Instead of using a single HTML Page in your Web Connection application, you can use framesets to create frames on your web page. In HTML, a frameset is specified instead of the body of a page, then the body element appears in the "noframes" area of a frameset page. A frameset contains a set of frames and additional framesets. A frame contains the URL of a page. If your client's browser does not support frames, the text in the frameset's "noframes" area is displayed instead of the set of frames.

The Frame Set Page part in VA Smalltalk is a subclass of page, and implements the page as a frameset. The contents of the page are the contents of the "noframes" area of the frameset. Anything you drop on a frameset in VA Smalltalk will only appear in a browser that doesn't support frames.

To use a Frame Set Page, create a new Web Connection part, delete the HTML Page, then drop a Frame Set Page. To set up the contents of the frames in a frameset, open the settings for the Frame Set Page and change the frameSet property. The frameSet property describes a single frame, with values such as columns and columnUnits or rows and rowUnits, and a collection of frames in that frameset. A frame can either have a URL pointing to a part or a page, or it can have another nested frameset. If an item in the frame's collection is a frameset, then the frame information about that item is ignored. To assign initial values to a frameSet property, uncheck the Set value to nil checkbox. You will have to resize the frames property prompter to see all the information about each frame.

If you use session data in your application, the Session Data part must be placed on an initial page which links to the frameset, even if the session data is not used on the initial page. This establishes the session data key for all frames in the frameset. You must set the session data key before entering the frameset to prevent the possibility of the session data being reset each time the frameset is reloaded in the Web browser. For an example using framesets with session data, open the AbtWebSampleFrameWelcomePage part in the AbtWebSampleFrameSetApp application.