Conventional behavior when clicking on a hyperlink or submitting a
form was to have the result load on top of the current document in the
browser window. With frames, we now have multiple documents in a single
browser area. It makes sense to be able to address specific frames in a
FRAMESET structure in such actions. The assignment of frame identity is
accomplished via the NAME attribute in the FRAME tag. The addressing of
these frames occurs when a user initiates an action command with a TARGET
attribute that specifies the NAME of a frame to use as a destination for
its action.
The TARGET attribute is used by the A,
AREA, BASE and
FORM tags [Please see the tag pages for these
tags to see examples of the attribute in use.] If the frame name
specified does not exist, the action will load to the parent window.
Note:
The window name specified by a TARGET attribute must begin with
an alpha-numeric character to be valid. All other window names will be
ignored excluding several special reserved names that start with a
"_" character (an underscore.)
Special Target Names
TARGET="_blank"
This target will cause the link to always be loaded in a new blank window.
This window is not named.
TARGET="_parent"
This target makes the link load in the immediate FRAMESET parent
of this document. This defaults to acting like "_self" if
the document has no parent.
TARGET="_self"
This target causes the link to always load in the same window
where the action originated. This is useful for overriding a globally
assigned BASE target.
TARGET="_top"
This target makes the link load in the full body of the window.
This defaults to acting like "_self" if the document is
already at the top. It is useful for breaking out of an arbitrarily
deep FRAME nesting.
Tips & Tricks
Make sure to ALWAYS check where the hyperlinks, etc. in
your frames structure load to. The default is _self,
which may not be what was intended.
Browser Peculiarities
The Macintosh Mosaic beta versions that support frames did not
support the TARGET attribute for any elements.