Question about frames

[Vman]

I'm doing ok with Flash, but I'm trying to get a hang of HTML now. How would one go about accomplishing a layout similar to the one in the following link. I know they are using frames, and the lower right frame is the only one with the scroll feature turned on, but I can't seem to get the alignment down. If you resize the browser window, the sides shrink and the main content's width remains a constant width until there are no more sides left. I've been struggling with it for a few days now with no success. Anyone got any tips? Thanks in advance.

www.chameleondata.com (http://www.chameleondata.com)

[Cota]

I can tell you there are some embedded frames. Basically, framsets within framesets. The Center frame is an absolute width while the 2 outside frames are to take up whatever is left. Within the center fram there are 3 more frames, top, middle, and bottom. Middle is divided in two. All, but that one frame have scrolling set to on. Does that help any?

[Vman]

Yeah, I think I understand. I've been playing aroud for the past few days and I couldn't even get 3 frames (1 in the middle and 2 on the sides) to work properly. When you say embedded, do you mean nested? Also, didn't you mean that all of the frames except one had scrolling turned off? Just want to make sure so I don't get confused. I mean more confused. :D Thanks Cota

[Cota]

Yes, when I say embedded I mean nested. Good catch, I had it backwards. Just that one frame has scrolling turned on, the rest are off. Honestly, for complex framing like this, you'd be better off using dreamweaver or golive to help. We wont consider it cheating, cause frames can be a pain in the ass.

[Vman]

Wadya talkin' about! I am using Dreamweaver! :p Now I feel really dumb. :o But until now, the only thing I ever used it for was inserting a Flash file and uploading it.

[Cota]

its easy to nest frames in dreamweaver. Click in the frame, go to insert, and select frame. It can still get alittle tricky, cause dreamweaver will create a HTML document for each frame, then you have to go back through and sort that mess out.

[Vman]

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that part, I just can't seem to get the alignment right, where everything is centered in the browser, the middle frame's size is constant and the sides shrink when you resize the window. That's what's driving me nuts. I had to take a break tonight. I'll give it another shot tomorrow. Thanks for your help. :rolleyes:

[Cota]

Basically you have to decide on the size of the center frame. For example, you want the center frame to be 500 pixels wide. You're first frame set would be:
frameset cols="*,500,*"
Then you nest the other frames inside the frame with the width of 500.

[Cota]

I threw together a quick example for you to see. Open the index.htm and check it out. Its not perfect but it illustrates the point.

[Vman]

Thanks Cota. That was nice of you to do. It looks just like just what I'm looking for. I'll give it a look at lunch time. I think I was making it to complicated. Thanks again.

[Vman]

Cota, got it working finally. Your example helped a lot. I didn't have my side frames set to Value = 1, Units = relative. That's what was hosing me. Everything I read says to stay away from frames like their the antichrist. They don't seem too bad right now, but we'll see. Thanks again for all your help buddy. I appreciate it. ;)

[Cota]

Not a problem.

[Vman]

Hey Cota, another question if you have a minute. If you look at that site, you'll notice that when you click a button it is actually loading 2 frames. Do you think the action on the button is targeting 2 separate frames or just one html file with 2 frames? Just curious. I'm guessing you could do it either way, right? I also find it interesting that the scroll bar area extends all the way to the bottom of the frame, but it doesn't start scrolling until you drag the window up past the bottom gray area. Not sure how they do that. Any ideas?

[Cota]

I think you can only target one at a time, but you can just have multiple getURL's:

getURL("www.domain.com","target");
getURL("www.domain.com/2","target2");
getURL("www.domain.com/3","target3");

And so on and so forth.

[Vman]

Thanks again Cota. Much appreciated. I Figured out the scrollbar thing too.