A frameset is a set of images that can wrap or frame the content area of a website. They are very simple to use. For example, in a custom look add the following line at the very end:

{include file="frames/standard.tpl" frame_source=46d4576bcb778/gallery27}

Just including this one line will add the frame around the site.

A set of standard framesets may be found at http://imagelib.hotdoodle.com/?section=borders

Each comes with specific inclusion instructions such as "{include file="frames/standard.tpl" ..."

Using framesets is easy. Creating them takes more effort. If all you want to do is use a frameset, then you can stop reading.

When a frameset is present a table is constructed as follows with the normal website content in middle cell.

table class="bodyframe" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="center"
   All of the below are the classes used in the various td cells.

The presence of the following declaration in the TPL causes the code generator to draw a frameset.
    {declare_layout var=frames val=1}

Additionally, the top or bottom rows can be made into one big colspan=3 cell (with no corners) by the following declarations:
    {declare_layout var=frame_bottom val=1}
    {declare_layout var=frame_top val=1}

You can even have that one big colspan=3 cell contain a table with 3 cols. While this may seem to put you right back to the val=1 case, this time the corners are not forced to be the same width as are the sides.:
{declare_layout var=frame_bottom val=3p}
{declare_layout var=frame_top val=3p}

Now all you have to do is declare the CSS for each cell including width, colors, background images, background repeat, etc.  Do it for all of the cells -- td.bodyframe_left, td.bodyframe_right, td.bodyframe_bottom, td.bodyframe_bottomright, etc.

Declaring the CSS for all of the cells can be tedious, but the include "frames/standard.tpl" will generate these for you following a standard pattern.

It takes arguments for the width of the various elements, but has logic to default them. For example, the default width for the topleft is the width for the left, the default for the left is the base frame width.  So you you set only what differs.  For example, this uses all of the standard widths:
    {include file="frames/standard.tpl" frame_source=46d4576bcb778/gallery27}
while this sets more options
    {include file="frames/standard.tpl" frame_source='46d4576bcb778/gallery26' frame_suffix=png
        frame_width=25 
        frame_width_top=78
        frame_width_bottom=122
        frame_width_topleft=70 
        frame_width_topright=70
        frame_width_bottomleft=70
        frame_width_bottomright=70
        frame_top='3p'
        frame_bottom='3p'}

Rather than requiring the passing in of 8 image names, the standard abstraction takes the path to an image gallery and presumes that files of the proper names exist there.  It will refer to
    {image_gallerypath}/right.gif
    {image_gallerypath}/rightbottom.gif
etc. See the imagelib.hotdoodle.galleries for examples.

The optional argument frame_suffix can set if the images are gifs, pngs, etc.

Here are the arguments you might pass to the standard frameset abstraction:

• image_path -- the path to the image gallery with the images.
• frame_source -- if the gallery is in imagelib.hotdoodle.com this gives its name and constructs image_path accordingly.
• frame_suffix -- the suffix of the images. Defaults to ".gif"
  The images will be referenced as follows: background: url({image_path}/right.{$frame_suffix})

The following are all optional:

• frame_width -- defaults to 30
• frame_width_top -- defaults to frame_width
• frame_width_bottom-- defaults to frame_width
• frame_width_left-- defaults to frame_width
• frame_width_right-- defaults to frame_width
   
• frame_width_topleft -- defaults to frame_width_left
• frame_width_topright -- defaults to frame_width_lright
• frame_width_bottomleft -- defaults to frame_width_left
• frame_width_bottomright -- defaults to frame_width_right
  
  
• frame_top -- sets the value for declare_layout var=frame_top
• frame_bottom -- sets the value for declare_layout var=frame_bottom