Visual Basic Concepts

Using Frames with DHTML Applications

See Also

When you create web pages in the DHTML Page Designer, you cannot insert framesets within the page and fill their contents. You can, however, display the pages you create for your DHTML application within a frameset created outside of Visual Basic.

To create a DHTML application that uses frames

1. In Visual Basic, create a page for the content area of each frame you want to use. For example, if you want to use a frameset with two individual pages — one for navigation and one for contents — you would design two pages, one for each frame.
   
   
2. Save each page as an external file by setting the value of the BuildFile property for each.
   
   
3. In an external editing program, design the frameset document as a separate .htm file and save it in the temp directory. See the HTML reference of your choice for information on how to build a frameset document.
   
   
4. Set the source (SRC) attributes for each frame to point to the content pages you created in Visual Basic, using the names you defined in the BuildFile properties.
   
   
5. In Visual Basic, open the project containing your frame pages and access the Project Properties dialog box. On the debugging tab, click Start Browser with URL and enter the path to the frameset document you created externally.
   
   
6. Press F5 to enter run mode. Visual Basic launches Internet Explorer and loads the frameset page you designed in an external program. The frameset document should then load your page designer pages in the appropriate frames.
   
   
7. Debug your application as usual.