You can uses frames for such things as tables of contents that always display, separate windows to display footnotes, navigation bars and so on. When well designed, frames can simplify the reader's navigation around the document. They can also make it easier to write the document because the navigation information does not have to be duplicated on every page.

This topic is not intended as a tutorial on how to create frames, but to give you some ideas for using frames to organize your publication more simply. If you want to know more about how to create frames, please consult a good book on HTML publishing.

	Main Page with Footnotes. The main page would contain all the navigation buttons. Clicking on a footnote reference would display that footnote in the lower frame.
	Navigation Bar and Main Page. This places the table of contents or main sections in the bar across the top. The main page displays below. It may contain its own navigation buttons.
	Table of Contents and Main Page. The table of contents displays in the left frame, the main page in the right. The main page may contain navigation buttons of its own.
	Table of Contents, Main page and Footnotes. The table of contents displays in the left frame, while the main page displays in the right. If there are footnotes, they will display in the bottom frame.
	Banner, Table of Contents and Main page. The banner at the top could be a graphic heading, or for a large publication, divide the work into sections. Clicking on one section will select the Table of Contents in the left frame. Selecting an entry from the Table of Contents will change the page displayed on the right.
	Table of contents, Section subtopics and main page. Although similar to the one above, the main table of contents is displayed in the left frame. The highlighted entry displays a subtopic list in the smaller top frame, while the selected subtopic displays the page in the main frame to the right and bottom.
	Three level Heirarchy. This is similar to the previous layout, except that the frames are arranged so that the main Table of contents is at the top, the subtopic list for a section is in the middle, and the  main page is displayed at the bottom.
	Banner, Table of Contents, Main page and Navigation Bar. The top bar contains the main sections, and loads the table of contents into the left frame. The main page is displayed in the right frame, while standard page navigation buttons are displayed in the bottom frame.

This is not an exhaustive list, but merely intended to show some of the options available.

A Few Pointers

How Many Frames?

While you can nest frames as deeply as you like, there comes a point of diminishing returns, and the content visible in a frame becomes unreadable. The options listed above range from two frames to four frames. As a general rule you shouldn't go above four frames without a very good reason.

Screen Size

Many people still have 640x480 VGA screens, so you should design your layout to be useable a this screen size. The most common size at the time of writing is 800x600, so this is probably the size for which to design your pages. Test them at other screen resolutions as well, especially 640x480.

Frames aren't completely standard

There are the Netscape additions, the Microsoft additions, and other additions. The Microsoft ones are supported by their own HTML editor FrontPage. The viewer program supports HTML v3.2, as documented in support.htm. Always test your pages with the viewer program, because this is the program people will be using to view your published ebooks. If you intend also to load the html files onto a web site, you should test them with Internet Explorer and Netscape as well.

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Copyright © 1997 David Noakes
Last modified: May 26, 1998