Xara rollovers

[RTK]

Klaus, thanks for clearing it all up [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Risto

diri@videotron.ca

[Egg Bramhill]

Both sites worked fine on my IE5 / W98, with no problems. I use XaraX nav buttons alot and have never found any problems with them. Very strange ???
Egg

[RTK]

...we are understanding each other?!

My question was: "Are the nav buttons supposed to download each time you go to a new page (if the same nav buttons are part of that page also?). I thought they would be cached, no?

I tried Alan's test page with a slow connection and I can see that 11 files are downloaded each time a button is pushed.

With my cable modem I cannot see any problems.

Anyone else?

Risto

diri@videotron.ca

[Egg Bramhill]

I have found that common button images are cached and the only image that is downloaded as new is the "selected state" button, which arrives later than the cached buttons from previous pages.
Of course this is only true for the first visit of a selected page, after that all button states are cached.
Egg

[Turan]

Fine with me - althought work connection is fast. I understand they should be stored locally, don't know what has happen with your need to connect.

Turan

[ajreed]

Excuse any misunderstanding but I get the impression that people are clicking my test buttons, which will result (probably) in some downloading as the href is set to self.

The effect I may have not emphasised clearly was just hovering over the buttons, as it is the mouseover effect that is in question. No clicking involved.

Egg: I like what you say, as it is in total accord with what I believe, but can you hazard any guess as to what setting on IE5.5 may have got moved/changed to cause such a problem? As I said earlier I have checked java active scripting and this is enabled. On IE5.5 I have the internet security level slider set to default Medium which I think is where it's always been.

The fact that some people have tried my test site and report no problem, *may* be that they are on a fast link and therefore might not notice a short download on passing over the button, or else they have their versions of IE set slightly different somewhere.

Anyone know a site with java rollovers that are coded correctly as a helper to determining whether it is a java or browser setting problem?

Thanks to all who have exercised a few neurons on this one, I am sure we must be getting close.

Just popping off to see if the WebDesign forum bunch have added anything.....

Alan

[ajreed]

Just had a quick look at the webdesign forum and nobody has even viewed my problem there let alone suggested any solutions (posted over 12 hours ago).

Boy - this forum positively buzzes with life compared to them.

Alan

[james_frost]

Getting caching to work correctly is a nightmare because its up to a combination of the client browser *and* the web server dishing out the pages.

There are HTML META-tag headers you can use to try and influence the way the caching works - the problem here is that the web server can add its own too. And there are cross browser platform issues to. And users can configure their browsers to cache in different ways (IE, for example, has three modes of caching)

You have to be very wary of this kind of thing and it causes all sorts of problems. For my field, web applications, most of the issues are with trying to stop things getting cached. For you its the opposite problem.

Try these sites for more detailed info on what it is and how to control it:

<blockquote>
Caching Tutorial for Web Authors and Webmasters


Caching online course
</blockquote>

[ajreed]

Security level settings seem not to be playing a part in that I set them to low (ignored the warnings) and the rollover download problem still persists. Now set them back to Medium.

Another thing I was trying my test site, and it was behaving as normal, downloading each rollover image every time I passed over the button. Then I came offline. Displayed the test site window again. Passed over a button. Dialer woke up giving opportunity to log in (clearly IE wanted to d/l rolledover images again) but I click 'work offline' at which point IE decided to just get the rolledover image from local cache. At this point moving the mouse over the four buttons produced instant rollover effects, so clearly the browser is aware it has these images in its local cache, but prefers if it can to get fresh copies downloaded. I don't believe IE has a mind of its own, but it makes you wonder.

Has this helped anybody?.....

Alan

[james_frost]

Incidentally, the JavaScript code that Xara creates *is* the correct (or at least accepted) way of doing cross browser (at least the common ones) image preloading, and therefore the problem is more likely a browser issue rather than a problem in Xara's rollover export.

James