Creating Inline Frames

Perhaps you've grown fond of the idea of guiding your visitors with the constant, reassuring presence of frames. Maybe you're already confidently envisioning one page, majestically sitting atop every page on your site, while the other pages below it scurry about, making brief appearances as they're summoned by link clicks. And then you snap out of it, alarmed at the thought of having to deal with so many different frames. If that sounds familiar, you may want to consider using a kind of pseudo-frame solution: inline frames.

An inline frame allows you to insert a frame within a regular Web page. Doing so is kind of like placing a window in your Web page that lets viewers see and scroll through the content of another pagethe one you place in the frame.

The biggest problem with inline frames is that, like regular frames, not all browsers support them. So be sure to create a No Frames page (Section 6.2.3.3) for inline frames as well.

6.5.1. Adding an Inline Frame

You can add an inline frame to any Web page. To do so, place your cursor where you want the frame to appear and select Insert Inline Frame. Select (or create) pages to appear in the frame, just as you would for any frame: click the Set Initial Page button to select an existing page, or click the New Page button to create a new one.

6.5.2. Modifying an Inline Frame

You can enlarge or reduce the size of your inline frame by selecting it, then dragging one of its small square handles until it appears just as you want it.

Use the Inline Frames Properties box to modify other inline frame settings (like your scroll bar preference or the alternate text for browsers that don't support frames). To open it, move your cursor over an edge of the frame. When your cursor turns into a regular white pointer, double-click. Or click once to select the frame, then right-click and select Inline Frame Properties. The choices in this dialog box work just like the ones you learned about earlier in this tutorial on Section 6.2.3. One option you have here that you don't get in other Frame Properties dialog boxes is Alignment. Use this to set alignmentleft, right, or centerof the frame within your page. Other alignment choices let you line up the frame with a line of text just like you can do with a picture (as explained on Section 4.3.2.4).