 How to Use the HTML IFRAME Tag
By
William
Bontrager
A short while ago, I was
surfing around, wasting time, when I came upon a site with links like,
paraphrased, "Rotate content in an IFRAME" and "Display different content
every day in an IFRAME."
It gave rise to a surge of ideas about ways to use the IFRAME tag.
For example, a comment/feedback form could be in an IFRAME. When submitted,
the thank you page would be displayed in the same IFRAME on the same page
where the form was submitted. No "click here to continue" or "click your
back button twice to get back to where you were" messages would be necessary
on the thank you page.
The IFRAME tag is rather simple to implement. It's a window of sorts embedded
in your web page. The window can contain content from other URLs.
First, decide how big you want the window to be. Then, put the IFRAME tag
where you want the window to be on your page. Give it the URL of the web
page (or script) that will be displayed in the window. Example:
<iframe
height="200"
width="300"
src="http://willmaster.com/">
</iframe>
When you put the above IFRAME tag on your web page, it will create an area
200 pixels high and 300 pixels wide and display the WillMaster.com home page
in that area.
To put a comment/feedback form in an IFRAME, simply change the URL so the
web page of your feedback form displays. Change the dimensions of the IFRAME
as necessary. When someone submits the feedback form, the regular thank you
page then displays within that IFRAME area.
You're beginning to have ideas of your own, right?
Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, let me mention a drawback; Netscape
4.# doesn't recognize the IFRAME tag. When that browser encounters an IFRAME
tag, the tag is ignored.
Therefore, you won't want to use the IFRAME tag for anything that is critical
for all site visitors -- a membership area log-in page, for example.
Let's address the two concepts that gave rise to this pile of ideas, rotating
content and daily content.
For rotating content,
Master
Merry-Go-Round can be used. Install the script and give it some content
to rotate. The content can be banners, testimonials, poems, anything a web
page could have. Then, put this tag into your web page where you want the
rotating content to appear (adjusting dimensions and URL as necessary):
<iframe
height="200"
width="300"
src="/cgi-bin/MasterMerryGoRound.cgi?page=complete">
</iframe>
(The "?page=complete" part of the URL tells the program to generate the content
as a complete web page.)
For daily content,
Master Daily
Content can be used. Install the script and give it a month or more of
content. Then, put this tag into your web page where you want the rotating
content to appear (adjusting dimensions and URL as necessary):
<iframe
height="200"
width="300"
src="/cgi-bin/MasterDailyContent.cgi?page=complete">
</iframe>
(Again, the "?page=complete" part of the URL tells this particular program
to generate the content as a complete web page.)
Other ideas:
Similar to the contact/recommend form idea, a "recommend this site" form
could be put in an IFRAME so the site visitor isn't required to navigate
back to the page s/he started from.
Surveys can be put into an IFRAME tag, with the results displaying in the
same spot.
Recommend and Survey programs are available at the Master Series site. Use
the search box or scan the list of
available
programs.
A site news IFRAME could be used to display content of importance, changing
it as needed.
Master
Site News makes changing such content easy via a control panel.
An index with photos could be put into an IFRAME. Create several regular
web pages, one with an index to the others. The others contain the photos,
along with a link back to the index. The IFRAME then contains the URL of
the index page, which allows visitors to click on a photo link, view the
photo, and click back to the index.
The IFRAME has scrollbars when the content exceeds the allotted area. Thus,
it can be used to display a large amount of text, yet require only a small
amount of space on the web page. For example, you could display the current
WillMaster Possibilities article, automatically updated every week, by creating
a page like
<html>
<body>
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://willmaster.com/possibilities/c/wmp.js">
</script>
</body>
</html>
and then using an IFRAME with the newly created page's URL to insert the
entire article into a small space.
When you have a lot of content to display in an IFRAME, the content can be
made to scroll. Try the Master Scrolling Presentation Generator V1
demonstration
to see how easy it is to generate a scrolling text area.
The IFRAME tag can be used to display anything a regular web page can display,
and put it into a small area on another web page.
Will Bontrager
About the Author:
William
Bontrager Programmer/Publisher, "WillMaster Possibilities"
ezine
mailto:possibilities@willmaster.com
Are you looking for top quality scripts? Visit
Willmaster
and check out his highly acclaimed Master Series scripts. Some free, some
for a fee. |
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