Frames pages are HTML pages that divide the Web browser’s window into named regions called frames. In each frame a Web browser can display a different page. You control displaying a page in a frame by creating a hyperlink to the page and specifying the frame as the target of the hyperlink.
Without frames, when a user clicks a hyperlink on a page, the page containing the hyperlink is replaced by the page that the hyperlink points to; one page is displayed in place of another. With frames, when a user clicks a hyperlink on a page, the page containing the hyperlink does not have to disappear. Instead, the page that the hyperlink points to can be displayed in a separate target frame.
In a simple frames page there are two frames: one frame contains a page made up of a list of hyperlinks, and the other frame displays the pages that the hyperlinks point to. When a user clicks a hyperlink in the first frame, the page that the hyperlink points to is displayed in the second frame. The frame containing the hyperlinks is a “table of contents” or “channel selector” for the other frame.
For example, if a real estate agency wanted to create a page that describes properties for sale, the author could create a frames page. The “table of contents” frame would contain the list of properties and, as users click hyperlinks in this frame, the other frame would display each of the properties for sale.
Like any other HTML page, a frames page is displayed by a Web browser when a user follows a hyperlink to it. If your FrontPage web’s home page is a frames page, it will be displayed by Web browsers when users first surf to your Web site.
When you create a frames page, you assign each frame an initial page. The initial page is the page that Web browsers display in a frame when the frames page is first displayed. For example, if a frame is designed to display a table of contents page, you would assign it an initial page containing a list of hyperlinks. When a user surfs to the frame set, the page listing the hyperlinks will appear in its frame, and the user will click entries in this list to view pages in another frame.
Any page can have a default target frame. This is the name of a frame in which to display pages pointed to by hyperlinks on the page. When you set the initial page for a frame in a frames page, FrontPage may automatically assign another frame in the same frames page as the default target page for the initial page, based on the template you used to create the frames page. You can view and modify the default target frame for a page in the Page Properties dialog box.
A hyperlink can have a target frame that overrides the page default. You assign a hyperlink a target frame in the Create Hyperlink dialog box. If the target frame for a hyperlink is the special target Page Default, the hyperlink will use the page’s default target frame.
Should I Use Shared Borders and Navigation Bars With Frames? When you use frames pages and frames to organize your Web site, you should not use shared borders and navigation bars. These are alternate ways to organize the structure of your FrontPage web. They cannot be used effectively together.