Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015 - Manual (Page 147)

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Layout and design
Last updated 6/3/2015
For example, the most common frame layout has one frame in the top row (where the company’s logo appears) and two
frames in the bottom row (a navigation frame and a content frame). This layout requires a nested frameset: a two-row
frameset, with a two-column frameset nested in the second row.
A Main frameset B Menu frame and content frame are nested within the main frameset.
Dreamweaver takes care of nesting framesets as needed; if you use the frame-splitting tools in Dreamweaver, you don’t
need to worry about the details of which frames are nested and which are not.
There are two ways to nest framesets in HTML: the inner frameset can be defined either in the same file as the outer
frameset, or in a separate file of its own. Each predefined frameset in Dreamweaver defines all of its framesets in the
same file.
Both kinds of nesting produce the same visual results; it’s not easy to tell, without looking at the code, which kind of
nesting is being used. The most likely situation in which an external frameset file would be used in Dreamweaver is
when you use the Open in Frame command to open a frameset file inside a frame; doing this may result in problems
with setting targets for links. It’s generally simplest to keep all framesets defined in a single file.
Work with framesets in the Document window
Dreamweaver enables you to view and edit all of the documents associated with a set of frames in one Document
window. This approach enables you to see approximately how the framed pages will appear in a browser as you edit
them. However, some aspects of this approach can be confusing until you get used to them. In particular, each frame
displays a separate HTML document. Even if the documents are empty, you must save them all before you can preview
them (because the frameset can be accurately previewed only if it contains the URL of a document to display in each
frame).
To ensure that your frameset appears correctly in browsers, follow these general steps:
1 Create your frameset and specify a document to appear in each frame.
2 Save every file that’s going to appear in a frame. Remember that each frame displays a separate HTML document,
and you must save each document, along with the frameset file.
3 Set the properties for each frame and for the frameset (including naming each frame, setting scrolling and non-
scrolling options).
4 Set the Target property in the Property inspector for all your links so that the linked content appears in the correct
area.