iframes - to use, or not to use?

alda.b's picture

They have: 44 posts

Joined: Dec 2001

i'm considering using iframes for the majority of content on my site. most visitors to my site use at least ie 5.5. would there be any specific issues/common mistakes i should be aware of before implementing them?

tia!

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

A lot depends on your sites content or goal, if you sell products or try make money from it then iframes is a no no, if its a personal site then go for it, if its an information site about anything then no.

if you must use some sort of frames, use frames, not iframes, keep it universal and everyone happy.

side note, there are dhtml scripts that do universal iframe type things but using javascript as main source of your site is also bad as many people these days surf with java/javascript turned off, even I find I am doing this these days, makes surfing so much faster. (I just wish they would make a option to turn off flash)

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I think with new browser capabilities we're going to have to worry more about people turning things off. Opera lets you turn of images and set your own stylesheet one easy click on the toolbar (don't have to go deep into the site options to get to it), and you can also easily turn of javascript, pop-up windows, Java, plug-ins (so you can turn off Flash there, Busy), embeded audio etc. So, if this catches on with other browsers and/or Opera becomes more popular, will we have to take these possibilities into account when designing pages? All for the best as far as I'm concerned - keep that fancy stuff for the fancy stuff not for the functionality.

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