Dreamweaver MX: The Missing Manual

Creating Frames

Before you begin creating frames, think about how they might best serve your Web site’s structure. For instance, if you want a banner with the Web site’s logo or name to appear at the top of each page, you could create a frame at the top to hold it. Or, to help your visitors get around, you might include a navigation bar in a frame at the left of the page consisting of a list of links to the site’s main sections.

UP TO SPEEDWhen Frames Aren’t the Best Solution

Frames are useful for banner logos, navigation bars, and so on. But if you look around, you’ll notice that not many big-time Web sites use them. The reason: frames have serious drawbacks.

First, bookmarks and favorites don’t always work with frames. When you click a link inside a frame, a new page loads inside it; if you click a link on that page, yet another page will load. Although it looks as if you are on a different page, the URL in the Address bar remains unchanged. That’s because a Web browser uses the address of the frameset page.

In other words, suppose you follow several links within a single frame, and then use your browser’s Add Bookmark or Add to Favorites command. Later, when you select the bookmark or favorite, you’ll see the frameset page and the original pages inside it—you won’t see the page you wound up on.

Printing a Web page with frames can be tricky, too. Since a frames-based page is composed of multiple Web pages, the browser doesn’t know which page you want to print. Different browsers handle ...