question: iFrames

[redlack]

no not Frames but iFrames notice the i in front.

The question is does anybody use them, what do you think of them, are they any better then regular "Frames"?

<iframe src="test.htm" name="test" width="100" marginwidth="5" height="200" marginheight="10" align="middle" scrolling="No" frameborder="0"></iframe>

I've used them before and DW CS3 has a option to insert one...

[Miss-tisdale fan]

I have, I like them. I haven't used frames.

[Pingy]

Well, one's view of inline frames depends, I suppose, on what one's needs are. They can be used for repeated content inclusion if one doesn't have access to JavaScript includes or any server-side language. They can also be used intuitively to retain data that a user submits; again, though, this is only in the instance of not having access to better solutions.

Speaking from a design standpoint, the only real use of inline frames is to include content from a seperate file onto multiple pages. As I've stated, though, there are better ways to do such a thing, so inline frames (by themselves) -- in my opinion -- serve only one, entirely obsolete purpose.

When in combination with AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XHTML), though, they can serve a much better purpose. When using AJAX to pull the contents of a remote file on your server, it stores this data in a property of the XMLHTTP object one creates to use AJAX called responseText (xmlHttp.responseText); the catch, though, is that this data is only available within the scope of the function in which it's included. An excellent workaround for this, though, involves a hidden iframe, which you use to write the response text to and call it from whenever you might need it.

Hope I've shed some light on this powerful but slightly out-of-date tag...