>> when an icon on the right is clicked, I want to update both the left (navigation) frame and the center (information) frame at the same time. Do I have to write out a whole new frameset, or can it be done from the HREF tag? <<

You can do this easily by embedding some JavaScript into your output page.

You can embed code like the following in the generated page. Here' I'm calling a script which essentially results in two CGI hits, but you could also pregen the second page and then call the static page:

(Hope this HTML doesn't get mangled in the message)




Hope this helps,