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Frames - basic information on frames for the new
web designer and the interested internet surfer

You may have heard of "Frames" or being "Trapped by Frames".  There is quite a bit of banter about frames on web design forums, some people seem to be afraid of frames and some are downright angry at them. What is this troublesome creature, the frame?

Actually, frames are nothing to be worried or scared about - they are simply an element of website design that permits a section of a web page to display independently of other page content.

For starters lets put this page you're reading inside a frame, so you can follow along with the example. To do this click here.  Now you should see the green-colored section to the left, typically used as a menu frame, it displays independently of the page you're reading (typically called the content frame). If you scroll the page you're reading, you will see that it moves up and down but the frame to the left stays in place.

You, as an Internet surfer, are never actually "trapped in frames", any more than you are trapped in your car while driving - you just have to know how to stop the car and how to open the door.

For example, in Firefox, it's easy, simply right-click on the page you want to remove from the frame, the context menu will appear, select 'This Frame' and then 'Show Only This Frame'.  In Internet Explorer, right-click the page, select 'Properties', then copy and paste the address to your browser URL bar and click to go there.

Some webmasters are fond of allowing a person to click on a link to break out of a frame - for example on this page at the top we have placed a 'Red Gizmo',  simply click on it and you'll break out of the frame.

Ok, let's continue, first we'll put this page back in the frame again.

When a webmaster or designer puts a link into a website he can tell the link to open the new page in a 'Target' - for example the page can be opened on 'Top', that breaks the new page out of all frames. Or, one could have the link open the page in 'self', in which case the new page will stay inside the present frame. Let's say that you're reading along and come up to a link to an imaginary website called "Make Believe Website".

If this were really someone else's site I would have "trapped" their website inside of my frames. If all their links then open in "self" or if their site has its own frames, well, to be technical about it, you get a jumbled mess. 

It's impolite at the very least to do this to other sites, since it forces the other site to appear willy-nilly inside other content that might or might not befit the site. In some cases it's arguably an Intellectual Property Rights Violation since it gives the impression that the other site is "part of" the first site. Search Engines, for example, generally have rules posted against the practice of framing their pages.

One definite disadvantage of frames involves Bookmarks and Favorites - only the frame's initial documents (the frameset which contains a document for each frame) will appear in the Bookmark - you may have had the experience of Bookmarking an item deep inside a site, and later you look for it in your Bookmarks and find instead the site Home Page or some other document, and not the page you Bookmarked.

If you are interested in Web Design, I suggest you see our Webmaster Tools section and start out with a trial of the Namo Web Editor - any web editor has a learning curve associated with it, but this one is relatively easy to use, it's inexpensive, and of professional quality. Suggest, by the way, you get the boxed version with the full manual. The manual is of good quality, and is essential.

Good luck and Good Computing.