[headbirth]

Can anyone tell me how this gradient background was done?

http://www.timdorr.com/software/N3wz/

[redJag]

(without looking at the code)

What I do is create a gradient image in photoshop, slice it to a few pixels, and repeat it horizontally/vertically (depends on direction of course) and then have the background color set to whatever the gradient is fading to. Works nicely.

[skalie]

(after looking at the code)

...adding to what redJag said there's a "background-repeat: repeat-x;" in the style sheet.

[- - e r i k - -]

Yup. Even cooler if you use a transparent png and a backgroundpattern:

http://www.erikveland.com/

[Diggory Laycock]

It's quite easy - I tried it recently:

http://monkeyfood.com/design/classy/

[Millennium]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Yup. Even cooler if you use a transparent png and a backgroundpattern:

http://www.erikveland.com/

That works great in most browsers, but keep in mind the ever-present IE/Win problem.

[DUNSEL]

IE has it's own method of gradient BGs. No images required. I have to do browser sniffs and varying function calls inside them for pretty much every site I build. It's not just IE. If you use anything that's not yet a standard, most browsers will differ in the syntax required.

[Synotic]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
I have to do browser sniffs and varying function calls inside them for pretty much every site I build. It's not just IE. If you use anything that's not yet a standard, most browsers will differ in the syntax required.

Yes and your website is a perfect example of this.

[skalie]

oh dear

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Synotic:
Yes and your website is a perfect example of this.

Ouch.

And yet, if I try to sneak past, I find that the page really isn't viewable in Safari. I'm still trying to figure out what godforsaken hack of nonstandard HTML he must have used to produce that.

[Chris O'Brien]

Originally posted by Synotic:
Yes and your website is a perfect example of this.

I feel sick.

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by Synotic:
Yes and your website is a perfect example of this.

For your information, I built that long before I even began worrying about cross-browser compatability. So there is no browser sniff on that page. But if you're so concerned about that effect being cross-browser viewable, the same technique is used here and will show in most browsers. NS 7.1 has a bug where dynamic use of css opacity attribute is concerned, but most others, including earlier versions of NS, display it properly. The point was, almost every browser requires a different syntax to access such a property with JS.

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
the same technique is used here and will show in most browsers.

*yawn* I was off to another site after quickly getting tired of waiting for an end to whatever the hell that intro was.

PS. splash pages are soooo 1995.

[DUNSEL]

Waiting? It takes all of 2 seconds, if you have a processor not built during the Reagan administration.

[DUNSEL]

And by the way, find a new hosting site. With a very fast connection your page still hadn't loaded when I finally gave up, after 30 seconds.

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Ouch.

And yet, if I try to sneak past, I find that the page really isn't viewable in Safari. I'm still trying to figure out what godforsaken hack of nonstandard HTML he must have used to produce that.

I wasn't aware that css attributes and javascript constituted "hacks".

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
Waiting? It takes all of 2 seconds, if you have a processor not built during the Reagan administration.

on my 12" powerbook (1GHz G4), it takes 10 seconds before I am able to enter the site (I timed it ok?)

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
And by the way, find a new hosting site. With a very fast connection your page still hadn't loaded when I finally gave up, after 30 seconds.

Our site is/was offline for the moment. Maybe you should find a new ISP. You should have gotten a connection error after about 5-10 seconds.

[DUNSEL]

Funny, for a site that's offline, an awful lot of it loaded. And since I've never been there before, there's no chance of any of it having been cached. Perhaps if you used something less bandwidth-greedy than jpgs for the plethora of images.....

I can't speak for how Safari runs javascript. I don't own a mac and they don't make a windows version. But that's at least 5x longer than it takes any other browser to load the splash page, including NS which runs JS notoriously slowly.

[registered_user]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
For your information, I built that long before I even began worrying about cross-browser compatability. So there is no browser sniff on that page.

yes there is. it's right here. http://www.jpages.net/jpages2.js

[DUNSEL]

It says "Why are so many mac users such belligerent sphincter muscles?"

[DUNSEL]

It isn't doing anything. I began to alter the code for crossbrowser compatability, but ran into a snag with NS 7.1. It has too many bugs concerning dynamic change of opacity. 6.2 is fine, but it doesn't make sense to code for outdated versions of a browser.

[registered_user]

Your browser sniff, that allegedly isn't even there, blocks Safari users. That's a public service to the Mac community though, right?

[DUNSEL]

Hardly a large enough % of the world to merit that much attention.

[registered_user]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
Hardly a large enough % of the world to merit that much attention.

If Safari users are too insignificant to attract your attention, then why did you bother to use a script that sniffs for Safari?

[DUNSEL]

I had some downtime at work and just did it for the sake of doing something. Satisfied?

[registered_user]

It just seems odd that first you say one thing and then come back and say the total opposite -- twice in this thread. But that's cool.

[DUNSEL]

What I find odd is, I entered a discussion completely unrelated to my site, and in a totally unassuming and civilized fashion, and suddenly find myself and my work under attack from a few members of the "mac users only" club who apparently have some personality issues. That's rather odd. And people say NYers are unfriendly.

[skalie]

Site was a disaster on Windows box as well, btw. (IE 6)

[eevyl]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
What I find odd is, I entered a discussion completely unrelated to my site, and in a totally unassuming and civilized fashion, and suddenly find myself and my work under attack from a few members of the "mac users only" club who apparently have some personality issues. That's rather odd. And people say NYers are unfriendly.

Mac users are not the ones to have a problem, but you. And you are just trolling so obviously that I really don't know what I am doing replying to such nonsense.

[Simon Mundy]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
Hardly a large enough % of the world to merit that much attention.

Perhaps - but I find it a little weird that you're posting stuff like that in the MAC News Network forums?

Anyhoo... I'm sure your advice was received by headbirth in the best intentions. Peace.

[Chris O'Brien]

dunsel,
I don't think it's the fact that we're all arse-holes (I presume that's the sphincter muscle you had in mind), but the fact that that JPages site is bloody awful...

IE has it's own method of gradient BGs. No images required. I have to do browser sniffs and varying function calls inside them for pretty much every site I build. It's not just IE. If you use anything that's not yet a standard, most browsers will differ in the syntax required.

That post didn't seem to go with what was being discussed - since when are png images not a standard? Because IE/Win doesn't support their alpha channels without a filter being applied? (hence Milleniums post about "the ever present IE/Win problem"). Or are you talking about using filter: opacity and the from to thingy to get a gradient (or whatever it changed to in ie5.5 - that funny progid dmx thingy), because that isn't a standard. I'd approach the problem of solving it for every other browser, then trying to figure out how to get IE/Win to conform.

Anyway, your site loads fine on my mac using moz and safari (although moz 1.6 and 1.7 can't see the fading in, but moz 1.5 can...). And, even though I helped a bit in your code for that site, madmacgames is right - splash pages are soooo 1995 There's no reason for anyone to want to sit and wait looking at some fading in when, presumably, they're just there to see the content of the actual page.

This thread seems like it should've been in the lounge - it started off with a nice question and now it's severely deteriorated. Ah well. Anyway, dunsel, just because people don't like the design of your sites doesn't make the them arse(ass)holes.

Out of interest - has anyone ever signed up JPages to make a site for them?

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by eevyl:
Mac users are not the ones to have a problem, but you. And you are just trolling so obviously that I really don't know what I am doing replying to such nonsense.

Did you read this entire thread? If you did, and you can still say what you just said to me, then lose the D in your sig and replace it with "schm".

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by Black Book:
dunsel,
I don't think it's the fact that we're all arse-holes (I presume that's the sphincter muscle you had in mind), but the fact that that JPages site is bloody awful...



That post didn't seem to go with what was being discussed - since when are png images not a standard? Because IE/Win doesn't support their alpha channels without a filter being applied? (hence Milleniums post about "the ever present IE/Win problem"). Or are you talking about using filter: opacity and the from to thingy to get a gradient (or whatever it changed to in ie5.5 - that funny progid dmx thingy), because that isn't a standard. I'd approach the problem of solving it for every other browser, then trying to figure out how to get IE/Win to conform.

Anyway, your site loads fine on my mac using moz and safari (although moz 1.6 and 1.7 can't see the fading in, but moz 1.5 can...). And, even though I helped a bit in your code for that site, madmacgames is right - splash pages are soooo 1995 There's no reason for anyone to want to sit and wait looking at some fading in when, presumably, they're just there to see the content of the actual page.

This thread seems like it should've been in the lounge - it started off with a nice question and now it's severely deteriorated. Ah well. Anyway, dunsel, just because people don't like the design of your sites doesn't make the them arse(ass)holes.

Out of interest - has anyone ever signed up JPages to make a site for them?

You're missing the entire point. I was just joining in a convo like anyone else, and I was not the LEAST bit rude. I've actually been accused of TROLLING! That's a 1st. I wasn't asking for critiques, nor do I particularly care. I examined the sites of most of those making critiques (those who have them). They were excruciatingly boring. But I didn't volunteer that information. And yes, to answer your question, I have been contracted to build sites. 4 in 6 months. I've obviously just begun doing that.

In any case, I only came here in the 1st place to try and get that syntax (which you gave me) and beyond that, maybe get a few good natured mac users to run the code for me, since I can't. What I've learned is, the good natured mac users must, by and large, frequent some other forum. There's clearly no good reason for any civilized, intelligent, person to remain. A bunch of wonderful ambassadors some of you have been for your little niché.

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by Simon Mundy:
Perhaps - but I find it a little weird that you're posting stuff like that in the MAC News Network forums?

Anyhoo... I'm sure your advice was received by headbirth in the best intentions. Peace.

Finally, a civil response from someone with no ground glass in it. How refreshing! I never had any intention of posting any such thing here. That would be rude. I was, however, responding to decidedly rude behavior aimed at me.

[skalie]

And there was me thinking that "advice was received by headbirth" was a euphemism along the lines of "belligerent sphincter muscles".

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by Black Book:

That post didn't seem to go with what was being discussed - since when are png images not a standard? Because IE/Win doesn't support their alpha channels without a filter being applied? (hence Milleniums post about "the ever present IE/Win problem"). Or are you talking about using filter: opacity and the from to thingy to get a gradient (or whatever it changed to in ie5.5 - that funny progid dmx thingy), because that isn't a standard. I'd approach the problem of solving it for every other browser, then trying to figure out how to get IE/Win to conform.

By the way, that was my intention in my 1st post in this thread, to try to help him get the effect in IE. He could've mimicked the png with the gradient filter in IE, and with a browser sniff, called a function which changed the background-image url to a single pixel clear gif, just for IE, or use <img> with divs and hide it. A fair bit of extra work, but that's the lot of the front end developer, if you care about crossbrowser compatibility. So I was, I think quite naturally, taken aback at what I think was a somewhat hostile response from others.

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by skalie:
And there was me thinking that "advice was received by headbirth" was a euphemism along the lines of "belligerent sphincter muscles".

I don't think so. And by the way, the post that I responded to with the "belligerent sphincter muscles" remark was deleted, presumably by the author.

[skalie]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
By the way, that was my intention in my 1st post in this thread, to try to help him get the effect in IE. He could've mimicked the png with the gradient filter in IE, and with a browser sniff, called a function which changed the background-image url to a single pixel clear gif, just for IE, or use <img> with divs and hide it. A fair bit of extra work, but that's the lot of the front end developer, if you care about crossbrowser compatibility. So I was, I think quite naturally, taken aback at what I think was a somewhat hostile response from others.

Or just use a .gif? Why the palava over using a .png? Gifs support transperancy, or am I missing something here?

[DUNSEL]

Yep, that would work fine. But I sensed a certain eagerness to embrace methods which fulfilled a dual function. 1 being to achieve the desired effect, and the other to provide an opportunity to bash MSIE.

[Chris O'Brien]

Originally posted by skalie:
Or just use a .gif? Why the palava over using a .png? Gifs support transperancy, or am I missing something here?

A gif only supports one colour (channel? i dont know) as being transparent - so it wouldn't do for a gradient transparency at all... try it yourself and you'll see what I mean.

Dunsel - I would point out that MSIE bashing is quite justified, since it is pretty pants. This is not just because I use a mac, and so microsoft is the devil - it is because internet explorer has always been a not very standards compliant browser, and so getting things to work cross-browser involves a lot of work to get IE/Win to comply (I even realised this 4 years ago when I exclusively used windows PC's, and therefore IE/Win). It's the bain of web developers - although, when you develop exclusively for IE/Win (like a lot of people do, unfortunately) then it comes across the other way. It seems to me that you are finding every opportunity to extoll the virtues of IE/Win. Seems almost zealoty to me

Anyhoo - your idea mentioned here:

He could've mimicked the png with the gradient filter in IE, and with a browser sniff, called a function which changed the background-image url to a single pixel clear gif, just for IE, or use <img> with divs and hide it

would (IMO) be better handled by using the alphaImageLoader filter available in IE5.5+.

Anyway - far from wanting to 'have a go' at you, I'm merely saying where i think you are wrong. Don't get disallusioned about mac users being bad people who shout at everyone who don't think what they think - look into it: IE/Win is actually pretty shocking.

p.s. I'll still happily test your code for you in safari, since it isn't available to you.

[Chris O'Brien]

Oh - is this the first ever +1 thread in the web developer forum?

Anyway - 'mon the hoops! (yes, I'm hammered after just watching celtic beat rangers! woohooo!!!!!!!!!!)

[redJag]

I don't know that DUNSEL responded in the best way, but this thread was definitely ruined by Synotic being a dick. DUNSEL made a perfectly correct response to a posed question, not mentioning his site at all, and Synotic dragged it in like that's what he was talking about. If these boards allow it and a mod will do it, I propose the thread get split before the Synotic post with the original staying here and the other being deleted or moved to the lounge.

[DUNSEL]

I wasn't referring to you specifically. That's why I took care to say "some of you". You were most cordial and helpful when I 1st appeared here. But I was attacked by others here in an unprovoked and bewildering fashion.

Yes, I'm aware of the spotty support of IE and some other browsers. But I don't understand why netscrape gets a pass. For my money it's WORSE than IE. 1st off, it runs JS SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW. You recall when you looked at my code i had multiple functions calling the next rather than an array? Well the reason for that was NS. It runs JS SO slowly, that even with the setTimeout interval at 0, the functions were still far too slow. Hence, the multi-function approach. Arrays run slower in just about every browser. Not sure why, but they do. So I had to return to that approach for the NS functions.

Beyond that, NS 7.1 has that dynamic opacity bug. Images and text "blink", and therefore render the effect useless. NS 6.2 didn't have that problem. You know the blendTrans() proprietary function in IE? Well I had come up with a way to do that in other browsers. NS 7.1 has nixed the idea. NS also doesn't accept % values for css positioning, at least not of tables, which is all I tried. I had to hard code a position when I didn't want to, just because of NS.

[Chris O'Brien]

Out of interest, what did synotic say that was deleted? I feel I may have looked at this thread in the wrong way (so: sorry dunsel, if that's the case)

[DUNSEL]

"Your site sure is fugly" and some other choice unsolicited remarks. Now, forgetting what your opinion of it is (there are no objective truths here), my site was never intended to be the topic of this thread.

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by redJag:
I don't know that DUNSEL responded in the best way, but this thread was definitely ruined by Synotic being a dick. DUNSEL made a perfectly correct response to a posed question, not mentioning his site at all, and Synotic dragged it in like that's what he was talking about. If these boards allow it and a mod will do it, I propose the thread get split before the Synotic post with the original staying here and the other being deleted or moved to the lounge.

A RATIONAL VOICE IS HEARD!!!! Bless you. I can certainly entertain the notion that my reaction may not have been the most prudent. But I take great care not to be the 1st to abandon civility.

[Chris O'Brien]

true, true.

This is something I seen at Simon Willison's blog, and it looks like it would make all our lives a little bit easier when it comes to CSS support...

[Synotic]

Originally posted by DUNSEL:
A RATIONAL VOICE IS HEARD!!!! Bless you. I can certainly entertain the notion that my reaction may not have been the most prudent. But I take great care not to be the 1st to abandon civility.

First of all I apologize for dragging you into this and spawning the 40 some odd posts that followed. My only point was to draw attention to the "Safari cannot view this page" text. The reason I did this was because I believe that most Mac users don't believe in browser sniffing because it breaks often and is generally used to block out Mac users... you can see this trend in banks and other sites. Generally it's helpful to at least leave the content available, even if it's harder to read... you never know when a newer version of Safari or any other browser might fix whatever bug you're experiencing. In hindsight I should of just stated my views instead of using your site as an example. I never made any direct comments towards the page.. so I don't know anything about deleted comments? I certainly didn't mean to attack you or anything, I also think that the claims of your trolling were unwarranted because all you did was answer the question, which I should of done as well. So anyways, my point is just that I acted lame and that I should keep more focused on the topic next time

[DUNSEL]

Someone actually wrote a patch to make IE standards compliant? That's quite ambitious. Believe me, I do understand the frustration, as I've felt it too since I began dabbling in front end developing. My training was more back end, DBs and apps, but I discovered this was more fun to do. But from my perspective, what I was trying to do, was accomplish many of the things that people normally use flash to do, with DHTML. Flash is a pain in the rump. It has it's own proprietary language, you need it's player, and it loads slower than non-flash sites.

Now DHTML is not a w3 standard, and that automatically means compliance and syntax problems, regardless of browser. Can't really fault anyone for non-compliance with something that isn't even a standard yet. But I don't see any reason not to use it until the consortium gets around to standardizing it.

But for my purposes, all those proprietary functions in IE that cause others so much frustration, I see as cutting edge technology that allows me greater freedom to experiment. But I've recently become interested in developing methods of doing some of the same things outside of IE. I found that some of them ARE possible, until I tripped over NS 7.1. I feel confident the trans-fade of images technique I worked out will display fine in Safari and Mozilla (it does in NS 6.2 as well).

I already have a job in business software, this is a hobby and a side-job, for me.

[DUNSEL]

Originally posted by Synotic:
First of all I apologize for dragging you into this and spawning the 40 some odd posts that followed. My only point was to draw attention to the "Safari cannot view this page" text. The reason I did this was because I believe that most Mac users don't believe in browser sniffing because it breaks often and is generally used to block out Mac users... you can see this trend in banks and other sites. Generally it's helpful to at least leave the content available, even if it's harder to read... you never know when a newer version of Safari or any other browser might fix whatever bug you're experiencing. In hindsight I should of just stated my views instead of using your site as an example. I never made any direct comments towards the page.. so I don't know anything about deleted comments? I certainly didn't mean to attack you or anything, I also think that the claims of your trolling were unwarranted because all you did was answer the question, which I should of done as well. So anyways, my point is just that I acted lame and that I should keep more focused on the topic next time

Thank you. Believe it or not, it wasn't Safari which caused my problem, but netscrape. I had some free time, and was working on making that page cross-browser capable, but netscape is what I got stuck on. Then things got busy at work, and I just abandoned it, and never finished it. Netscape doesn't allow any JS manipulation of divs if the parent element, in this case a table, has a class designation and any css positioning used. When I removed them, the functions fired. But then I couldn't place and format the content. And the faded images also blink in NS 7.1.

Safari (to my knowledge) has no such "quirks". If it was all a misunderstanding I will treat it as such and forget about it. As I said above, front end developing is a side job and hobby for me.