Frame Properties Dialog

This dialog is used to edit frames that you add to a page layout. See Editing Pages and Frames.

Following are the primary tasks that you can perform in the Frame Properties dialog.

  • Aligning Frames The Page Layout Editor contains various tools to help you easily keep your frames aligned with each other on a page. For example, after adding a decoration frame to a page, you might want to make sure that its left border is aligned with the left borders of the header and footer frames on the page. This feature is not available for body frames. See Aligning Page Layout Frames.
  • Aligning Text You can easily align text and content in a frame both vertically and horizontally. See Aligning Text in Frames.
  • Anchors You can set anchors in a frame. Anchors allow you to lock the frame to the margins on the page. If a page size changes, the frame is resized accordingly. See Setting Frame Anchors.
  • Background You can add a color and/or image to the background of a frame. See Specifying a Frame Background.
  • Borders You can add borders around a frame. This might be useful, for example, if you want a line to run across the bottom of the header on a page. For PDF output, you can also make the borders rounded by using border radius properties. See Specifying Frame Borders.
  • Columns You can easily add and configure columns in any frame of a page layout. See Creating Columns.
  • Floating and Sinking You can arrange overlapping frames on a page to determine which ones are displayed "in front" of others. See Floating and Sinking Frames.
  • Frame Flow (Type) Each frame that you add to a page has a specific type (Body, Header, Footer, Decoration, Image). The type determines how the frame behaves in the output and the flow of its content. For example, a Body frame will automatically display the content from your topics, whereas a Footer frame only displays the content that you add to it. See Specifying Frame Flow.
  • Heading and Running Head Variables If you want certain content to be inserted into a frame automatically (rather than typing the text manually), you can use a variable. For example, you might want to automatically include the first h1 heading of each chapter into the header for certain pages. By using a Heading variable, you can use just one page layout for all of your chapters, rather than having to create a new page layout for each chapter. For Adobe PDF output, you can also use Heading variables to automatically display glossary headings, index headings, or index terms in a page layout frame.
  • Padding If you want there to be a certain amount of space between the edge of a frame and the content within it, you can set the padding. See Specifying Frame Padding.
  • Page Numbers One type of content that you are likely to add to a frame is a page number, which is actually a snippet that serves as a placeholder for a page number in the output. See Inserting Page Numbers Into Frames.
  • Removing Frames Just as you can add new frames to a page as necessary, you can remove existing frames as well. See Removing Page Layout Frames.
  • Rotating Frames From time to time, you may find that you need to rotate a frame on a page. For example, you might want to rotate a decoration frame so that the text reads sideways, as opposed to left-to-right. See Rotating Frames.
  • Size You can easily set the size and position for a frame on a page, either by entering specific values in the Frame Properties dialog or by dragging the frame as needed. See Specifying Frame Size.
  • Text and Content—Add to Frames You can add any kind of content to a frame that you can add to a regular topic (e.g., text, links, images). Simply by selecting a frame and pressing F2, you can open the Frame Contents window pane, which is used as a miniature XML Editor for adding content to a frame. See Adding Text and Content to Frames.