Working with Framed Documents | Macromedia Studio MX Bible

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To work with pages within a set of frames, click into the document you want to develop. At that point, you have access to Page Properties and any other developmental tools available in Dreamweaver. It's best to work on your individual pages in the frameset because the Design view gives you an idea of how your pages will look in the browser. Of course, you should still preview the pages because Design view doesn't show you how your pages appear in all browsers.

To preview a frameset and its framed pages, press F12 to access your primary browser, Ctrl+F12 (Command+F12) to access the secondary browser, or choose File ® Preview in Browser ® and choose the target browser to use. If your pages have unsaved changes, Dreamweaver prompts you to save the frameset and pages before viewing. If you set up your application preferences to view the actual document (not a temporary document), you may be required to save before continuing the preview process.

Setting a title for the framed page

Because only one title can be displayed by the browser, the title for your framed pages must be set in the frameset document. To set a title for display by the browser, select the frameset and enter the title in the Title field in the Document bar above the page.

Tip

It's useful to set titles for all your framed pages even though only the title for the frameset document displays in the browser, because search engines give a high level of importance to page titles when cataloging sites.

Setting page background colors and images

Setting page colors for pages within frames is the same as setting page color for any HTML document. The code is contained within the <body> tag and is accessed in Dreamweaver via Page Properties.

You can also set a background color for the frameset document. The <body> tag for the frameset document is contained inside the <noframes></noframes> region. The <noframes> region is used to display content for browsers that cannot understand frames. More about <noframes> is covered a bit later in this chapter.

Tip

Set a page color for your frameset document to match the color your pages use to avoid the flash-of-color changes as your framed documents load.

Setting a background image for your framed pages is a simple process, but you must take special care when planning to have images that line up across frames. This is most apparent when background images use curves that intersect frames and must line up. Netscape 4x and earlier browsers render frames with extra margins along the bottom and right edges, even when margin width and height are set to zero. Try to avoid using close fits between frames, and be sure to test in all target browsers on all computer platform targets. If you plan to allow 10 pixels of space between frames and avoid curved intersections, you shouldn't have problems.

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