Use the Frame Set Page part to create a web page that uses frames. In HTML, a frameset is specified instead of the body of a page, then the body element appears in the "noframes" area of a frameset page. A frameset contains a set of frames and additional framesets. A frame contains the URL of a page. If your client's browser does not support frames, the text in the frameset's "noframes" area is displayed instead of the set of frames.
The Frame Set Page part in VisualAge is a subclass of page, and implements the page as a frameset. The contents of the page are the contents of the "noframes" area of the frameset. Anything you drop on a frameset in VisualAge will only appear in a browser that doesn't support frames.
The contents of the frames are set using the properties of the Frame Set Page part.
To add a Frame Set Page part, delete the page, then select the Web
Connection Category (
), then the Frame Set Page part (
). You can also add the part using the Add Part dialog and specifying
the class name, AbtHtmlFrameSetPage.
If you are using session data, initialize the session data on the Frame Set Page part rather than on a page part. Note that the session data value is initialized on the Frame Set Page part. This is important! If you do not set the session data on the frameset part, but then use session data on a page part used in a frame, users will be able to reset their session data by refreshing the frame with the refresh or reload button on the web browser. Furthermore, if the session data is not established on the frameset part, each frame may end up using its own session data rather than sharing a single session data value. These effects are caused by the way browsers refresh frames in framesets. To avoid problems with session data, initialize the session data on the frameset part even if it is not needed until later.
To set up the contents of the frames in a frameset, we open its settings and change the frameSet property. The frameSet property describes a single frame, with values such as columns and columnUnits or rows and rowUnits (one or the other), and a collection of frames in that frameset. A frame can either have a URL pointing to a part or page, or it can have another nested frameset. If an item in the frames collection is a frameset, then the frame information about that item is ignored. To assign initial values to a frameset property in the property prompter, uncheck the "Set value to nil" checkbox. You will have to resize the frames property prompter to see all the information about each frame.
The Frame Set Page part has the following properties:
The Page part has the following properties:
This property is equivalent to the background attribute of the HTML body element.
Note: | The backgroundImageFile property affects only the appearance of the page in the Composition Editor at edit time. It has no effect on the generated HTML and will not cause a graphic to appear in Web browsers at run time. In order to display a runtime graphic, you must specify a location for a graphic using the backgroundImage property. |
This property is equivalent to the link attribute of the HTML body element.
The name of the part can consist of alphanumeric characters, and must be unique from all other parts on the layout surface.
This field is optional. If you do not specify a part name, VisualAge generates a unique name based on the class name of the part.
This property is equivalent to the text attribute of the HTML body element.
This attribute is equivalent to the vlink attribute of the HTML body tag.