My site works well in Firefox and Safari. In IE6 all of the iframes are either missing or include huge blocks of white space between css. Haven't checked it in IE7 yet. Thoughts?

Can't be sure without looking at your site and its code, but I suspect there is no need for you to be using IFRAME. What is their purpose on your site?

1) so I can update content in one location and have it populate across multiple pages, and 2) I found adding content to the page the iframe references is easier than adding content directly to the page where the content is shown for formatting reasons. use different kind of frame? better solution that doesn't use frames? I'm a beginner.

Server Side Includes do exactly what you need, and don't have the crippling effect frames have on search engine listings, as well as no client-side side effects, since they take place on the server before the HTML is ever served to the client (web browser).

Thoughts: there is no need for you to test iE6. Who uses IE6 or IE anyway? If anything, you should [google]conditional comment[/google] into IE a large opaque div telling users to upgrade to firefox.

It seems that the newer browsers all support iframes but they are not good to use? - do I need to rebuild my whole site? what is the effect negative search engine impact you mentioned when usuing iframes?

Search engines see iframes as iframes and then list them as supplemental results - nothing bad, really - but you can also put the content you want to see used multiple times into a separate file (i.e. someframe.php), and then include that file wherever you want the content to appear on your PHP powered site with

PHP Code:

<?php include 'someframe.php'; ?>

It's a bad result for search engines in my opinion, because the IFRAME content is indexed as an "orphan", not a part of the page it is contained in, when it would be better to keep the content together.

IFRAMES should rarely if ever be used by standard users, though they are useful to some client-side programmers for web applications if they know what they are doing.

The only time an IFRAME should be used is if a completely sterile CSS environment is needed, that is free from all present rules. A good example is online text-editors, which need their own style rules, and may be ported into any existing page without worrying about conflicts. An example is the editor used for replies right here on Webmaster-Talk.

so are the "orphans" - in my case .html files - going to be indexed by search engines and be viewable? the are just sections of content (test and images) not meant to be seen alone.

They will be indexed, but by themselves, not mixed in with other content. Since framed content is actually individual content in reality, that is what it is archived as.

well I definitely don't want them indexed if they would come up in a google search. so SSI is the best practice? can it support images? will the content be indexed as part of the page it is meant to be viewed on?

there is no need for you to test iE6. Who uses IE6 or IE anyway?

Nonsense. While it's use is diminishing, it's not dead yet! Lots of companies (like mine) are still using IE6 for many reasons, and there will always be someone using that and even older versions of a browser. If your site is for income, you don't want to alienate potential customers.

Originally Posted by crw

SSI is the best practice? can it support images? will the content be indexed as part of the page it is meant to be viewed on?

Yes, SSI can include any snippet of HTML, including images or any other element than may be represented with HTML. SSI happens before anything is sent to the browser or any user agent (such as the Google crawler), so it is just as if you are serving a single plain HTML file.

I will try SSI. Is there an easy way to do it in Golive? It's all I have access to right now. Is it as easy as dragging over an object or something and linking it to the existing html file?

I don't know anything about Golive, but SSI normally imitates an HTML comment like this:

<!--#include virtual="/path/to/file.htm"-->

It is going to depend on what type of server is hosting your site. If it is Apache, the above example will work, by default on .shtml files, though it can be configured for any type of file.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/ssi.html

On Microsoft servers (IIS) it is slightly different:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro....mspx?mfr=true

I used the "component" function in golive, it works perfectly in firefox but ie6 is still a problem. It seems to be SSI because the file resides on the server and the code is automatically included into source for the viewable page. The desired content is visible but IE6 positions it farther down the page. Thoughts? This is what golive inserted to call the code:
<csobj csref="../path" h=110 occur="62" t="component" w="966">

No idea. We'd have to see the outputted HTML and CSS to know what is happening. SSI doesn't have anything to do with browser compatibility. A link to the page would do just fine.

***EDIT**
I'm not sure that is SSI at all. I was curious, since I'd never heard of the <csobj> tag, so Googled it. I read it is an internal Adobe tag, so this means to me this is the goLive template system, to behave like SSI would in a way, but instead of the files being put together on the server, they are put together before being uploaded. If this works for you it is probably okay, though it will make it difficult to change editors if you ever so desire.

ok here's the link. it looks like I want it to in firefox and safari. if you can load it in ie6 you'll see that the frames include huge blocks of empty white space causing some to disappear entirely. the main blog area is the only frame that shows up but there are huge white spaces between content.

carnegiehillreview.com

Depending on the version of IE6, you could have many problems with Iframes displaying properly. I would suggest not using Iframes if at all possible, as the content within that frame is not treated as if it is on the same page as the content you are injecting it to. Perhaps PHP would be a better language to tackle your problem with, as you can combine different pieces of content for a page before they are converted to the actual content.

@LadynRed - I agree with your comment on not giving up on styling for IE6 quite yet, but why is your company still using it? If you are really a Web Standards Evangelist as your signature says, you would be informing them of it's total lack of web standards, and it's drag on the web developer community. No company should be using IE6 on the grounds of network security alone at this point...

EW! iFrames! RUN!