In the world of Web design and publishing, most pros create layout and effects using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripts. Doing this ensures that Web pages not only comply with Web standards, but are also accessible. But CSS and scripts aren’t the only way to spice up your Web pages. An older Web technique, called frames, does a great job, too.

What Are Frames?

Frames are a way to divide a browser's display into separate windows. As you’ve probably guessed, those windows are called frames. The advantage of using frames over, say, tables is that frames allow you to display multiple pages in a single browser window. And each page is independent of the other pages. However, you can add links to the frames on your page and even to someone else's Web site.

One common use of frames is to display a menu in one window while displaying content in another. Each time you click the an item on the menu, it appears in the content frame.

The Tags

You only need three tags to create a framed Web page: <frameset>, <frame>, and <noframe>. There's also a fourth tag, <iframe>, which is discussed later.

<frameset>

The basis of a framed Web page is the <frameset> tag. A frameset is a container holding individual frames. The frameset is like a tray with multiple slots. The tray holds everything together, while each slot is an individual frame. You can add attributes to the <frameset> tag to control the number of columns and rows the frameset contains.

<frame>

The <frame> tag defines the size, location, and attributes of individual frames. as with the <frameset> tag, you can add attributes to the <frame> tag to control the size, position, and other characteristics of the individual frames on a page.

<noframes>

The <noframes> tag, as you may have guessed, lets you embed content for browsers that don't support frames. The use of this tag is discussed later in the article.

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