Frames based Page needed: left nav links; right page - how to do this?

[iamvela]

I need help with creating a very basic HTML page:

On the left I want a series of links maybe 10, maybe a 1000. Think of it as a "showcase"

When a user clicks the link the left pane (frame): the frame on the right should show the page for that link. Each time the user clicks a link, one will see the corresponding page on the right.

How can I do this?

P.S.
Ideally I'd like to keep a thin horizontal frame at the top which wil lhave the mene to my site on it.

I appreciate your help with this. Thanks very much!

[lavazza]

Frames are horrible... for visitors and search engines alike

The look and feel that you describe is eminently do-able using CSS (which is what should be used to control presentation)

See Google: Results 1 - 10 of about 343,000 for css frames [google.com]

[iamvela]

Thanks a bunch for the obvious pointer (*sheepish*), but how do I control that all my links in the left display the actual page on the right?

[lavazza]

You create one html file per page
e.g. in your 'local (left-pane) menu'
<a href="../widgetsFolder/red-widgets.html">red</a> links to red-widgets.html
<a href="../widgetsFolder/green-widgets.html">green</a>links to green-widgets.html
<a href="../widgetsFolder/blue-widgets.html">blue</a> links to blue-widgets.html

I guess this is the sort of thing you had in mind when you said:

thin horizontal frame at the top which wil lhave the mene to my site on it

[iamvela]

No no...

On the left I want:
Link to Google
Link to Yahoo
Link to CNN
...
Link number 100

When a user clicks any of these links I want the contents from Google, Yahoo etc. to be displayed on the right.

What I want on the top will be just tabs (menu) for my own site.

Does that make any sense?

[lavazza]

Does that make any sense?

I understand what you want and, although I don't understand why, I do know ONE way how to make it happen

iFrames [w3schools.com]

local menu:
<a href="myGooglePage.html">Google</a>
<a href="myYahooPage.html">Yahoo</a>
<a href="myChickenNoodleNewsPage.html">CNN</a>

in myGooglePage.html:
<iframe src="http://www.google.com"
name="myFrameName"
id="myFrameId"
frameborder="1">
[Your user agent does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. However, you may visit
<a href="http://www.google.com">
the related document.</a>]
</iframe>

in myYahooPage.html:
<iframe src="http://www.yahoo.com"
name="myFrameName"
id="myFrameId"
frameborder="1">
[Your user agent does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. However, you may visit
<a href="http://www.yahoo.com">
the related document.</a>]
</iframe>

in myChickenNoodleNewsPage.html:
<iframe src="http://www.cnn.com"
name="myFrameName"
id="myFrameId"
frameborder="1">
[Your user agent does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. However, you may visit
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">
the related document.</a>]
</iframe>

etc

[edited by: tedster at 5:07 am (utc) on July 12, 2008]
[edit reason] fix link [/edit]

[iamvela]

Umm.. not quite :(

There will be a several hundred links on the left, and all these links point to external pages. I just want to fetch the pages dynamically in the right frame. I cannot possibly code each page for the right frame.

Any other ideas?

[tedster]

Give the frame on the right an identical id and name as an attribute: <frame id="results" name="results">

Then each link in the left frame uses an extra target attribute: <a href="google.com" target="results">

However, also note that people are trying to give you important input here. Not everything that can be code actually should be coded.

1. Both usability testing and search engine guidelines indicate that 100 links TOTAL is about the limit for any page.

2. Framesets are almost always a poor usability choice, and they boggle the mind of around half of the web's users. See this thread, The Pros and Cons of Frames [webmasterworld.com]. It's from 2003, around the time that most of our community abandoned framesets.

3. Also check out usability authority Jakob Nielsen from 1996 Why Frames Suck (Most of the time) [useit.com]