MCOM 223
Westfield State College	Back to Home page
Professor Nigel Dobereiner	Back to Guides page

Creating a Frameset in Dreamweaver

Frames are one of the most difficult to understand concepts in web page creation. Once you "get it" you'll be fine. But getting it can be a challenge. The hard part is that your main frameset, called index.htm, has no visual content (except possibly frame borders). Index.htm is, in this case, only a container or "frame" for other pages. Think about a window with several panes of glass. You could replace all the panes with different colored glass but the window frame would still be the same. When using frames, your index.htm file becomes that window and the other .htm files that you create are different panes of glass that can be visible in that window. Frames have the advantage of creating a constant menu or other interface elements (such as a title banner) that don't move or have to be reloaded as you swap other frame content. They have disadvantages as well. Some older browsers don't understand frames. Also, frames create problems with bookmarks which tend to only save the initial frameset content. Search engines can also be stymied by frames.

How to create a simple frameset with two frames

Start with a new Dreamweaver page. Choose Insert/Frames/Left to create a frame on the left side of the page. Click once in the narrow frame on the left so that the cursor is active there. Choose File/Save Frame As... Save this frame as menu.htm. Click once in the large frame on the right. Choose File/Save Frame As... Save this frame as main.htm. Roll your mouse over the narrow border line that appears between the left and right sides. When a double-headed arrow appears, click once to select the line. It should change into a dotted line when it's selected. With that line selected, go to the menu and choose File/Save Freameset As... And save it as index.htm. You have now created 3 new HTML pages which together make up the page index.htm.