Webmaster in a Nutshell, Second Edition

The <frame> Tag

A frame document contains no displayable content (except for the contents of the <noframes> tag, if applicable). The <frame> tags provide URL references to the individual documents that occupy each frame. <frame> tags are standalone elements and therefore, do not require a closing tag.

Frames are placed into a frameset column by column, from left to right, and then row by row, from top to bottom, so the sequence and number of <frame> tags inside a <frameset> are important.

Netscape displays empty frames for <frame> tags that do not contain an src document attribute and for those trailing ones in a frameset that do not have an associated <frame> tag. Such orphans, however, remain empty; you cannot put content into them later, even if they have a target name attribute for display redirection.

Listed below are the basic attributes that can be used in the <frame> tag.

src= document_name

The value of the src attribute is a URL of the document that is to be displayed in the frame. The document may be any valid HTML document or displayable object, including images and multimedia. The referenced document may itself be another frame document.

name= frame_name

The optional name attribute labels the frame for later reference by a target attribute in a hypertext link anchor <a> tag. If a link that targets a frame’s name is selected, the document is displayed in the named frame. The value of the name attribute is a text string enclosed in quotes.

noresize

Even though you may ...