Targeting Frames
One of the challenges of managing a framed document is coordinating where linked documents display. By default, a linked document loads into the same frame as the link; however, it is often desirable to have a link in one frame load a page into a different frame in the frameset. This is the case when a list of links in a narrow frame loads content into a larger main frame on the page.
This is done by using the
target
attribute
in the anchor (<a>
) tag to specify the
target frame by name. First, of course, it is necessary to assign a
name to the frame using the name
attribute in the
<frame>
tag as follows:
<FRAME SRC="original.html" NAME="main">
Now any link can load a document into that frame by specifying its name as the target window, as shown in this link example:
<A HREF="new.html" TARGET="main">
In the above example, the document new.html
would load into the frame named “main”
(replacing original.html
).
If a link contains a target name that does not exist, a new browser window is opened to display the document, and that window is given the target’s name. Subsequent links targeted to the same name will load in that window.
The <base> tag
If you know that you want all the
links in a given document to load in the same frame (such as from a
table of contents into a main display frame), you can set the target
once in the <base>
tag instead of for every
link in the document (saving a lot of typing and extra characters in
the HTML document).
Placing the <base>
tag ...
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