[WEB4LIB] CSS or DHTML?

[Peter C. Gorman]

At 11:56 AM -0500 4/22/99, Bill Drew wrote:
>Seems to me that JavaScript combined with CSS should be able
>to do this.  I know how to do this using mouse rollovers for images combined
>with client side mapping.  That is too slow because of the time it takes to
>down load images.  Are there any examples out there?   This would be used in
>conjunction with a browser detector script to ensure appropriate access for
>all users.

You can do it with a combination of CSS to position and view/hide <div>
elements (aka layers) and JavaScript to trigger said viewing/hiding. Here
are some articles explaining the technique. Both sources accommodate both
Netscape and IE   (4.x), but you'll have to do your own
backward-compatibility.

"Dynamic Tooltips"
http://www.webreference.com/js/column16/


Dynamic HTML Articles
http://www.irt.org/articles/dhtml.htm
(especially nos. 87-89)

We may be using this technique to show annotations for menu entries,
assuming we can accomodate non-CSS/JavaScript users and maintain validated
HTML and CSS. It could be hard to account for users with older versions of
JavaScript that don't support the fancy layering tricks.

PG
_______________________________
Peter C. Gorman
Automation Librarian
University of Wisconsin-Madison
General Library System
Library Technology Group
pcgorman at facstaff.wisc.edu
(608) 265-5291