Frames are a very good tool if you have a lot of different information to supply. It is important to remember, however, that you are entering into an area that requires quite a lot of organization and skill if you are relying on html to produce the frames. I would suggest if you are going to use frames to get a copy of Front Page, or a similar program that will do a lot of the html for you.

What frames do, is give you two or three different areas on your screen, in which to put information. Each frame is built as a separate web page and then combined into one page. There are some basic rules governing frames which need to be followed..

The Rules for frames

Frames differ from tables in that when you scroll down in one frame the other frames stay constant. They are used especially when people need to use a frame for lots of navigation and there is a relatively complex navigation structure.

In the diagram below we have set up an example of how your page would look. You would not necessarily have the borders shown but I have left them in for ease of explanation. On the left side you would need to build your web page to take up a narrower space and this is usually where you put your index. Even when you scroll down the page in the centre frame the side and top frame will stay set. It is also a good rule to try and not have scrolling on the side and top frame as it tends to look messy. For this reason it takes quite a lot of testing to develop a neat page that uses frames.

By clicking on a link in Frame 1 or Top Frame you open up the web page in the Target Frame. This is an important concept and skill to learn as you don't want the side frame to open a new page, because you will only be able to see a very small area of the whole page. The top frame is usually used for a logo or special message.

Frames Examples

 Here is another nice frame. and tutorial.

As I mentioned before it can be quite a complicated process and so I am not going to cover it here. If you want to learn more I have put two excellent links to simple tutorials on frames.

The first is by Dan Brown. Go there now.

The second is by Charlton D. Rose, a.k.a. "Sharky" graduated from Brigham Young University with a Master's degrees in Computer Science. You should have a look at this site as it is a lot of fun and a good read as well. You can get there here.

An introduction to frames. This is a very simple tutorial and gives all you need to master frames.

Again you can make frames in Sothink editor. 

Remember that when using frames some browsers do not handle them and so always offer an alternative. Lets have a look at putting some forms on your site.