Odd issue with IE bookmark files

Question

In addition to saving URLs, IE bookmarks store the names and locations of any loaded iframe or frame on the page you bookmarked. When you download this bookmark, IE tries to load frames on the page with the URLs in the bookmark file.

Maybe it was a good idea in the 90s (or maybe today it is a good idea, and I just can’t think of a reason), but for any rather complex web application using iframe, this can easily cause problems. This is the situation I am in right now.

While I am working on handling this in my application, I would really like it to just turn it off. In short, if someone can tell me why bookmarks store and use this information, I would be one happy tourist as I am very curious.

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

I suspect you posted this question on IEBlog a few days ago. :-)

IE does not offer the ability to suppress this, and the reason it exists is basically still relevant today: users expect that loading a bookmark will restore the page as it originally saw it. While it’s true that some frame-based web applications cannot be restored in this way, it remains true that sites that allow sub-frame navigation can usually be restored correctly only if the sub-frames are moved to the same URL as when saving Bookmarks