Re: A really basic web animation question -- Example

[Arlen P Walker <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

>Is this another know your audience thing?

Sure is. Funny how often that pops up, ain't it?

>Arlen, what do you mean? Are you using a version of Netscape earlier than 4?

No. Using 4.08.

>Opera?

Nope.

>Do you have something disabled?

Not on my *computer,* at any rate. ;{>}

Here's a few more interesting data points for you:

Fired up IE 4.01. Word floats up fine, but it starts its journey from a
position roughly on top of "Isn't that". This was expected, and the reason is
simple. Windows renders fonts at different sizes than the rest of the world, so
pixel placement of words is *never* reliable across platforms. I've not tried
this, but I'm told that some Windows machines even have a control panel with
the video driver which lets you set the number of points/inch (note: I don't
mean pixel resolution of the monitor, I mean number of typographical points per
monitor inch) so this wouldn't necessarily work even on two of the same model
Windows machines, if each used different values.

Now, before I fired up IE, I fired up my Netscape just to verify that the last
three times I did it, nothing happened. Sure enough, nothing happened. As soon
as IE fired up and loaded the page, however, the Netscape text *also* started
to float. Interesting. I thought you couldn't manipulate text in Netscape, but
after it floated I revisited the code, and saw that he wasn't moving the text,
he was moving the layer it was on. This could work, but I have no explanation
why it didn't the first three times, except to suppose that since the
javascript was in a separate file, his server didn't get the file to me in time
for it to matter. (I left the thing sitting in front of me for a minute,
though, and nothing happened.) As a further test, I emptied my cache and tried
it again. No action. Waited a full minute, nothing. Then I hit "reload" and
voila, it floated.

As one of the engineers around here has been heard to moan, I *hate*
intermittents.

>I am very fortunate in that my audience is required to use the Microsoft
>operating systems.

This is obviously a definition of the word "fortunate" with which I am
unfamiliar. ;{>}

> Thus, most of my stuff only really needs to work in IE.

Good, then you have a well-defined subset of problems to deal with. Just
remember that what you learn during all this has this limited application, and
you'll do well.

>No need to flame me.

I wasn't aware anyone had.

I use Navigator simply because it's more reliable. Sitting behind a busy
firewall, fetching pages is often a hit-or-miss proposition (pun unavoidable)
and I've found Netscape to be a little more forgiving in that regard, even
while fetching pages from ms.com.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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