Client-side include via OBJECT tag
I was looking Tantek's Log markup, when I stumbled into this interesting trick:
<div id="now"><object data="now.html" type="text/html"> <a href="now.html">now...</a> <!-- ... --> </object></div>
Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Tantek is using the <object> tag to include his brand new sidebar (found in a separate file called "now.html") into his blog page. Perhaps it's old news but I didn't known that.
Of course this technique to include additional page elements makes perfect sense to me but how many page authors out there are still using that ancient <iframe> tag mostly to accomplish the same effect? Surely there must be some sort of compatility issue that holds back this technique from mainstream usage. To partially compensate this Tantek puts some additional code inside the <object> element allowing older browsers to display something meaningful if they are not able to hook included HTML file contents.
Update: Tantek has drop a comment about this technique and added some info about its compatibility across latest browsers.
Feb 7 2003, 2:57 PM