Frames

[syntagm]

A really compelling discussion with an excellent example. Thank you (all) for your dedication to this forum. BTW - where does the green come from on the mouseover? Chris

[steve.ledger]

BTW - where does the green come from on the mouseover? Chris

Web Properties>>Website [tab]

[akubbeng]

Nice one, Steve. Thanks for sharing your frameset example.

[cursor]

That is a very cool example, Steve! One of the problems with using frames is that web page printing is a bit unpredictable for the site visitor. With your example, would printing address more than the current frame?

[cursor]

I just uploaded Steve's frames-example to see how printing might behave.

• Printing the page before clicking anywhere will print all page elements.
• Clicking LINK 1 in the left navigation pane will make that frame active. A File > Print will print only the navigation pane.
• Mouse clicking on any other pane, then printing, results in a partial page print.

I note that as part of the File > Print dialog there is a tab called Options (should a site visitor realize that it's there ...). There I can instruct it to print the page in three different ways:

1. As laid out on screen
2. Only the selected frame
3. All frames individually

[steve.ledger]

Printing frames is browser dependant, handling frame printing in various ways.
With IE, you can right-click a menu link and select 'Print Target' or right-click the frame contents and select 'Print'
Firefox uses the term 'Print this frame' when using the right-click context menu for a frame link or the frame content.

If you are producing a site with printable content in mind, it might be just as easy to provide a link to a printable version of that page or a prepared PDF version for printing.

[steve.ledger]

Of course the better method might be to add <a href="javascript:print();">Print this page</a> placeholder to the page to print. It will only print the page in which the script is added.