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The most common mistake made when developing framed sites is improper links targeting. By default, any clicked link (whether text or graphic button) calls a new page, which replaces the page that holds the link. This is standard link behavior but not the ideal behavior for links in a framed site. If you have your navigation in one frame and want the pages to appear in a separate frame, you must target that frame.
The target attribute of a link specifies the frame or window in which the linked content opens. Dreamweaver generally offers four target options in the Target menu of the Property inspector: _blank, _top, _parent, and _self. The default target for all links is _self. A new window is launched with _blank. Both _parent and _top are often used with frames. When you are working within a frameset document, Dreamweaver adds your frame names to this list.
Building a link in framed pages is the same as in non-framed HTML pages, but may require target changes. Here are some possible target scenarios:
If the link you create should replace the current page that contains the link, you need not specify a target for the link. The default, _self, will be used.
If your link needs to load a page in a different frame, use the Target menu to specify the desired frame. Your frame names should be listed in the menu.
If you need a page to load and replace all the current frames, choose _top. Using _top overwrites all current frames and pages with the called page.
The _parent option is intended for replacing one frameset with another when the replaced frameset is the source page for an existing frame, as shown in Figure 39-4. If you are an experienced HTML coder, you may have used this target, but Dreamweaver doesn't generally build framesets in a way that accomodates its intended use. The proper setup of this kind of frameset is covered in the nested framesets section of this chapter.
Figure 39-4: You may target the frame or use _parent when your configured framed site doesn't use the stan-dard Dreamweaver nested frames approach.
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