Conflation of multiple HTML elements for web-page display
In the context of a
web browser
, a
frame
is a part of a
web page
or browser
window
which displays content independent of its container, with the ability to load content independently. The
HTML
or media elements in a frame may come from a
web site
distinct from the site providing the enclosing content. This practice, known as
framing
,
[1]
is today often regarded as a violation of
same-origin policy
.
In
HTML
, a
frameset
is a group of named frames to which web pages and media can be directed; an
iframe
provides for a frame to be placed inside the body of a document.
Since the early 2000s, concern for usability and accessibility has motivated diminished use of framesets and the
HTML5
standard does not support them.
Tags and attributes
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]
The frames in HTML are created using the
<frameset></frameset>
tag pair. The
<frameset>
tag is a container tag for all other tags that are used to create frames. The
<frameset>
tag replaces the
<body>
tag in frameset documents.The
<frameset>
tag defines how to divide the window into frames.
Each frameset defines a set of rows or columns. If user define frames by using the
rows
attribute then horizontal frames are created. If user define frames by using
cols
then vertical frames are created.
The
<noframes>
element may be included so web browsers with frames disabled (or browsers that do not support frames) can display something to the user, as in this example:
<
frameset
cols
=
"85%, 15%"
>
<
frame
src
=
"http://www.example.com/frame_1.html"
name
=
"frame_1"
>
<
frame
src
=
"http://alt.example.com/frame_2.html"
name
=
"frame_2"
>
<
noframes
>
Your browser does not support frames.
<
a
href
=
"http://www.example.com/frame_1.html"
>
Click here
</
a
>
to view frame 1.
<
a
href
=
"http://alt.example.com/frame_2.html"
>
Click here
</
a
>
for frame 2.
</
noframes
>
</
frameset
>
Framesets have a
border
attribute. If set to an integer greater than 0, the user can resize the frames by dragging this border, unless a
noresize
attribute is present in a frame element. If border is set to 0, no border will be displayed and content in different frames will abut each other without delineation.
The
iframe
element is used inline within a normal HTML body, and defines the initial content and name similarly to the
frame
element. Any text inside an
<iframe></iframe>
tag pair will be displayed in browsers that do not understand the iframe tag.
<
iframe
src
=
"http://www.example.com/frame_1.html"
height
=
"480"
width
=
"640"
>
Your browser does not support iframes.
<
a
href
=
"http://www.example.com/frame_1.html"
>
Click here
</
a
>
to view the content.
</
iframe
>
History
[
edit
]
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needs expansion
. You can help by
adding to it
.
(
January 2008
)
|
Netscape Navigator
2.0 introduced the elements used for frames in March 1996. Other browser vendors such as
Apple
with
Cyberdog
followed later that year.
[2]
At that time, Netscape proposed frames to the
World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) for inclusion in the HTML 3.0 standard.
[3]
Frames were used to display and navigate early
online magazines
and
web apps
, such as
webmail
services and
web chat
sites. Frames had the advantage of allowing elements to be displayed sitewide without requiring server features such as
server-side includes
or
CGI
support. These features were not common on early web servers accessible to the public.
Early websites often used a frame at the top to display a banner which could not be scrolled away. These banner frames sometimes included the site's logo as well as
advertising
.
[4]
XHTML
1.1, the intended successor to HTML 4, removed all frames.
XFrames
, the intended eventual replacement,
[5]
provided the composite
URI
to address a populated frameset.
The later
HTML5
standard removed framesets by means differing from XHTML.
[6]
The
iframe
element remains with a number of "
sandboxing
" options intended for sharing content between sites.
[7]
Advantages
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]
By allowing content to be loaded and navigated independently, frames offered several advantages over the plain HTML in use when they were first developed:
- Simplifying maintenance of content shared across all or most pages, such as navigation data.
[8]
If an item needs to be added to a sidebar navigation menu, the web page author needs to change only one web page file, whereas each individual page on a traditional non-frameset website would have to be edited if the sidebar menu appeared on all of them.
- Reducing the amount of bandwidth needed by not re-downloading parts of the page which had not changed.
- Allowing several pieces of information to be viewed side by side, with the ability for each section to be scrolled independently. This might include the side-by-side comparison of two pictures or videos, or two different ways to understand something, such as an independently scrolling page of text next to video, images, animation, 3D rotating objects, etc.
- Allowing footnotes or digressions to appear in a dedicated section of the page when linked to, so that the reader does not lose their place in the main text.
[9]
Criticism
[
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]
The practice of framing HTML content led to numerous criticisms, most centering on
usability
and
accessibility
concerns. These include:
- Framing breaks the identity between the content and
URL
as displayed in the browser, making it difficult to link to or bookmark a particular item of content within the frameset
[10]
- The implementation of frames is inconsistent across different browsers
[10]
- Browsers which render material linearly do not handle frames well.
[11]
- Framing complicates
web indexing
and can be detrimental to
search engine optimization
.
[13]
- Framing confuses the boundaries between content on different servers,
[14]
which raises issues of copyright infringement
[15]
- Visitors arriving from search engines may land on a page intended for display in a frame, resulting in the visitor having no way to navigate to the rest of the site
[16]
- Frames change the behavior of the back button.
[16]
- Users usually do not expect browsers to print frames the way they do.
[15]
- External links on web pages which use frames may cause other pages to appear in the frameset, since the default behaviour for a link is to load in the current frame if the author does not specify otherwise. This could be used by unscrupulous webmasters to make it appear as though content from another site was actually part of the site hosting the frameset.
- If the screen resolution or browser window size is too low then each frame will have scroll bars which can look messy and uses up already limited space. Such behaviour typically resulted more from bad site design (fixed layouts instead of fluid layouts), whereby not all frameset features were put into proper use.
This behaviour could be mitigated by:
- disabling scrolling for smaller frames that typically did not require a scrollbar;
- using fluid design characteristics in target pages instead of fixed designs, so that the content would not cause horizontal scrollbars in the first place.
Alternatives
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]
As web technology developed, many of the purposes for which frames were used became possible in ways that avoided the problems identified with frames.
- Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) allowed elements of a page to be scrolled independently (using the
overflow
property) or held on screen while other content is scrolled (using
position:fixed
)
- Server-Side Includes
allowed shared content to be edited once and automatically delivered to the client as part of a finished page; as server CPU and connection speeds increased, the extra work required to do this on the fly became a lesser consideration.
- CGI
and web-oriented
scripting languages
and
web development
frameworks such as
PHP
and
Active Server Pages
, as well as database-backed
Content Management Systems
such as
WordPress
, provided much richer options for maintaining content and providing navigation.
- Client-side scripting
and
Dynamic HTML
allowed parts of a page to be visually replaced based on a user's actions. This allowed much more flexibility for showing "side" content, such as footnotes or instructions, as these could now be displayed and hidden anywhere on the page rather than requiring a pre-defined frame.
- AJAX
allowed for dynamic display within a page of content even when it needs to be fetched from the server, for instance based on the logged in user or events elsewhere.
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
"Connecting to Other Websites"
. 2 April 2013.
What makes framing different is that instead of taking the user to the linked website, the information from that website is imported into the original page and displayed in a special "frame". Technically, when you're viewing framed information, your computer is connected to the site doing the framing?not the site whose page appears in the frame.
- ^
Garaffa, Dave (23 December 1996).
"A Present From Apple: Cyberdog 2.0a1"
(Press release).
Internet.com
. Archived from
the original
on 17 August 2000
. Retrieved
14 April
2011
.
- ^
Ladd, Eric.
"Using HTML 3.2, Java 1.1, and CGI; Ch. 13, Frames"
. Archived from
the original
on 30 October 2007.
- ^
Shafer, Dan (1996).
JavaScript & Netscape wizardry
. Scottsdale, AZ: Coriolis Group Books. pp.
31
.
ISBN
978-1-883577-86-5
.
- ^
"XFrames working draft"
. W3C.
- ^
HTML5 differences from HTML4
: "The following elements are not in HTML5 because using them damages usability: frame, frameset, noframes"
- ^
HTML5 differences from HTML4
: "The iframe element has new attributes called sandbox and srcdoc which allow for sandboxing content, e.g. blog comments."
- ^
"Framesets"
.
- ^
Roberts, L, John.
"CSS and SEO"
. Retrieved
28 January
2022
.
- ^
a
b
Nielsen, Jakob (December 1996).
"Frames Suck Most of the Time"
.
- ^
"Should You Use Frames?"
. HTML Code Tutorial. Archived from
the original
on 6 August 2016
. Retrieved
7 April
2010
.
- ^
"G.E.Boyd's How To Do Just About Anything by email ? Part 1"
.
GeoCities
. 11 August 2000. Archived from
the original
on 17 August 2000
. Retrieved
24 June
2010
.
- ^
Moore-Eded, Piers.
"SEO fundamentals 1"
. Lewes SEO
. Retrieved
25 February
2012
.
- ^
"I Hate Frames Club"
.
- ^
a
b
"Why are frames so evil?"
.
- ^
a
b
"The Pros and Cons of Frames in Web Pages"
.
External links
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]