[WEB4LIB] IE6's whacky submit buttons

[Bob Duncan]

At 01:56 PM 08/03/2004 -0700, Thomas Dowling wrote:
>I've been vaguely bothered by this for quite a while, but it has become
>more of an issue in a design I'm working on.
>
>In IE6 (or at least, IE6 under XP), form submit buttons start to look
>very strange if the input's value attribute exceeds some mysterious
>length.  That is, for something like '<input type="submit"
>value="Search">' you get the nicely rounded and shaded 3D button from
>the standard XP widgets.  But beyond some length, I get a crudely
>magnified button, as though someone loaded the nice native button into a
>cheap image editor and resized it, complete with serious jaggies.


Funny you should mention....

I just started noticing this myself.  I have no solution, but here are some 
things I've observed:

-  The crude button only appears that way if you choose an XP theme in the 
Display control panel;  if you use the Windows Classic theme in XP the 
buttons are the familiar grey with no distortion.  (As they are if you 
disable "Enable visual styles..." in Internet Options.)

-  I have a button which does it on one page, but on a different page, that 
same button is fine and a different (longer) button is all squirrely.  Odd 
seeing as how nothing has changed about the button except its company.

-  I can sometimes (but not always) make a crude button change appearance 
by playing with the encoding setting in the browser.  For example, the page 
at 
<http://www.library.lafayette.edu/search/X?searchtype=X&searcharg=duncan&SORT=D> 
shows the crude button ("Save Marked Records") when it loads.  But if I 
alter the browser's encoding setting from "Western European (Windows)" to 
"Unicode (UTF-8)", the button cleans up.  If I go back to Western European, 
the button goes back to crude.  However, on a different page where the auto 
select encoding shows as Unicode, there is still a squirrely button.  And 
changing the encoding setting on Thomas' example page does nothing.

Beats me.

Bob Duncan


~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Robert E. Duncan
Systems Librarian
David Bishop Skillman Library
Lafayette College
Easton, PA  18042
duncanr at lafayette.edu
http://www.library.lafayette.edu/