The Floating Frame [Archive] - SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums

pageoneresults

10-02-2002, 01:02/01:02AM

iframes

I did a search on the forums for this topic and did not see any relevant results so I thought I'd start a discussion about iframes.

Have any of you utilized iframes? Yes, I know, they are not compatible with NS4, but they are with IE3+ and NS6+. Because NS4 does not show them at all, there are work arounds for presentation as I'm going to show you.

I've done some research on iframes and how they function. These are great floating windows of opportunity. Not only can you present users with live content feed from other sites, you can also show them content from other parts of your site.

I'm testing a page off of 123seo.com and have created windows (iframes) to the five forums that I visit periodically. Instead of clicking on bookmarks or links from my site (which I usually do), I now have one page showing active posts for all forums.

These are really cool! Its ashame NS4 does not support them. There is still a large portion of the audience using NS4 and we sure don't want to alienate them! So, I created links and descriptions to each forum. When viewed in NS4, the iframes do not display, nor do they intrude on space and my links and descriptions look fine.

Search Engine Forums - iframe Presentation (http://www.123seo.com/search-engine-forums/iframe.htm)

bigDugan

10-02-2002, 01:54/01:54AM

Suh-weet!:cool:

P.S. Nice layout!8)

MazY

10-02-2002, 07:18/07:18AM

Very nice, pageone and something that I'd like to know more about. In our scenario, now having four domains, I could make use of this.

As for Netscrape 4 users - my days of catering for such backwards technology are well and truly over. They account for less than 2% of VBMedia traffic. Good riddance to them I say!

Advisor

10-02-2002, 11:59/11:59AM

I had a discussion with a Rank Write reader and our RW designer a few months back about Iframes. I'm not positive, but I think that the info in Iframes cannot be read by the search engines, which is why I would avoid them. It's possible that you can use the noscript tag and put the information in there instead. I think that's what we finally concluded.

Jill

pageoneresults

10-02-2002, 12:10/12:10PM

I believe Jill might be correct on indexing. My first assumption based on some other topics that I've been reading is that these are spider friendly. But, after running the Search Engine Spider Simulator on this page along with another where I've used the iframe to serve up a static .htm page from within the site, it did not see the contents in the frame.

That's okay for now. I'm sure there is some way to make these spider friendly and I will find out one day soon. Right now, I'm looking at them more for functionality than indexibility.

Maz, they are very simple to set up and can be placed anywhere on a page between the <body></body>. The tag looks like this...

<iframe src="http://www.yourdomain.com/page-name-htm" width="100%" height="320" name="I1" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="center"></iframe>

That's all there is to it! You have the same options you would as if you were building a frameset except now you have a floating frame that can be placed anywhere on your page.

ihelpyou

10-02-2002, 12:28/12:28PM

Yes. Very good PageOne! I utilize this as well:

http://www.freemoneyservices.com/google_search_engine.htm

That page is visited quite a lot so I figured I would bring traffic to here from it as well. :)

NS 4 users, sorry, you cannot view it. :(

pageoneresults

10-02-2002, 12:36/12:36PM

Doug, I'm getting an error when browsing to that page. Its that darn unterminated string constant again. Do you need to update some java on that page?

pageoneresults

10-02-2002, 13:39/01:39PM

Here are some links which you might find useful when learning how to use iframes and their attributes.

iframe Description, Compatibility and Attributes (http://html.about.com/library/tags/bl_iframe.htm?iam=savvy&terms=%2Biframes)

idocs Guide to HTML (http://www.idocs.com/tags/frames/_IFRAME.html)

Web Review - Inline Frames Revisited (http://www.webreview.com/2001/12_20/developers/index02.shtml)

Here's a little snipet from the above link...Advantages of inline frames

The advantages of using inline frames as opposed conventional frames are:

Fewer pages required to create a frame page layout. Two pages compared to four. In addition to reducing the number of pages, creating an inline frame only requires one line of code.

More room for static content. As you can see in Figure 2, inline frames provide more room for other kinds of static content on the main page. For instance, you could put copyright or credit card information beneath the inline frame. You could also put advertisements or other information on the right side of the inline.

Easier on search engine crawlers. A lot of search engines' crawlers have a difficult time properly indexing sites that use conventional frames. This is because the first page that the crawler encounters when investigating the site is the frameset page, which doesn't contain links to the rest of the pages on the site. As such, some crawlers will simply ignore the site and move on.

However, if you're using inline frames, you won't have to worry about this problem as the main page contains the menu and as such contains links to the rest of the pages on the site.

Now to be fair, there is one search engine problem that plagues sites using conventional frames that is also a problem for sites that use inline frames. Sometimes a search engine will index individual pages on a site and provide links directly to those pages—sans the frames. As you can imagine, this can be very confusing to users who follow a link from a search results page and end up on a page without any reference to the site that it belongs to. However, you can work around this problem by putting a link to the home page near the bottom of each page on the site that appears inside the core frame.Of course there is always the authority on html...

Inline Frames - The <iframe> Element (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/present/frames.html#h-16.5)

DJ5A

10-02-2002, 17:40/05:40PM

Hello Everybody:

Thanks a Million Pageoneresults & Everybody else. This is a Killer Post & it might help me with getting to the Point, without sending people to other pages!

bigDugan

10-02-2002, 18:21/06:21PM

I'm getting that error on your page too, Doug. Unterminated String Constant - Line 240 Char 40

P.S. The page STILL seemed to load properly.

bigDugan

10-02-2002, 18:39/06:39PM

Thanks for the information, Pageoneresults! I can think of a couple applications where I may try using some iframes. I suppose there could be an advantage of the iframes not being indexed, if they just contained advertising.my days of catering for such backwards technology are well and truly overMe too, although I've never used much other than plain HTML, which is already backward compatible.

Alan Perkins

11-02-2002, 19:38/07:38PM

Originally posted by pageoneresults
But, after running the Search Engine Spider Simulator on this page along with another where I've used the iframe to serve up a static .htm page from within the site, it did not see the contents in the frame.That's a "feature" of whatever simulator you are running. It's entirely down to the spider programmer whether they choose to follow iframes or not. Do not rely on them being followed. Likewise, do not rely on them NOT being followed. Use robots.txt and the robots meta tag as appropriate.

pageoneresults

11-02-2002, 22:37/10:37PM

Alan brings up a good point about the programming of the spider. I've been doing some extensive research on the <iframe> and its pluses and minuses. The only minuses that I see are NS4 users and robots not programmed to index <iframe> content.

Now, how to go about presenting content in <iframe> windows and also appeal to those who are using a browser that does not support <iframe> or have their frames turned off?

Option I
If you are using multiple <iframe> tags on a page, then you can do what I've done with the above linked page. You set up a headline title and then a three or four line paragraph of well written content to describe what the user is seeing in the window. Make sure the title or something in the paragraph (preferrably a keyword phrase) is hyperlinked directly to the content that appears in the <iframe>.

For those who cannot see the inline frames, they see the headline titles and paragraph text as if the page were built that way. If a browser doesn't support the element, then it will not display, nor will it intrude on your page layout.

Option II
You can include content within your <iframe></iframe> tags just as you would for your <noframes></noframes> tags. But, you would not want to include the same content that we did in Option I. Your NS4 users and those with frames turned off would see duplicate content.

Be creative and relevant. You can do pretty much what you want between the <iframe> tags. Browsers that support <iframe> will see the inline frame, those that don't will see what is between your <iframe> tags.

I look at the inline frame as another option on presenting content to the user. This is not for the spiders although you can make it spider friendly and you should. This is more for the functionality and presentation.

pageoneresults

11-02-2002, 22:44/10:44PM

One of the problems I am having right now using the inline frame have to do with usernames and passwords.

I've already had two instances where I came into the forum through that page, was replying to a topic, and you know how winded I can get, and ended up losing my reply. After pouring my heart and soul out for ten or fifteen minutes I hit submit and it told me that I was not logged in. When I entered my username and password it recognized me but did not take me back to my well thought out reply. It was gone, twice that happened!

The lightbulbs from the forum topics also don't work in the <iframe> and I know it has to do with the pretzels.

When I log in to the WMW forum, it recognizes me, but as soon as I click on view recent posts, it sees me as a guest again. Wierd. Something funny going on with the pretzels.

Any suggestions? Workarounds?

P.S. The only one that works is SitePoint. I only lurk at the other two and haven't logged in to post anything recently.

pageoneresults

01-04-2002, 21:55/09:55PM

Since I first posted this topic, way back when, I've been working with <iframe>s more and more. I really like the functionality that they provide and they are a definite plus with sites that need to present text information quickly and conveniently for the user.

My absence here this past weekend was due to the rebuild of 123seo.com, not that anyone has missed me! I just converted 110 pages of information over to css and absolute positioning along with a few <iframe> presentations.

Check this out and tell me what you think. Before you reply, take a very close look at how everything is interlinked, look at the source code. Those pages appearing in the <iframe> can stand on their own, although they are not real pretty, they were not meant to be, their strictly information pages that users can print.

My approach with this site is to keep it as minimalist as possible while still offering some structure and presentation of content. I use this site mainly for sending prospects to so they can see the entire package without me having to draw up a lengthy proposal for services.

Oh, by the way, I've added quite a few more pages to the tips section and have now started to categorize.

Search Engine Optimization Tips (http://www.123seo.com/search-engine-optimization-tips/index.htm)

Web Site Design and HTML Coding Tips (http://www.123seo.com/information-tips/index.htm)