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Posted by: davidmichaelangelo Oct 12 2011, 02:19 PM

I created a page that dynamically updates an iFrame depending on variables passed through the URL.
You can see the page here: http://www.bluelinkerp.com/corporate/clientlist.asp

My question is: does this reduce the page load time?

It may seem like a stupid question but it seems to me like there is only one iFrame loaded at a time (a user needs to click another link to load a different iFrame).

This is an effective way of reducing the size of a page, right?

Posted by: Darin McGrew Oct 12 2011, 02:33 PM

In a sense, you might consider it "reducing the size of a page" because you're trading one big page for multiple smaller pages.

But ultimately, the browser has to download all the smaller pages anyway, so the total "size of the page" isn't any smaller.

Posted by: pandy Oct 12 2011, 02:41 PM

In fact the total size is a little larger and there are two requests to the server instead of one. Not that the difference will be noticeable, but I'd say the frame version would be the slower. And there are of course problems with frames. You don't use alt text for the logos (you should). But if you did, what page would you like search engines to find? This http://www.bluelinkerp.com/corporate/client-industry/food-beverage-import-distribution-wholesale.html or this http://www.bluelinkerp.com/corporate/clientlist.asp ?

Posted by: davidmichaelangelo Oct 28 2011, 03:22 PM

Thanks for the help. So you are saying that when you land on a page with a dynamic iFrame, the browser automatically downloads all of the pages? Because the html code is written using ASP depending on the parameters set in the URL, I thought it was a safe bet that the browser would only be "aware" of one iFrame at a time. I do not see how it could possibly download all of the individual pages . . .

The other benefit to this approach is that I can maintain each page separately instead of having one HUGE page loaded with embedded content and have to sort through all the code.

Does it make sense?

Posted by: pandy Oct 28 2011, 04:05 PM

No, I'm saying that with a normal static page that has an iframe two requests are made to the server and two pages are loaded, the main page and the page in the iframe. There is also more HTML since each document needs HEAD and so on.

If you load a new document with a only a part changed instead of using an iframe, most things that matter size-wise should already be cached. Images, style sheets, scripts. Provided you use external style sheets and scripts of course. The only gain is that the text doesn't have to be reloaded, but text doesn't weigh much compared to even the tiniest of images and as said the framed document adds HTML (HEAD and so on). I don't think the dynamic part changes any of this.

Add to that the inherent problems with frames. I don't think it's worth it even if it would be a few msec faster which I don't think it is.