Frames: The Simple Frameset

One of the simplest types of framed web documents uses a newspaper-style layout.

In such a document are three frames:

a horizontal upper frame for a nameplate or banner
a narrow vertical frame on the left side of the screen for a table of contents.
a wider vertical frame on the right side of the screen to hold the main site pages.

Frame for a Banner
Frame for a Table of Contents	Frame for the main contents of a web site. The viewer might click on a link in the table of contents area to the left to cause the contents of this frame to change.

Before you create your frameset document, sketch out the layout of your frames page.

Then create a few files that will go into your frames.

For the example above I might create the following web pages:

banner.htm for the banner frame
toc.htm for the table of contents frame
default.htm for the main page of my site
pagetwo.htm for the next page of my site

Note that in this case both default and pagetwo are meant to appear in the larger frame in the lower right column.

To create a framed web document, first create a frameset document.

This frameset document is actually a blank page. It contains no content, only instructions for the frames that will be displayed.

Each frame will contain a body document, i.e., a normal web page.

The Frames Wizard

HomeSite 1.2 has a very useful Frames Wizard that will get you started with your frameset document.

Access the Frames Wizard from the Frames tab on the speedbar.

Frames tab

Frames Wizard

The Frames Wizard will first ask you whether you want rows or columns for your frames:

Specify the number of rows or columns you want to set up as frames:

Then if you want to divide one or more of the rows into columns, change the default values on the next screen:

Follow the Frames Wizard's advice to see a preview of the frames you have designed:

Click on each frame in turn.

Put a name for each frame in the Name box.

In the URL box specify the file that each frame will contain.

When you are finished naming the frames and specifying the file each frame will contain, click on the NEXT button at the bottom of the screen, and HomeSite will generate the code for the frameset file.

<FRAMESET COLS="100%" ROWS="50%,*">

<FRAME NAME="Frame 1" SRC="banner.htm" SCROLLING="AUTO">

<FRAMESET COLS="50%,*">

<FRAME NAME="Frame 2" SRC="toc.htm" SCROLLING="AUTO">

<FRAME NAME="Frame 3" SRC="default.htm" SCROLLING="AUTO">

</FRAMESET>

You will probably want to tinker with the code to adjust the relative sizes of the frames on the web page