display webpage inside other webpage without frames

Question

Hi,
i'm looking for a way to display a web page inside a div of other web page.
i can fetch the the webpage with CURL, but since it has an external stylesheet when i try to display it, it appears without all his style properties.
i remember facebook used this technique with shared links (you used to see the page that was linked with a facebook header) did some unsuccessful jquery tests but I'm pretty much clueless about how to continue..
i know this can be done with frames but i always here that it's good practice to avoid frames so i'm a bit confused
any ideas how to work this out?

Answer 1

If you want to display the other website's contents exactly as they are rendered in that site then frames are, in this case, the best (easiest) way to go.

Facebook and Google both use this technique to display pages while maintaining their branding / navigation bar above the other site.

Answer 2

I am going to guess that Facebook still used an iFrame, just with no borders and a well placed header outside of it. The reason I am guessing that is because if the outside page has its own style sheet, there is a high probability that your styles and their styles will clash and not show things properly.

In order for the styles not to clash everything on both ends would have to be extremely detailed, not just generic styles applied to all paragraphs etc...

Answer 3

i agree that using frames would probably be the best solution for you problem. but if you still want to avoid frames and put the contents into a div with the id externalConent, you could request the stylesheets the same way you get the other contents and prefix every rule in them with "#externalContent ". save these stylesheets to your server and include them in your page. with a few more customizations, that should work. i have to admit this solution does sound quite strange... well, it is. but it's the only way i see to do what you're asking for.

Answer 4

If you are unable to use a frame or iframe, try:

• extract the HTML inside the BODY and inserting it into the destination DIV
• extract the and sections at the header

Is not very clean though, but it will definitely work, you can insert a phpBB forum into another dynamic way using this technique, take a look at http://www.clearerimages.com/forum/ for an example.