1.html">Reason 1</a></p>
<p><a href="reason2.html">Reason 2</a></p>
<p><a href="reason3.html">Reason 3</a></p>
<p><a href="reason4.html">Reason 4</a></p>
<p><a href="reason5.html">Reason 5</a></p>
<p><a href="reason6.html">Reason 6</a></p>
</body>
</html>
Your page should look as shown in Figure 14.13 when you open it in a browser
Trang 9Creating Complex Framesets
Figure 14.13 The left frame in the frameset.
Now you need to create the six pages that will appear in the main frame when the visitor selects one of the links in the contents frame The main frame is designed to display pages that normally you would display in a full browser window However, if you're going to display your pages in a frameset that has a left navigation bar, you'll have to account for the
reduced size of the frame in your design
To keep the page examples relatively easy, I've given them all the same basic appearance This means that the code for all of these pages is pretty much the same The only items that change from page to page are the following:
● The title of the page
● The description of my current mood
● The text that describes what each image means
To create the first of the six pages that will appear in the main frame, type the following code into a new page and save it as reason1.html:
Input
<html>
<head>
<title>Reason 1 - Forgot My Lunch</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h2><img src="uhoh.jpg" width="275" height="275" align="left">I forgot my lunch
at home.</h2>
</body>
</html>
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Trang 10Figure 14.14 shows what this page should look like in a browser.
Output
Figure 14.14 The first of the six pages that appear in the main frame.
You code the remaining five pages for the main frame similarly Modify the code you just created to build the second of the six main pages The only differences from the previous code (reason1.html) are shown with a gray background Save the new page as reason2.html The complete code appears as follows:
<html>
<head>
<title>Reason 2 - By the Water Cooler</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h2><img src="flirty.jpg" width="275" height="275" align="left">I'm flirting by
the water cooler.</h2>
</body>
</html>
For the third page, modify the code again and save it as reason3.html The complete code appears as follows:
<html>
<head>
<title>Reason 3 - Don't Ask!</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h2><img src="grumpy.jpg" width="275" height="275" align="left">None of
your business!</h2>
</body>
</html>
Here's the fourth page (reason4.html):