MS FrontPage —

Hyperlinking from Frames

A hyperlink within a frame is more complicated than the usual plain vanilla hyperlinks you first learned about in Creating a Basic Web page. A link that appears within a frameset must tell the browser not only what page to open, but where to open it. Or, as FrontPage would put it, you don't just select the hyperlink destination, you also identify the target.

Setting Targets for Frames

The target attribute of a hyperlink specifies what frame the new page will open in. Open up the Hyperlink Properties dialog box (by clicking the Hyperlink button on the Standard toolbar) to edit the target.

Within the Hyperlink Properties dialog box, click Target Frame. The Target Frame dialog box appears, sporting a new feature called "Current frames page" (see Figure 6-5).

Depending on what template you've chosen, FrontPage makes an intelligent guess at what your target frame should be (based on the template's automatic settings). But you can override this choice and select any one of your frames to serve as the hyperlink's target. Just click the diagram to make a selection or enter the frame name in the Target Setting field. If you select Whole Page from the list on the upper right, then the new page will take up the entire browser window, replacing your frameset completely. The regular hyperlink target selections also still appear here, and you're free to choose any of them instead. For example, if you wanted the hyperlink to launch a new browser window, the Target Frame dialog box gives you that option (see Understanding Hyperlinks for a refresher on hyperlinks).

Figure 6-5. The Target Frame dialog box displays an interactive diagram of your frameset. Click the frame in which you want the linked page to load.