In this second part of a two-part series on the ins and outs of iframes, we will explore more uses for iframes. The ones we will discuss fall into the broad category of remote scripting, or remote procedure calls (RPC). You won't find any sophisticated code in this article, but we will do quite a bit with just plain HTML tags and some basic PHP.
Remote Scripting with iframes - Other uses (Page 4 of 4 )
There are many other things that can be done using iframes for remote scripting. For example, a form in the main page could be used to send user input to the script in the iframe, and the script could display a response in the iframe, with no page reloads necessary.
Here's another example: dynamically generated information could be sent from a script in the main page to a script in the iframe without human input. I'm quite certain you can think of other possibilities for iframes. Feel free to play around with the code I've included in these two articles. You might come up with any number of applications that suit the needs of your website.
Conclusion
While iframes are not the ideal tool for every remote scripting task, they do have two significant advantages: simplicity, and fewer problems with the behavior of the back button. I'm sure you can think of many more uses in addition to the ones described in this article.
Oh! And what about that remote procedure call (RPC) that I promised you? Guess what -- we just made one (or Joe did)! RPC is a term used to describe communication or exchange of data between remote computer systems, and what Joe did qualifies as that. If you want a lot of complicated code, you will have to find some other article.
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The Ins and Outs of Iframes
