OBJECT vs IFRAME (was RE: Hyperlinks in OBJECT inclusions)

[analogy between frames and HTML OBJECTs deleted]

>> Where inclusion.html is as before.  The behaviors of the two
>> alternatives are not the same, since the frame-replacement behavior
>> cannot be achieved by browsers that see the non-frame option.  IMHO,
>> the same should go for the HTML OBJECT.

>Certainly this is appropriate for IFRAME. But wasn't part of the reason for
>including both IFRAME and OBJECT to provide mechanisms both with and without
>this degree of subordination? Put a different way: if this (what you
>describe) is the behavior you want, why not use IFRAME?

>Braden

To quote the Web Design Group
<http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/special/iframe.html>:

  OBJECT is more widely supported than IFRAME, and, unlike IFRAME,
  OBJECT is included in HTML 4.0 Strict.

Now, I was under the impression that IFRAME, like APPLET, had been
deprecated in favor of OBJECT, and this was reinforced by the WDG's
description of IFRAME, to wit "IFRAME provides a subset of the
functionality of OBJECT".  But now that I look at the actual HTML4.0
spec, with phrases like "Authors may use either the IFRAME element or
the OBJECT element for this purpose, but the elements differ in some
ways"
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html#embedded-documents>,
I realize that IFRAME may have been omitted from HTML 4.0 Strict for
the same reason the TARGET attribute was (not that that strikes me as
a very good reason, but that's another thread).

	That aside, is it useful to *have* a separate IFRAME element
with behavior distinct from OBJECT TYPE="text/html"?  It seems like
with a useful set of conventions for the meanings of TARGETS on links
inside and outside the frame, all of the functionality could be built
into OBJECT.  In the long run, OBJECT TYPE="img/whatever" should
replace IMG, but it's not useful to start ditching IMG yet because
it's in such widespread use and recognized by all browsers.  OTOH,
IFRAME is about as new as OBJECT, so why bother building up the
infrastructure for IFRAME so it can someday be deprecated?

					John T. Whelan
					whelan@iname.com
					http://www.slack.net/~whelan/

Received on Thursday, 20 August 1998 21:31:18 UTC