[thelist] Hidden CGI Communications

[Simon Willison]

Hershel Robinson wrote:
> I work on an Win IE6-only site and we do hidden communications with the
> server via an iframe. In short, I load JS data into the iframe and then the
> JS code in the page itself processes that data.
> 
> I am wondering, out of curiosity, do people have any other solutions to this
> challenge? Last I recall, NetScape did not support the iframe tag. Actually,
> I don't believe it's valid HTML either, which would be another GOOD reason
> to find an alternative.

Not only do all versions of Netscape since Netscape 4 support iframe, 
but it's also valid in both HTML 4 and XHTML 1. It's supported by all of 
the other modern browsers as well.

There are a few other interesting techniques for communicating with a 
server without reloading a page, a technique often called "remote 
scripting". Take a look at these links for more information:

http://www.ashleyit.com/rs/
http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2002/08/12/dChatReleased


-- 
Simon Willison
Web development weblog: http://simon.incutio.com/