iFrames compatibility

[James L.]

Hey all,

Not being a big fan of frames I usually don't use them in my designs, however I am currently working on a project that could definitely use an iFrame in one place.

Not being very familiar with them I am curious about browser and version compatibility.

I quickly whipped up a page with an iframe today and tested it on my mac. It worked fine in all the latest versions of IE, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Safari. It DID NOT WORK in OMNIWEB, which seems to be a pretty crappy browser anyway for compatibility issues.

I have not tested it yet on any pc platforms.

Any advice or opinions on the use of this tool would be greatly appreciated.

[Zach Elfers]

If an iframe works on IE, NN, Mozilla, and Opera, almost everyone can view it.

[James L.]

Hey Zach,

Yeah, I was thinking the same. I don't really care about the Omniweb compatibility as it seems to have MANY issues.

I was more concerned with older versions of the browsers, as the ones that I mentioned where all the latest versions. Also, I only tested my page on Mac platforms and I am unsure if there are differences cross-platform.

[Charles]

Make sure that you are using the IFRAME element properly:

<iframe src="http://www.w3c.org"><a href="http:.//www.w3c.org/">W3C</a></iframe>

Browsers that don't understand the IFRAME element will display the link and all will be well.

[Stefan]

I might as well mention one browser that won't handle <iframe>s, NS 4.x.

However using Charles example will provide a link to the iframe page.

If you absolutely need the page to work also in NS 4.x you could add some proprietary NS 4.x code to the page to make it work the same as the rest.

It looks something like this

<iframe><layer>link if all else fails</layer></iframe>

[Robert Wellock]

Or use the <object> we had this debate yesterday :p.