Description

In a frameset-based design, it’s often the case that one portion of the screen, for example a frame dedicated to navigation is a fixed height and the content inside will not vary at all. As such, scroll bars are not normally required, but some browsers may reserve space for scrollbars, just in case the content scrolls (which it might do if the font size is increased). The scrolling attribute is used to tell the browser whether to allow scrollbars or not, regardless of the content that appears.

If no scrolling attribute is applied, the default that browsers revert to is "auto", so there is very little good reason for applying scrolling="auto" within the frame; you are almost always going to use it for the purpose of suppressing scroll bars, using the value of "no". If a value of yes is applied, then the browser will reserve space for the scrollbars regardless of whether the content runs off the page. The various settings are shown in Figure 1.

Note that in the screenshot that when set to "yes", the browser applies inactive scroll bars on the x and y axis even though the content fits in the page. In the smaller window with the value set to "no", the last line is missing and you cannot use the scrollbars to reveal it.

<frameset rows="100,*" >
  <frame src="header.html" frameborder="1"
    noresize="noresize" scrolling="no"/>
  <frame src="home.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="yes"/>
</frameset>

Value

"yes", "no" or "auto" only

Compatibility

Internet Explorer				Firefox					Safari				Opera			Chrome
5.5	6.0	7.0	8.0	1.0	1.5	2.0	3.0	3.5	1.3	2.0	3.1	4.0	9.2	9.5	10.0	2.0
Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full	Full

Every browser listed supports this attribute.