Tutorial 14: You've been Framed, Part I
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
Special frame targets
There are some special frame targets that correspond to specific frames or windows. All of these start with an underscore (_). The most important one is _top. This target refers to the top frame (i.e. the entire viewing area) of the current window. All links that point to a document that is not part of your frameset should have a target of _top or else there will be no way to get rid of your frameset. In the framed HTML with Style page, all the links in the top and bottom frames have a target of _top (this is set using the BASE element. It is usually helpful to set this to _top and individually set link targets to other frames since you might accidentally forget a link and leave a user "trapped" in your frames).
The _blank target can be used to load the document in a new window without a name. Following the link again will open another window, while if you had just given the window a name, following the link again would load the document in the same window that was opened the first time. This method can easily crowd a user's GUI with windows, so it is best avoided.
_parent is similar to _top, but instead of loading the document in the top frame, it loads into the frameset that contains the current frame. Finally, _self refers to the current frame, which is the default, but if you've set the TARGET attribute on the BASE element to something else, you will want to use this for links that must be followed in the same frame.
Conclusion
That's all for this time. In this tutorial, you learned the basics of framing: How to create frameset documents and frames, and how to link from one frame to another. As a bonus, you learned how to open new windows and annoy your users. Next time we'll go into some of the more advanced uses of frames and look into some alternatives to their use, as well as focus more completely on their disadvantages. Try your hand at the exercises below to make sure you're ready to deal with them.
