How can I scale the content of an iframe?

Question

Kip's solution should work on Opera and Safari if you change the CSS to:

<style>
    #wrap { width: 600px; height: 390px; padding: 0; overflow: hidden; }
    #frame { width: 800px; height: 520px; border: 1px solid black; }
    #frame {
        -ms-zoom: 0.75;
        -moz-transform: scale(0.75);
        -moz-transform-origin: 0 0;
        -o-transform: scale(0.75);
        -o-transform-origin: 0 0;
        -webkit-transform: scale(0.75);
        -webkit-transform-origin: 0 0;
    }
</style>

You might also want to specify overflow: hidden on #frame to prevent scrollbars.

I found a solution that works in IE and Firefox (at least on the current versions). On Safari/Chrome, the iframe is resized to 75% of its original size, but the content within the iframe is not scaled at all. In Opera, this doesn't seem to work. This feels a bit esoteric, so if there is a better way to do it I'd welcome suggestions.

<style>
#wrap { width: 600px; height: 390px; padding: 0; overflow: hidden; }
#frame { width: 800px; height: 520px; border: 1px solid black; }
#frame { zoom: 0.75; -moz-transform: scale(0.75); -moz-transform-origin: 0 0; }
</style>

...

<p>Some text before the frame</p>
<div id="wrap">
<iframe id="frame" src="test2.html"></iframe>
</div>
<p>Some text after the frame</p>
</body>

Note: I had to use the wrap element for Firefox. For some reason, in Firefox when you scale the object down by 75%, it still uses the original size of the image for layout reasons. (Try removing the div from the sample code above and you'll see what I mean.)

I found some of this from this question.

After struggling with this for hours trying to get it to work in IE8, 9, and 10 here's what worked for me.

This stripped-down CSS works in FF 26, Chrome 32, Opera 18, and IE9 -11 as of 1/7/2014:

.wrap
{
    width: 320px;
    height: 192px;
    padding: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
}

.frame
{
    width: 1280px;
    height: 786px;
    border: 0;

    -ms-transform: scale(0.25);
    -moz-transform: scale(0.25);
    -o-transform: scale(0.25);
    -webkit-transform: scale(0.25);
    transform: scale(0.25);

    -ms-transform-origin: 0 0;
    -moz-transform-origin: 0 0;
    -o-transform-origin: 0 0;
    -webkit-transform-origin: 0 0;
    transform-origin: 0 0;
}

For IE8, set the width/height to match the iframe, and add -ms-zoom to the .wrap container div:

.wrap
{
    width: 1280px; /* same size as frame */
    height: 768px;
    -ms-zoom: 0.25; /* for IE 8 ONLY */
}

Just use your favorite method for browser sniffing to conditionally include the appropriate CSS, see Is there a way to do browser specific conditional CSS inside a *.css file? for some ideas.

IE7 was a lost cause since -ms-zoom did not exist until IE8.

Here's the actual HTML I tested with:

<div class="wrap">
   <iframe class="frame" src="http://time.is"></iframe>
</div>
<div class="wrap">
    <iframe class="frame" src="http://apple.com"></iframe>
</div>

http://jsfiddle.net/esassaman/PnWFY/

I just tested and for me, none of the other solutions worked. I simply tried this and it worked perfectly on Firefox and Chrome, just as I had expected:

<div class='wrap'>
    <iframe ...></iframe>
</div>

and the css:

.wrap {
    width: 640px;
    height: 480px;
    overflow: hidden;
}

iframe {
    width: 76.92% !important;
    height: 76.92% !important;
    -webkit-transform: scale(1.3);
    transform: scale(1.3);
    -webkit-transform-origin: 0 0;
    transform-origin: 0 0;
}

This scales all the content by 23.08%, the equivalent of the original being 30% larger than the embedded version. (The width/height percentages of course need to be adjusted accordingly (1/scale_factor).

You don't need to wrap the iframe with an additional tag. Just make sure you increase the width and height of the iframe by the same amount you scale down the iframe.

e.g. to scale the iframe content to 80% :

#frame { /* Example size! */
    height: 400px; /* original height */
    width: 100%; /* original width */
}
#frame {
    height: 500px; /* new height (400 * (1/0.8) ) */
    width: 125%; /* new width (100 * (1/0.8) )*/

    transform: scale(0.8); 
    transform-origin: 0 0;
}

Basically, to get the same size iframe you need to scale the dimensions.