IFraming the standard stuff?

SEO's Magic bullet?

[Brett_Tabke]

Anyone working with moving menus and other default page text into Iframes? How well is that working?

That would mean the only thing left on the actual page is the content.

[joshie76]

Wouldn't such a practice be frought with layout problems? Your navigation could end up with either a lot of surrounding whitespace if the iframe src page is rendered with smaller fonts than you designed with or, worse, scrollbars if with larger fonts etc?

Is there a way, without scripting, to make the IFRAME the exact height and width of it's rendered source?

[cfel2000]

IFrames don't work in NN do they? This is a brilliant idea in theory but NN wouldn't view the IFRAMES and therefore wouldn't be able to navigate.

[ggrot]

iframes work in NS6+, which is presumably what AOL would move to. About the only browser still in use that does not use IE is NS 4.x. I think that the market for that is like 5% if that much. You could also use user agent cloaking for that particular browser. But i've never tried using iframes like this and see very little reason to try it out. It would probably screw up internal linking for google for one since your navigation was no longer on the page itself.

[toolman]

This sounds like a headache. (albeit I haven't played with it much). It could also cause problems if you have no appearant navigation on your site....might look like a bunch of doorways.

[rcjordan]

>working with moving menus and other default page text into Iframes?

Yup. I'm not throwing any mission-critical stuff in there (yet), but some sections of my right column (sponsor's ad text, for instance) are iframe. I'm guessing the loss rate is 10%, about the same as javascript.

BTW, which do you think is less cpu intensive, iframed content or just write the same content into the page with ssi?

[DrDoc]

>About the only browser still in use that does not use IE is NS 4.x.

Err .. About the only browser that _uses_ IE is .. umm .. IE. :)

The reason why NS6 supports IFRAME is because tons of users all over the world got to play a part in creating the browser. It hasn't gone over to IE technology .. instead it has it's own technology (still Mozilla), it just supports more tags than before.

I wouldn't use iframes if I were you. I'd rather use a regular frame (if possible) or use SSI like you suggested. You don't have to worry about CPU ..

[papabaer]

I have been using iframes extensively for the last year or so. There are a lot of advantages to be had. Yes, Nescape 4.x does not fully support HTML 4 and the introduction of iframes (how long ago?)- I will suffer the loss.

I have not had any problems, nor complaints regarding CPU drain. As far as I have witnessed, that is negligable, if even noticeable.

I did have a site map that loaded into an iframe, though I moved from that purely on a design basis.

I do use iframes to load Flash content so the parent pages will validate XHTML - works nicely too!

I also use iframes to function as an embedded image viewer (I hate thumbnails and pop-ups!) this works GREAT, plus, you need only load a single image initially.

I mentioned this elsewhere, another benefit if iframes is that each page is a complete html document that can have a "spider-friendly" link leading to it from the parent page, or can be referenced on a sitemap. Lots of possiblities here... really!

[mdharrold]

>>Is there a way, without scripting, to make the IFRAME the exact height and width of it's rendered source?
The iframe height and width work with %s too.

>>It could also cause problems if you have no appearant navigation on your site....might look like a bunch of doorways.
You can place standard links, text, anything you want between the iframe tags. Search engines and older browsers are then shown this information instead of the iframe.

I have not used iframes for my navigation, but have used them for content.
The one thing you do need to do, is add some navigation to the iframe page. Otherwise, if the iframe is indexed, people who arrive at your site through that page are stuck.

[joshie76]

"The iframe height and width work with %s too."

The % is of the parent page in which the iframe is embedded - not of the source page loading into the iframe.

On iframe performance for use with navigation... I guess it removes the server-overhead in processing an include (though this is almost certainly negligible) but it could mean an extra round trip to the server on every page load. I suppose the navigation page, if static, would get cached though. Swings and roundabouts I guess.

[luma]

I am using Opera for Linux and I unchecked "Enable inline frames". On the sites I surf to, all it ever contained was ads. Can't have these. ;) How about blind people,
will they be able to "see" the menu? Will you be able to use keyboard navigation ("q", "a") and still get to the menu?

Okay, I don't like your Flash menus (in the Opera section) too much either, and I am by no means your "average user". ;)