Iframes good or bad?

MattB · 11 Jan 2006 at 13:36

I am in the process of developing a site, I am considering using iframes on the site is this a bad idea and if I do use them what will be the effect on the site?

Cheers

MattB

Mr_L · 11 Jan 2006 at 13:46

Well I know that the iframe tag has been dropped from XHTML strict so if you want to use it then you'd have to use a transitional doctype.

Search engines don't particulaly like frames/iframes and there are other and much better ways of displaying content than these.

How were you thinking of using the frames?

MattB · 11 Jan 2006 at 13:53

Mr_L said:
Well I know that the iframe tag has been dropped from XHTML strict so if you want to use it then you'd have to use a transitional doctype.

Search engines don't particulaly like frames/iframes and there are other and much better ways of displaying content than these.

How were you thinking of using the frames?

I was thinking of using iframe in some sort image gallery.

Mr_L · 11 Jan 2006 at 13:58

Be more straight forward to just have them in a normal page. You could always use a gallery system like SimpleGal, as long as your web space meets the requirements.

Scam · 11 Jan 2006 at 14:24

Depending on what you need it for, why not just use a div with a set height and width. Set overflow: auto in its CSS and jobs a good'un. The div will scroll when it needs to.

robmiller · 11 Jan 2006 at 15:21

Search engines, text based browsers and screen readers might have problems indexing your content, and it'll be difficult to bookmark and navigate for you readers - bookmarking will just take them to the start page (or the content of the frame, in which case it will be without navigation or anything else) and opening a link in a new window/tab will mean losing navigation as well.

meghatronic · 11 Jan 2006 at 15:32

I used to love them, utterly love them...

But as Scam said, divs are the daddy's now...

Especially as you won't get W3C XHTML validation if you use iframes...

thesubstitute · 11 Jan 2006 at 16:33

robmiller said:
Search engines, text based browsers and screen readers might have problems indexing your content, and it'll be difficult to bookmark and navigate for you readers - bookmarking will just take them to the start page (or the content of the frame, in which case it will be without navigation or anything else) and opening a link in a new window/tab will mean losing navigation as well.

Sounds like you're talking about frames not iframes

MattB · 11 Jan 2006 at 17:29

Cheers for the help guys, the reason I need to use iframe was because I wanted to have a thumbnail gallery which when the thumbnail is clicked on displays a larger version of the picture on the page without having to reload the whole page again.
What could be an alternative to using iframe to do this?

robmiller · 11 Jan 2006 at 19:28

thesubstitute said:
Sounds like you're talking about frames not iframes

...which operate on exactly the same principle, except iframes are inline and frames use framesets. I'm not sure I follow :confused:

robmiller · 11 Jan 2006 at 19:29

MattB said:
Cheers for the help guys, the reason I need to use iframe was because I wanted to have a thumbnail gallery which when the thumbnail is clicked on displays a larger version of the picture on the page without having to reload the whole page again.
What could be an alternative to using iframe to do this?

You could use Javascript, with an HTML fall-back in case the user doesn't have it enabled

Jotun · 11 Jan 2006 at 19:33

Can you not just open the link in a new window?

MattB · 11 Jan 2006 at 19:47

robmiller said:
You could use Javascript, with an HTML fall-back in case the user doesn't have it enabled

That sounds like it would be just what I need, any idea where I could find an example of this?

Cheers

MattB

richard1973 · 27 Jan 2006 at 14:33

I've been using Iframes for a few years, they are simple to set up and you get a lot of control on your layout design.

Shame to hear WC3 XHTML are dropping it, I hope future IE releases will still support Iframes. My site uses them, I also use them for a gallery in my 3d and vr games section www.richard1973.co.uk (though site is down today, well it was earlier

)

richard1973 · 27 Jan 2006 at 14:57

just like to add i've no problems with google finding my site which has Iframes used, it appears on first page UK and worldwide just by searching my name richard brown. I'm aware normal frames can cause problems though, but not sure to what degree of a problem.

iCraig · 27 Jan 2006 at 15:05

richard1973 said:
I've been using Iframes for a few years, they are simple to set up and you get a lot of control on your layout design.

Shame to hear WC3 XHTML are dropping it, I hope future IE releases will still support Iframes. My site uses them, I also use them for a gallery in my 3d and vr games section www.richard1973.co.uk (though site is down today, well it was earlier )

They will still support iframes, but the simple fact is that iframes are oldhat.

Far more effective ways of controlling your layouts.

and even though Google will index iframed sites, Google will always index properly designed sites better (XHTML + CSS).