How do I get links to work on a frames-based design?

Dave's Answer:

For example, here's a common approach that you might use to specify a frames-based layout. Notice in particular the words in bold:

<frameset cols="100,*">
  <frame src="navbar.html" name="navbar" />
  <frame src="welcome.html" name="main" />
</frameset>

You should recognize this as a two-column layout, where the left column is going to start out with the page "navbar.html" while the right column, the main section of the frame, is going to be "welcome.html" to start.

With me so far?

To have the links in the file "navbar.html" actually affect the content of the other pane of the frames-based design, they must reference the name of the pane as specified in the frame statement: name="main". Here's how that would look:

<a href="http://www.intuitive.com/">Intuitive Systems</a>

Right? No! It's not correct, because I forgot the all-important target attribute. It's easy to do.

Here's the correct version of the link:

<a href="http://www.intuitive.com/" target="main">Intuitive Systems</a>

See the difference? It's not too hard once you remember that you need to specify a target if it's other than the existing pane.

Even better, you can also specify something like:

<base target="main" />

which means that all links on this particular page are now pointing to the other pane. You override this, if needed, with an explicit target="_self".

I hope that clears everything up!