Web Design in a Nutshell

Targeting Frames

One of the challenges of managing a framed document is coordinating where linked documents display. By default, a linked document loads into the same frame as the link; however, it is often desirable to have a link in one frame load a page into a different frame in the frameset. This is the case when a list of links in a narrow frame loads content into a larger main frame on the page.

This is done by using the target attribute in the anchor (<a>) tag to specify the target frame by name. First, of course, it is necessary to assign a name to the frame using the name attribute in the <frame> tag as follows:

<FRAME SRC="original.html" NAME="main">

Now any link can load a document into that frame by specifying its name as the target window, as shown in this link example:

<A HREF="new.html" TARGET="main">

In the above example, the document new.html would load into the frame named “main” (replacing original.html ).

If a link contains a target name that does not exist, a new browser window is opened to display the document, and that window is given the target’s name. Subsequent links targeted to the same name will load in that window.

The <base> tag

If you know that you want all the links in a given document to load in the same frame (such as from a table of contents into a main display frame), you can set the target once in the <base> tag instead of for every link in the document (saving a lot of typing and extra characters in the HTML document).

Placing the <base> tag ...