Frames are an excellent tool for navigation. They allow you to place a menu and/or other multiple pages within one page which change independently of one another. The pages within the workshops site make excellent use of frames to keep a menu bar on the top of the pages for easy navigation, and use other frames to display information. The page you are currently viewing is actually composed of three separate pages which have been combined into one frameset to make a single page. The top frame is the navigation bar, the left frame is the menu of tutorial topics, and the right (and largest frame) is the area where the links from the left frame are displayed. Frames work conceptually much like images. The files are all separate, brought together by the frameset page. Below is the Tutorials page with the frames palette, the frames-specific properties inspector, and the frames portion of the objects palette open. Notice how in the frames palette a solid black line is around all three frames and directly on the menu bar below it says <frameset>. This indicates that the whole page (index.html - the frameset) is selected. The frames palette also displays the names of the frames that make up the frameset. This particular frameset has its borders set to "0". To view the invisible borders in Dreamweaver, go to View > Frame borders.
To create a page with frames, begin with a blank page and choose the "frames" option at the top of the objects palette, and make sure the frames palette and properties inspector are open.
The document below began as a blank page. Clicking on the "insert left frame" button added a left frame to the page. The frames palette shows the frameset with default names (leftFrame and mainFrame) and the properties inspector shows the properties of the frameset.
Clicking within a frame in the frames palette will display its properties in the properties inspector. Clicking within a frame in the document window allows you to edit the contents (text, images, etc) within that frame. Below the leftFrame is selected, with its properties in the Properties inspector.
To save your page, you need to save the frameset and the contents of each frace as separate files.
When creating links from one frame into another, you need to use the "target" box on the properties inspector. For example, in the page below, a link has been created in the leftFrame. Clicking on the arrow next to the Target box gives you choices for the target - the frame in which the link will open. If no target is selected, the link will open up in the same frame.
Remember to include all html files within the frameset when uploading!
For more information, see chapter 11 in the Dreamweaver Visual Quickstart Guide (pages 197-225).