Unit Verse

Comments (4)

Artem Nezvigin on July 7, 2008

There’s a bug with the UniTip script (a common one for scripts that do absolute positioning).

The tooltip does not take into account the scrolling position of the browser. Scroll down a little and try to use the tooltip, it will be offset.

The solution is determining the how far the scrollbar has been scrolled and applying that to the absolutey x/y position of the tooltip.

Off the top of my head it’s document.scrollTop for IE and window.pageYOffset for everything else.

Can you increase the height of the comment textarea? It’s really very uncomfortable to leave comments here

Artem Nezvigin on July 7, 2008

Oh also the AlphaImageLoader should be used very sparingly in designs. You should probably put a notice on the lab page for this. Transparent PNGs may cause performance issues if too many are loaded onto the page. They’ll also look real ugly until all of them are initialized. Some have made the mistake of using transparent icons for large navigation menus and weren’t aware of the performance consequences.

I like to avoid using rounded boxes for IE users (just give them a square box and everyone else a rounded box). Most of those users won’t tell the difference and the presentation stays smooth without nasty javascript. There are rare cases when transparent images are absolutely necessary.

One thing I like to do is use transparent GIFs for rounded boxes.

The boxes stay square, but the transparent parts have a checkered pattern of black and transparent 1px by 1px squares. You can change the black to a lighter gray if that suits your layout. The effect is virtually the same. It’s kind of like displaying a slightly lower quality image that IE6 users probably won’t notice.

J on July 8, 2008

“Waaaaah! Waaaaaah! You hear that? That?s IE6 whining about how you should be using an obtuse ?filter? attribute, causing all those nice, pretty pngs on your page to go whacky. Fortunately for you, we got just the thing to shut it up.”

This gave me the impression that you somehow found a way of not using filter to achieve the effect in IE6.

“Almost half the size of any comparable png fix script. ”

1k in file size difference won’t change the performance by the slightest. however, document.getElementsByTagName(‘*’) would. imagine a complex page…

“Works on img objects and background-image attributes.
Runs automatically. You don?t have to define classes or call any functions. ”

you may want to document how the users will have to change their code, if they already have a body onLoad() function. Otherwise there will be an onLoad conflict.

“The only png fix to allow for auto width and auto height elements. ”

negative.

“Super simple to deploy”

May i suggest you include the html file in the .zip file for even simpler deployment?

Nathan on July 8, 2008

@Artem:
Thanks for the input. We have fixed the positioning bug for firefox. Actually, there are four different ways to get that for four different browser scenarios… IE6 has two depending on the DOCTYPE!

Also, here at Unit, we agree that pngs should be used sparingly, but there are times when they work well, and the PNG fix is built specifically for those times.

@J:
Thank you, as well, for your thoughts. While I hear ya on the getElementsByTagName, I would assume most developers would stay away from pngs if they are targeting users with low bandwidth.

Also, the script is written to work with any preexisting onLoad functionality, so no edits to the code are necessary.

@All:
We are continually improving and finding new ways of achieving the best results for our clients, and as we do, we believe in sharing that knowledge, so check back at the Unit Labs as we continue to try to offer the best solutions. Also, if you want to report bugs or concerns, please direct them to labs@unitinteractive.com.

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