A question about "iframe" in general

This is more of a theoretical question. Anyway, I've seen "iframe" element being mentioned in various articles (and IIRC as quite a powerful thing, with multiple purposes/roles), then I know that it is used by Google AdSense to display ads in it etc.


The example of the element's syntax:

<iframe>... something ...</iframe>

Code (markup):

So what I am curious about is: what is so special about this particular element that it is (or it can be) so widely used ?? What is a basic difference between "iframe" and common "frame" tags/elements ??


tayiper

 

iframes (Inline Frames) are simply floating objects which can be placed anywhere on the page, as pose to normal frames which are bound to the side of a browser window.

 

Hello, Tayiper.
The difference between a standard frame and an iframe is that the iframe can be placed anywhere in the HTML page. With normal frames you have to have a frameset, an HTML document that does nothing but describe the way frames are laid out. You can have your frames arranged in rows or columns, or a mixture of rows and columns. For example, you can a header frame and two columns beneath it.
An iframe, instead, is a rectangle that you place anywhere you want. You can specify WIDTH, HEIGHT, HSPACE, VSPACE, and ALIGN attributes for iframes, just as you would do with an image. It is very used by advertisers (like Google) because they can set exactly the dimensions they want and set up their advertisements according to this.

 

Just to mention the downside here, you still have many of the same problems you get with frames, like the appearance of the back button breaking, and inbound links become hard to manage becuase can lack any site branding or recognition if not careful.

 

OK, thanks all for the educative replies ...


tayiper