Comments on: iFrames are evil. If you must, try this alternative.

By: ASAP

ASAP — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:07:14 +0000

well is there another way of getting third party websites to b displayed in your own site in a box when user clicks link?

By: Joel Dahlin

Joel Dahlin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:44:36 +0000

Reading the comments I must agree with both sides.

First off if you are only looking to get a scrolling effect of an element inside your page the author has given you the right technique. A div with overflow:auto.

Many commenters have expressed that this does not serve the purpose of an iFrame and I agree with that too.

The real purpose of an iFrame is to display a third party page inline with yours.

An example I currently have is; I have a website built on top of a cms which without paying extra does not allow me to embed any forms in the site. So my approach is to create the needed form on a seperate url that will be iFramed within the cms site. To the visitor they will have no idea that the form is hosted outside of the site. I even go as far as removing all scrollbars.

I hope my examples help.

Joel Dahlin | http://www.dahlindevelopment.com

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:02:18 +0000

Thanks Mike, this is a great alternative to using an iframe and helped cure the problem I had.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:33:21 +0000

That’s not an alternative to an iFrame, that’s called a div you retard, go look up what an iframe does before you wank explode over a div.

By: Random Guy

Random Guy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:43:27 +0000

Hi,
you say Iframes are not “web standards compliant”. See HTML 4.01 spec section 16.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/frames.html#h-16.5) “Inline frames: the IFRAME element”.
Hope this helps,
Random Guy

By: Mike Tighe

Mike Tighe — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:56:48 +0000

There is a time and place for iframes. For example the resurgence of its use for twitter and digg toolbars. (Granted there are mixed feelings in the web dev community about them.)

That said, many people use iframes to contain elements within their site for design and layout purposes.

If search engine optimization is important to your goals for a site, then using iframes for layout purposes pretty much negates any SEO desires you might have.

That is the purpose of this article, to point out those other options in a fairly simple implementation.

Perhaps the title is a bit to ostentatious though It got your attention though, didn’t it.

By: Matteus

Matteus — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:34:09 +0000

Yes, how about it? Whats the alternative for the iframe tag if you want to load another document from another domain using CSS or XHTML?! IFRAMES are still VERY useful and should in fact be used!

By: tot2ivn

tot2ivn — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:21:22 +0000

Well, I don’t get the idea of this.
How do you replace an iframe loading another document including complicated js, css ?

By: Mike Tighe

Mike Tighe — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:09:49 +0000

No problem Sam I’m glad that you found it useful.

While I’ll agree with Johnny that there is a use for an iFrame, many people end up using them when coding a site who really shouldn’t – using what I propose here is an alternative, but like any solution it should be based on what you hope to achieve.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:02:00 +0000

Thanks for this clear article. Helped a very non-techie me to try it out, the site is the “NEWSFEED” page on the website you can get to clicking my name. It contains an RSS feed (or is supposed to) I just need to find out how to get the “frame” to display another page inside it using html and php which will link in the RSS feed and the individual RSS posts hopefully using the php.