[thelist] dynamic background?

[Paola Kathuria]

Peter Kaulback wrote:
> I was discussing a random photo gallery to display catalogue items and the
> client inquired of having a dynamic background whereby if a visitor
> revisits the site in a given time period then they would see the site with
> a different background.  Is this possible?

Yes (if you just mean effectively a scheduled but slowslide of
backgrounds).

My first thought was to set-up a cron job (if it's a Unix server)
to overwrite the background tile image that the page refers with
one chosen randomly from a directory of images.  Because it'd be
done at the server, it wouldn't depend on the visitor's browser of
config.

I then remembered seeing a home page where I saw different
graphics after a full reload - a quick peek at the top of the
source implies it's done in JavaScript.  http://www.jeffglover.com/

However, I would suspect that one wouldn't really want to
rotate backgrounds.  Unless they were essentially the same
lightness, foreground text would vary in how readable it is.
And if you put anti-aliased images on top, even with
transparent backgrounds, a differently-coloured background
would show up all the edges from the intended background
colour of images placed on top.


Paola