Learn How To Use Inline Frames on Your website

Inline frames are an exciting new technique achieved using HTML 4.0 to construct a document that is actually embedded as a subwindow into a website or other HTML document.  The inline frame is also called a floating, or embedded, frame.  The inline frame is complete with scroll bars located to one side and at the bottom of the window.

One really impressive maneuver inline frames allow is the ability to use the embedded window (the inline frame) as a navigation portal without leaving the main, or home, page of the website.  In essence, you have two navigation-savvy pages displayed within one.

You can have more than one embedded frame in a document.  These multiple inline frames can be interactive, provide links to other pages or websites, and can be individually formatted.

The key to building inline frames is to use the embedded frame tag coding - <IFRAME>.  Between tags, you can adjust all the details as usual – width, height, font, style, border sizes, etc.  If you are proficient using the <img> tag, the <IFRAME> tag should pose no problems to you.

There are some down sides to the technology as it is currently written, however.  It looks fantastic on your computer but it’s impossible to print the document complete with inline frames.

Also, in order to view the inline frames, Microsoft Internet Explorer 3+ or Netscape Navigator 6+ is needed.  Some versions of Opera and AOL will work, too, while later versions of Firefox and Safari support them.  Older browsers do not recognize the <IFRAME> tag and cannot work with it.

Bookmarking doesn’t always produce the desired results when using inline frames.  If the main page of a site is to be bookmarked, you should have no problems.  It’s when a bookmark is desired on a page within the embedded frame that the problems show up.  Bookmarking an embedded frame will actually bookmark the main page only but not any part of the frame.

It’s these downside issues that make many programmers leery of using floating frames.  They can be lots of fun to create and explore from the design end of the process but the average user just doesn’t seem to be that enthusiastic about inline frames.  Good websites are easy for the average user to navigate.  Perhaps the end user should be considered when deciding to embed or not.