[thelist] Flicker with CSS rollovers in IE Win - solved

[Ian Anderson]

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