Using an Inline Frame for Page Navigation

Creating Shared, Easy to Update Navigation Menus

A lot of sites I design require context menus - a set of shared links to other related pages in a sub section of a website, that are usually paced on the left of each page. A common way to do this is by using a Dreamweaver template such that only one change is needed to update all the pages in that section.

I recommend Macromedia Contribute to my clients so that they can update web page themselves. However a major disadvantage is that Contribute does not allow templates to be updated. Very often clients want to add new pages themselves without requiring a change from the site designer.
A Solution Using IFRAME

The IFRAME creates an inline frame within the current page. The frame is a rectangular area in which any other HTML page can be displayed.

This page is a working example. On the left of this page an IFRAME displays the content of the file IFrameMenu.htm which defines a common set of links. Any other page that need to share this same "context menu", such as IFramePageNavigation2.htm, simply needs to include an IFRAME pointing to same file, IFrameMenu.htm. This is easily and best achieved within a Dreamweaver template.

Using Contribute the client can easily update the page IFrameMenu.htm. The new version is automatically included the next time any page is viewed that references it.

Using this method a single edit effectively updates the menu in all pages that uses the template, without requiring updates to every file.

IFRAME is part of the universal HTML 4.0 standard and unlike the FRAME command is supported under the newer XHTML standard.
Does Google Index Inline Frame Content ?

Google does indexes the contents of the page in the IFrame. The page included in the frame is seen as a separate page by Google and, not as part of the containing page(s) it is displayed within.
Other Solutions

Macromedia Dreamweaver Templates and Library Items or FrontPage Menus all provide methods of updating a menu from a single source change, but they they are dependent upon features specific to each product and result in updates to every dependent file.

Server Side Include commands achieves a very similar result to an IFRAME but has the disadvantage they depend upon the type server you are using. Windows servers require ASP to enabled for the site and the web pages must be renamed .asp for the server side to work.