Creating four flexible frames around one fixed center frame?
Most designers know and preach the evils of frames fervently. However, there are certain situations in which the use of frames is not only an option, but a necessity. It is at these times that many designers despair: their dislike for frames has kept them from acquiring a deeper knowledge of their workings.
GoLive comes to the rescue! This tutorial will show you how to easily create one fixed center frame with four flexible/resizeable ones around it. This will ensure your content is always centered, both vertically and horizontally.
First, switch to the Frame Editor in your document.
Next, switch to the Frames Tab of the Pallette.
Drag the Frame Set shown below into your document.
Click the leftmost frame. In the Frame Inspector, click the Size popup menu and choose Scale.
Now drag the Frame Set shown below exactly onto the line separating the two frames.
Before doing anything else, in the Frame Set Inspector, click the Size popup menu and choose Pixel. Type in the width you want for your center frame and hit Enter. [Note: If you are designing for 640x480 resolutions, your frame must not be wider than 590 pixels. I personally use 580 pixel-widths in my designs, since Explorer's side tabs eat away at some users' available screen real estate.]
Now Control-Drag the selected Frame Set to the middle of the other two.
Click the center frame. In the Frame Inspector, type in the desired height for the center frame. [Note: Again, if designing for 640x480, remember the various tabs and bars in Netscape and Explorer. A safe height value for a center frame is around 290 pixels. Use 285 if you want to be safe. You should also strive to keep all the graphical/table elements on your page below this height, so that they can be viewed at once on a 640x480 screen.]
You should now have a fixed-size center frame and four flexible/variable width frames around it! You can speed things up by loading the same page into the four surrounding frames [using a color or background image as a border]. Choose your border colors wisely, since on larger monitors those areas will be larger. Enjoy!
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