MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER MX 2004-USING DREAMWEAVER Use Manual page 202

Not all browsers provide good frame support, and frames may be difficult for visitors with
disabilities to navigate, so if you do use frames, always provide a
frameset, for visitors who can't view them (see
on page 214). You may also want to provide an explicit link to a frameless version of the site, for
visitors whose browsers support frames but who don't like using frames.
Advantages to using frames include the following:
•
A visitor's browser doesn't need to reload the navigation-related graphics for every page.
•
Each frame has its own scroll bar (if the content is too large to fit in a window), so a visitor can
scroll the frames independently.
For example, a visitor who scrolls down to the bottom of a long page of content in a frame
doesn't need to scroll back up to the top to use the navigation bar if the navigation bar is in a
different frame.
Disadvantages to using frames include the following:
•
Precise graphical alignment of elements in different frames can be difficult.
•
Testing the navigation can be time-consuming.
•
The URLs of the individual framed pages don't appear in browsers, so it can be difficult for a
visitor to bookmark a specific page (unless you provide server code that enables them to load a
framed version of a particular page).
Related topics
•
"Understanding how frames and framesets work" on page 200
•
"Handling browsers that can't display frames" on page 214
Understanding nested framesets
A frameset inside another frameset is called a nested frameset. A single frameset file can contain
multiple nested framesets. Most web pages that use frames are actually using nested frames, and
most of the predefined framesets in Dreamweaver also use nesting. Any set of frames in which
there are different numbers of frames in different rows or columns requires a nested frameset.
For example, the most common frame layout has one frame in the top row (where the company's
logo appears) and two frames in the bottom row (a navigation frame and a content frame). This
layout requires a nested frameset: a two-row frameset, with a two-column frameset nested in the
second row.
202 Chapter 10: Using Frames
noframes
"Handling browsers that can't display frames"
Main frameset
Menu frame and
content frame
are nested within
the main
frameset.
section in your