Our picture searching and sorting software
makes great use of Java Script and Dynamic
HTML. Unfortunately the two popular browsers
Netscape and Internet Explorer have slight
differences when it comes to dealing with
the features of these two languages. As
a consequence there are a couple of occasions
when features available in one browser are
not available in the other.
The most
awkward of these is in the closing of the
lightbox windows. When sorting and selecting
pictures the software attempts to refresh
all your open windows so that they are up
to date. An example being adding a picture
to a light box. If the light box is open
then you will see the picture appear in
the box. A problem occurs if you close the
box using the X button in the top right
hand corner. Internet Explorer will flag
the window as closed and no attempt
will be made to refresh it when it is changed
in any way. Unfortuantely Netscape does
not flag the window as closed and the software
will treat it as still open. As a consequence
when any changes are made to the light box
the software will refresh it which means
it will re-appear. To avoid this problem
we have added a close window button to each
light box window for use when closing the
window.
A second
problem occurs in the use of ALT tags for
pictures in web pages. This is the message
that appears when you leave the mouse over
a picture of a short period . Use has been
made of the feature to add a caption to
a picture. It has also been used to remind
you which light box a picture has been added
to once it has been selected. This can be
useful if you are doing a long search with
several light boxes. Unfortunately it is
not possible at present to change the ALT
value of an image in Netscape so Netscape
users will not see any change to the "Add
Picture" button's ALT value i.e. the
messaget they get if they rest their
mouse over the "Picture Added"
button that will replace the "Add Picture"
button when a picture is selected.
