Targeting Frames: Frame Names

If all hyperlinks used implicit names to specify targets, then there would be no need to assign names to frames (as we did in a.html). Certainly, it is good practice to use implicit names wherever possible, since this reduces the chances for errors, but there are still cases where one frame cannot access another frame via an implicit name. Because of this, it is sometimes necessary to specify the target frame by its given name.

You can give each frames a name by including the property name="frame_name" in the <frame> tag, as shown in the second <frame> tag of a.html. In this example, the upper row has no name, while the lower row has the given name "bottom". Note also that in this example the name "bottom" is not being assigned to just a single frame, but rather to a row of frames, since the document yz.html is itself a (nested) frameset document. Later on in our project, this trick will enable us to program hyperlinks that target the entire lower row of frames for update.