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Setting a Target

If your site uses frames, it's common to have a framed navigation bar that loads the different pages into the main frame. The main frame is the target for the links in the navigation bar, and to load that main frame using HTML, you use the target attribute of the <a> tag. But if you want to use both frames and XHTML Strict, JavaScript is the only way to set the target. That's because the target attribute isn't allowed in XHTML Strict, and you have to set the target in order to use frames.

The XHTML Strict frameset in Script 5.7 allows you to load your choice of page into the main content frame, just by clicking a link in the left frame (Script 5.8, detailed below). The result is shown in Figure 5.8.

Script 5.7. When you're using HTML Strict in your frameset, you need JavaScript to set frame targets.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
     <title>Nav Bar</title>
     <script type="text/javascript" src="script04.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
     <h1>Navigation Bar</h1>
     <h2>
     <a href="frame4a.html">Page 1</a><br />
     <a href="frame4b.html">Page 2</a><br />
     <a href="frame4c.html">Page 3</a>
     </h2>
</body>
</html>

Script 5.8. And here is the JavaScript you need to do the job.

window.onload = initLinks;

function initLinks() {
     for (var i=0; i<document.links.length; i++) {
         document.links[i].target = "content";
     }
}

Figure 5.8. Here's a frame acting as a navigation bar with the content page appearing in a content frame.

[View full size image]


To set the target for a frame:

1. 
window.onload = initLinks;



When the page loads, call the initLinks() function.

2. 
function initLinks() {
  for (var i=0; i<document.links. length; i++) {
     document.links[i].target = "content";
  }
}



This function loops through all of the links on the page. When the loop finds a link, it sets the target property to the string "content". And that's all it takes.

Tip

  • If JavaScript is turned off, visitors will find that the first link that gets clicked loads into the navigation frame, not the content frame. Sorry, but that's the way frames and XHTML Strict work.



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