DHTML Menu Builder can add menus to sites that use frames in two ways:
- When your hotspots or toolbar are in the same frame as the menus
This method is usually used when the frame containing the
hotspots or the toolbar has enough space to display the menus.
In this case there's no need to enable frames
support. If the hotspots or the toolbar and the menus all work together in the same frame,
you can leave the frames support turned off.
- When your hotspots or toolbar are in a different frame from the
menus
This method is used when the frame containing the hotspots
or toolbar
is not large enough to display the menus.
Because there's no way to display any HTML element over the
borders of two frames (a limitation of HTML, not DHTML Menu Builder), it is necessary to display the menus
on another frame with enough space to hold them.
| It is important to
remember that when you have enabled frames support, the
Target Document setting in your configuration in the
Project Properties needs to point to the document where
your hotspots are or where you want to display the toolbar. |
To set up your project to support frames:
- Open the Project Properties
dialog
- Click the Configurations
tab
- Click the Frames Support
button
- Check the Enable Frames Support
checkbox
Frames Document
This parameter must point to the document that
defines your web site's frameset.
When you have selected this document, DHTML Menu Builder
will analyze it and retrieve all the different frame names.
After you have enabled frames support, DHTML Menu Builder
will detect all the frames on your frameset document and you
will be able to specify one of these frames as the target frame
to open your links. To set the target frame for your menu items'
links simply click on the Target Frame button ( ).
Installing the Menus
The process to install the menus is always the same:
- Compile the project (Tools->Compile)
- And install the menus into your HTML documents
(Tools->Install)
You will notice that the Install Menus dialog looks a bit
different when the frames support has been enabled: there're two
target panes (on the right) instead of one.
This is because you now must distinguish between the document
that will receive the toolbar and the documents that will
display the menus.

The top/right pane must list the document where you want to
install the toolbar.
The bottom/right pane must list all the documents where you want
to display the menus.
If you're not using SSI (server side includes), templates or
shared borders you should click on the Auto
button to let DHTML Menu Builder fill the right panes
automatically.
Note that even after using the Auto button you should manually
check that DHTML Menu Builder has correctly listed all the
documents.
By default, DHTML Menu Builder will automatically detect the
document that must be listed on the top/right pane since this is
the document defined by the Target Document
from your configuration. However, DHTML Menu Builder not able to
detect all the documents where you want to display the menus and
you might need to add them yourself.
Let's consider this frame set:

It is obvious that the documents displayed on the MAIN FRAME
are the ones that will display the menus. So, you must make sure
that the bottom/right pane of the Install Menus dialog contains
all the documents from your web site that, at any time, will be
displayed on the MAIN FRAME.
When you're done, simply click the
Install button and DHTML Menu Builder will proceed to
install your menus.
| Related topics of interest:
|
|