IFrames... What Frames Should Have Been

Updated 2009-11-25
Iframes are everywhere now. Unfortunately they are being abused by advertisers. They are still a great solution and have provided me with numerous benefits. Still no autosizing capabilities ;(

Updated 2002-01-07
My demonstration site uses IFrames exclusively. Without them there would be no “FloatAway” toolbar. Now if they only had an automatic resizing and true transparency… Never satisfied 

Published 2000-09-02
Ever use a frames design? Restrictive aren’t they? You can’t have a frame anywhere you want. A frameset document is a particular type of document. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a frame anywhere you wanted in a window. Wouldn’t it be nice to have frames that can be moved around the window at will? That is what IFrames improves on the old frames(among other things).

The biggest drawback with using IFrames was that they were only supported on IE3+. Not anymore. Netscape V6 now supports them. It is not quite as complete as IE’s version but still it is a major step forward.

Their biggest advantage is they allow a developer to create a site with multiple small windows interacting…just like many Windows applications. This is really cool and opens up the potential for a true client server model on the web.

Don’t get me wrong, frames are great. This demo site still uses frames because when making a simple 3 frame page the Frameset means you do not have to code for resizing and other weird things. I could have used IFrames, but they are not best for this particular site. I do use them on sites that need more complex interaction between many frames.

If you have a choice and you only need to support IE and NN6 think about IFrames. There are a lot more possibilities once you use them.