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Unfortunately, the two browsers that currently support frames -
Netscape (NS) and Internet Explorer (IE) - are not consistent in the
interpretation of the HTML involved with frames support. The page designer
is faced with the choice of (1) recognizing the browser and providing different HTML
for each, (2) not using some features, or (3) having his page look and act
differently depending on which browser the user has.
This document is a start at enumerating these differences. I hope that others may add to this information, and - especially - to extend the comparison beyond the small realm of frames. Borderless framesIn the FRAMESET tag there is an attribute that will produce borderless frames for that set. Borderless frames are ones without the heavy lines that normally separate frames; the frames blend into one another. NS and IE have a different name for this attribute:
In NS it is BORDER=no In IE it is FRAMEBORDER=noBut that is not the end of the problem. In a NS FRAMESET with BORDER=no, the frames in that set can not be resized by the user; it acts like every frame has the NORESIZE attribute specified. In IE the FRAMEBORDER=no attribute has no effect on the ability to resize. The NOFRAME tagMy interpretation of the <NOFRAME>...</NOFRAME> tag is that it should be applicable in any HTML file that is used in a FRAMESET. It allows the designer to specify HTML statements that are comments to a frames compliant browser interpreting HTML statements while running in a frames environment. The statements are to be interpreted by a non-compliant browser or by a compliant one running in a non-frames environment. I could be wrong about the statements in red.IE appears to follow the rules I have stated, although I have not tested it in a non-frames environment. NS honors the NOFRAME tag only in the file containing the FRAMESET. In other files, it interprets the HTML. This has made it impossible for me to cleanly support non-compliant browsers for some things I have tried to do.
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