I know frames are out of vogue but this is a situation in which they are actually kind of helpful.
I'm designing a site which is intended to serve as a multidimensional reference work for users.
The site will have five frames: one across the top, three across the center, and one across the bottom.
The centermost frame will have something that looks like a flow chart that shows how information flows through a particular industry. A talks to B, B talks to C and D, C talks to E, D talks to F and G, etc.
The agency I work for regulates both the actors (A, B, C, etc) and the information exchanges (represented as arrows linking A to B, B to C, etc.)
My idea is to make each arrow and each actor a hyperlink. When the user clicks the link, he/she will get a bunch of information on the actor or transaction he selected. The information will all be displayed in the four remaining frames.
Thus, if you click the box on the flowchart labeled "Kitty":
The top frame will tell you how many Kittys there are in the industry, what is their aggregate value, what is percentage of the gross Kitty product is produced by the top 10 Kittys, etc.
The left frame will tell you who Kitty buys from; the right frame will tell you who Kitty sells to.
The bottom frame will tell you what laws and regulations (and agencies) apply to Kitty's business.
So, one click of the Kitty hyperlink will change the information in four frames.
I assume I'll need to use javascript to create an OnClick event that tells the browser to load all the requested pages into the right frames.
Can I do that? How would I do that?
I'm not at all experienced in writing JavaScript so you'll need to be pretty explicit in your response. It's okay to refer to the frames as "top", "bottom", "left" and "right."
Thanks in advance for the help.
Kitty
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