Grabbed a copy of Beginning Dreamweaver MX. Must say it was one of the few HUGEA$$ :D computer books that I have bought that I actually use. Well done!

Oh - webpage making newbie here, hardware geek turning to the dark side ;)

I am following thru making the first website in the book, but am making my own instead of the Cooking Site that is the example. I am deviating from things a bit and am wondering if the following is possible.

I used a table to hold the gif border pix (4 of them) in place and created a center area (the middle of the 5 table cells) where I want the hyperlinks from the menu buttons to put the various html pages chosen by the visitor. I'm thinking/hoping to make that cell into a frame. But am having troubles actually making the frame inside the cell. Is this even possible ... ie having a single frame on a page? Everytime I play around with frames it makes at least 2. Or am I in left field and need to get on the right track (which hopefully can be pointed out to me).

Thx for your time,
Al


What comes around ... goes around.

Al:

Thanks for the good words.

If I am hearing you correctly, you want the center cell to reflect the new web page selected.

Ths is called a Frameset and requires a bit of HTML programming. Dreamweaver helps us out by using a template from the File > New > Frameset menu.

While it is possible, most web designers have moved away from Framesets. Their behaviors can be erratic in different browsers and, even if you do that, you would need to use a "browser sniffer" to detect the browser the visitor is using and offer a possible alternative.

I hope this helps a bit. Let me know if I misunderstood your question.

Charles E. Brown

Charles E. Brown
Author - Beginning Dreamweaver MX, Fireworks MX - Zero to Hero
Contributor - Macromedia Studio MX Bible

Hi Al,

Glad you like the book!

In addition to what Charles said, you may choose for an <iframe>, also called an inline frame.

The cool thing about an iframe is that you can use it almost anywhere in your page; there is no need to define a top level frameset. Something like this would wotrk:

<table id="mainMenuTable">
<tr>
  <td><iframe src="MyMenuPage.html"></td>
</tr>
</table>

This way, your table cell can contain a frame. The frame's contents are retrieved from an external file called MyMenuPage.html.

For more info about the iframe element: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/f...ml#edef-IFRAME
Beware that iframe is not supported by older browsers, but most modern browsers know how to handle it.

Cheers,

Imar



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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

A couple of things to elaborate on Imar's response. First of all, make sure you use a closing iframe tag. You could have problems without closing it.

While I do think the iframe tag is interesting, it is not without its problems including, believe it or not, legal issues. There are also some browser compatibility problems with IE.

As an interesting read for the potential pros and cons of iframes, go to:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/....html#problems

This is one of the best discussions of this topic.

Charles E. Brown
Author - Beginning Dreamweaver MX, Fireworks MX - Zero to Hero
Contributor - Macromedia Studio MX Bible

Thanks, Charles, for fixing the </iframe> tag. I had indeed forgotten it in my code example.

Nice link; very thorough explanation of how to use (and not to use) an iframe.

Imar


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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Ba Da BING!

That is exactly what I wanted!! Had to play with is a bit to get the cell to fill out to the same size as the cell.

Next question: In the target pulldown under properties for hyperlinks, I am not getting an option for the frame just created. I am obviously missing something. Suggestions?

Thx for the quick responses Charles and Imar.
Al

What comes around ... goes around.

Nope, you're not missing something, but Dreamweaver is. It doesn't add the names of iframe tags to the drop-down. You'll need to type in the name directly.

Cheers,

Imar


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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

ah-HA! It's ALIVE! :D

thx for the help!
Al

-------------------------------------

What comes around ... goes around.

Sorry, couldn't help but ask - maybe it's a dumb question! but in this case what's the difference between using a layer or an i frame?

I've never used i frames but they sound similiar to layers? am I barking up the wrong tree?

What sort of instance would you use an i frame?

thanks

Adam

Well, there are some similarities and a lot of differences between layers and iframes.

You can thing of an iframe as an ordinary frame, except that there is no need to place it inside a frameset, but instead you can place it anywhere on the page. You can load other pages in it, so it makes it easier to reuse a menu for example, on multiple framesets.

Layers (usually implemented as a <div> tag, as the old skool <layer> tag shouldn't be around anymore) are more like container objects for elements on your page. They make for easy arrangement, hiding, displaying, etc.

This is what the W3C says about the iframe:

For more info, checkout the iframe, the div, and the span tags at the W3C site.

regards,

Imar


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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.