Re: So what is _parent then?

In article <199708021950.AA19727@jupiter.ph-cip.Uni-Koeln.DE>,
wahlen@ph-cip.Uni-Koeln.DE (Holger Wahlen) wrote:
> Unfortunately it doesn't say what exactly a FRAMESET parent
> is, not to mention the immediate one (are there other than
> immediate parents anyway?), 

The value of _parent is one of the most confusing things in framesets.
It is often confused with _top, because people rarely nest framesets
in such a way that _parent means something different. 

I think the best description is "Refers to the FRAME that contains
the current FRAME, if there is one - otherwise, identical to _top".
In other words, if you have

<FRAMESET COLS="*,*">
<FRAMESET ROWS="*,*">
<FRAME SRC="topleft">
<FRAME SRC="bottomleft">
</FRAMESET>
<FRAME SRC="right">
</FRAMESET>

then document "topleft" *appears* to be nested, but _parent here
is identical to _top, because there is no FRAME element that *contains*
the FRAME containing "topleft". If the innermost FRAMESET were in
a document called "left", referred to as

<FRAMESET COLS="*,*">
<FRAME SRC="left" NAME=TheLeft>
<FRAME SRC="right" NAME=TheRight>
</FRAMESET>

then _parent in document "topleft" would refer to the frame named
TheLeft.

> and why it matters whether nested
> framesets are defined in a single file or in several ones.

"Netscape does it this way."

I have been unable to find *any* information whatsoever on the
reasoning behind this behaviour. The only idea I can come up with
is that in the first case, there *is* no FRAME to refer to, but
in the second case there is. This makes it possible to resolve _parent
in the second case.

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Received on Sunday, 3 August 1997 15:05:07 UTC