Working with Frames

DHTML Menu Builder can add menus to sites that use frames in three ways:

1. When your hotspots or toolbars 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.
2. When your hotspots or toolbars 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.
3. When you have several toolbars located in different frames and the menus are displayed inside the same frame
   This is a special situation where you may have an horizontal toolbar in one frame, a vertical toolbar in another frame and then the menus from both toolbars are displayed inside the same main frame.
   If you are looking to create such type of project, read the following information and then follow the link at the bottom labeled "Advanced Frames Implementation".

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

The Frames Document 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.

• Click the Target Document button

Using the browse button () select the document where you want to display the toolbar

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.

As mentioned earlier, DHTML Menu Builder will let you have several toolbars, each placed on different frames and display their menus inside the same main frame.