[thelist] Flicker with CSS rollovers in IE Win - solved
Ian Anderson
ian at zstudio.co.uk
Thu Apr 28 17:32:17 CDT 2005
Hi esteemed list members,
a few weeks ago, I mentioned in a post to someone that their CSS
rollovers flickered in a most unacceptable way in IE 6 for Windows, and
that I had long been troubled by this drawback to CSS rollovers.
I have just realised today why the problem occurs, and it is probably
not such a drawback as I imagined.
The flicker was caused by IE getting another copy of the image from the
server every time the :hover event occurred; that is, every time you
mouse over the image. The reason for this was that in Tools > Internet
Options > General, for Temporary Internet Files Settingds, I have my IE
set to check for a newer copy of the page from the server "Every visit
to the page". This to prevent being misled by caching problems when
checking pages I am working on.
What I found out today (and validated in a wee test) is that where CSS
images are concerned, IE will check the image and download newer
versions even *without* reloading the page, every time you mouse over
the CSS rollover.
Setting the Temporary Internet Files setting to "Every time you start
Internet Explorer" or "Automatically" fixes this, and it now does the
rollovers as slickly as Firefox, Opera or Safari. I know one of these is
the default setting, can't remember which.
Most of the audience out there will have their IE on the default
setting, and will not see the problem. Apologies for misleading the
person with my previous post.
Cheers
Ian
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