Are IFrames (HTML) obsolete? [closed]

Solution 1:

Support for <iframe> is still there in HTML 5, so I don't think this will change in the near future.

To answer your other questions:

  1. <iframe>s (as frames in general) are most of the time not user-friendly:
    • They don't allow easy access of the content in the frame via an URL (without losing the content outside of the frame at least).
    • Most "technophobe" users are irritated by frames.
    • As far as I know they are slower to render for browsers
  2. Alternatives include dynamic page generation (SSI, PHP, Rails and so on) and using JavaScript / AJAX to change contents of e.g. a <div>

To be clear: I'm talking about <iframe> as an interface element. Not a hidden element for loading other stuff like e.g. Google Mail does.

Solution 2:

In my opinion the W3C jumped the gun in dumping iframes from the Strict HTML and XHTML doctypes. In theory you would use the <object> element to add foreign objects to your document, but browser differences and limitations have made this a nonstarter for many developers. With the much-more-pragmatic HTML 5 (which is still a draft), iframes are back and even have two new attributes: seamless, and the intriguing sandbox.