Inline Frame

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What Does Inline Frame Mean?

An Inline Frame (IFRAME/IFrame) element allows one HTML document to be embedded within another HTML document. IFrames may be used in a variety of ways to enhance the user website experience, including displaying advertising content and comparing multiple documents.

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Techopedia Explains Inline Frame

An IFrame element may contain another HTML document or even an entire website within the same browser window. In addition to having an independent scrollbar, the IFrame can serve as a link target, be printed and contains viewable source code. The IFrame allows Web programmers to change frame content via the utilization of client-side scripting (JavaScript) without requiring the website to be reloaded, allowing for interactive Web applications.

In early 2008, hackers distributed harmful iFrame content within search engine results, and a number of well-known websites, (for example, ABC News), were victimized. When such an i Frame overlay attack occurs, hackers embed iFrames within highly-trafficked websites to redirect users to websites containing malicious content, which is automatically downloaded when the websites are accessed.

As of HTML 5, framing (as implemented by the FRAME, FRAMESET and NOFRAMES HTML elements) were made obsolete, with the exception of the IFrame element.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.