Lesson
10. Floating Frames.
IFRAME,
A Brief History.
The HTML 4 standard makes provision for an additional level of control
using frames, the floating (or inline) frame. This tag is added into
your normal HTML script and allows you to position a frame into the
main body of your document as you would an image, giving it height,
width, justification etc. The frame contents become an item in your
page with scroll bars if necessary allowing you to place one entire
HTML page into another and strictly control it.
This tag was first introduced my Microsoft in their Internet Explorer
3 browser and has been continued since. It won favour with W3C and
was introduced into the HTML 4 standard because, in plain and simple
terms, it's potential influence in the design of website navigation
is immense.... it's a brilliant tag.......
........... except that it's not. IFRAME has been around for several
years now and it's barely used because Netscape have bluntly refused
to adopt the tag for their browsers. There is much speculation about
the reasons for this, the vast majority of which centres around a
little bit of bitter rivalry often called "The Browser War"
and the fact that Microsoft never adopted Netscape's dreaded BLINK
tag among others.
At the time of writing this tutorial there's a light at the end of
the tunnel for IFRAME. Netscape 5 has been promised as a fully compliant
HTML 4 Standard browser when finally released which should mean that
IFRAME will move into more common usage. Follow the brief and staggeringly
simple tutorial below and hope the tag is adopted.
Using IFRAME
<IFRAME> </IFRAME>
The IFRAME tag has very simple syntax.
<IFRAME
SRC=" "> Alternative
Content
</IFRAME>
Using fileone.html from the previous tutorials
I have called this this as the source for a 200x100 pixel IFRAME below
and add alternative text for browsers that don't recognise the tag using
the following
<IFRAME
SRC="./htmlfiles/fileone.html"
width="200"
height="100">
Sorry
your browser does not like IFRAMES
</IFRAME>
Immediately below this line is the result
Immediately above this line is the result.
If your browser understands IFRAME you will be able to see this....
Non-IFRAME browsers will be showing this....
As well as being able to vary the height and width of the frame you
can also use alignment tags to wrap text around it and specify border
widths.
The frame you've created in your page will act as any other frame with
scrollbars if needed and any links on your sourced html file will work
and be followed inside your IFRAME.
That's it! ...... but think about the possibilities.
Final Word
You have now reached
the end of this tutorial.
The next part is up to you. Design is a combination of knowledge and
flair. We cannot provide the flair for you but we hope that these
tutorials have helped you over the first hurdle and allow you to express
your own flair and individualism in ways that previously were unavailable
to you.
Please make use of our HTML
resource centre as a reference library in your future authoring
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