controlling frameset with javascript

pagetta · #1 (**permalink**) 06-20-2005, 06:10 AM

I am building a site, and when skipping to active content it goes to a part of the site that is in a frameset. What i need to happen is, depending on which product you are signing up for for the appropriate page to load in the lower frame.

this is my frameset code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>M-Science SMS Server</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link href="../styles/pc_ie.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<frameset rows="235,*" cols="*" framespacing="0" frameborder="NO" border="0">
<frame src="header.html" name="topFrame" scrolling="no" noresize >
<frame src="signup.html" name="mainFrame" frameborder="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
</frameset><noframes></noframes>

</head>

<body align="center">
</body>
</html>

signup.html is just a test page, but I want this frame to depend on where the user has just navigated from. What javascript shoul I use to do this? I have not used javascript much so if you could explain in simple terms I would really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance for any help!

ADAM Web Design · #2 (**permalink**) 06-20-2005, 08:50 AM

You don't actually have to use Javascript at all to navigate the frameset. All you really need to use is the target attribute of your <a> tag.

For example, if you put <a href="someotherpage.html" target="mainFrame"> somewhere in your header.html page, it will load someotherpage.html into the mainFrame target.

pagetta · #3 (**permalink**) 06-20-2005, 08:56 AM

I'm not sure that would work in my case. what we have are three products, and when you sign up for a product, you click on the 'sign up' button, this navigates to a frameset, with an upper and lower frame. All the active content is in the lower frame. Depending which product you are signing up for, I want the appropriate page to load in the lower frame.

So if I clicked 'sign up' on product A, for example, what link would I use? How would using this 'mainFrame' target tell the frameset what to load in the lower half of the page?

Sorry - I am new to javascript a little more detail would be great.

Thank you

speed · #4 (**permalink**) 06-20-2005, 10:31 AM

I'm not sure I'm reading this right, but if the product selection is a form then you should be able add a target attribute to the <form> as ADAMWebDesign showed for a link.

If you go the JavaScript route then people will need to have JS enabled on their browsers so that they can use the sign up form, in which case:

a) How are you going to deal with those that choose to have JS disabled?

b) More importantly how are you going to meet Guideline 6.3 of WAI (http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#tech-scripts) which requires pages work without client side scripting.

If you can't use frames the way ADAMWebDesign described, wouldn't it be better to use server side scripting to achieve the functionality you require?

Sites are supposed to be accessible now days.

pagetta · #5 (**permalink**) 06-22-2005, 10:06 AM

Right - let me try and explain:
Our new site is NOT built using frames, however we have a large amount of active content. As soon as you navigate to ANY active content, you are hosted by a different server, and the page looks the same, but IS in frames, with a header and lower frame.
(Active content is 3 different sign in/registration pages, plus different log-ins depending on what product you have.)

What I want is for the frameset to recognise the referrer and depending on what the referrer is, to load the appropriate page in the lower frame.
I assumed this wouldn't be that difficult - I thought on the link TO the active content I could use a file.html?name=blahand then use some javascript in the frameset to tell it to use the name section (or similar) to load the appropriate page in the lower frame.

I don't see how a <target> attribute can work when I am not already in a frameset? I will be going from no frames, to frames, and want the lower frame to be dependant on where the user has just navigated from.
Any ideas?

ADAM Web Design · #6 (**permalink**) 06-22-2005, 10:10 AM

Okay, I think I see what you mean. Basically, you want a customized page loaded into the lower frame based on the referrer.

Again, I don't think you need to use Javascript. Something like this would work:

<frame src="some_page_of_database_driven_content.asp?name =someone"></frame>

And use server-side programming to customize the content of the frame.

pagetta · #7 (**permalink**) 06-28-2005, 10:36 AM

this is what I needed:
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/framecustom.html

apologies if this is what you meant! But hope this can help someone else too :-)