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HTML Frames Basics

By Stephen Bucaro

A frame creates a separate pane within the browser window. A frame can contain its own webpage, or it can provide a different view of the same webpage in another frame in the same browser window. A frame may have a border, or be borderless. A frame may or may not have scrollbars. A frame may or may not be resizable.

frameset

A frame is always contained within a frameset which may contain one or more frames. The frameset shown above contains three frames, the menu and content area frames are within one frameset which is nested along with the header frame inside a second frameset. The code for this example is shown below.

<html>
<head>
<title>Amendments to the Constitution</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="110, *">
  <frame src="header.htm">
  <frameset cols="120, *">
    <frame src="menu.htm">
    <frame name="content" src="content1.htm">
  </frameset>
</frameset>
</html>

The <frame> tag defines a frame within a <frameset>. A frame may have the following attributes:

Attribute Description

src URL of the document to be displayed in the frame

name Name used for TARGET attribute in <a href> links

frameborder Whether to display a border, 1=yes or 0=no

framespacing Space between frames, in pixels

marginwidth Size of left and right margins, in pixels

marginheight Size of top and bottom margins, in pixels

scrolling Defines scrolling, values are yes, no and auto

noresize Prevents user from resizing the frame

The <frameset> </frameset> tags define a set of frames.

<html>
<head>
<title>Two Vertical Frames</title>
</head>
  <frameset cols="200, 400">
    <frame src="leftcol.htm">
    <frame src="rightcol.htm">
  </frameset>
</html>

The document that defines the frameset has a head section, but no body section. The frameset tags take the place of the body tags. A frameset may have the following atributes:

Attribute	Description
rows	Width of frame in number of rows or percentage of window width. * indicates frame should take up remaining space
cols	Height of frame in number of columns or percentage of window height. * indicates frame should take up remaining space