Randomize

I’ve been using transparent PNGs for a number of years on IE6 using the DXTransform hack, encapsulated neatly away as a behaviour on a global CSS file.

But today, I figured out that if you use the DirectX alpha filter on a PNG that is loaded as the result of an XmlHttpRequest, IE6 hangs. Badly.

So, because my new AJAH application regularly passes back img tags to PNGs, I have to turn off global transparent goodness and then turn the behavior back on only for image references I give a specific CSS class (which I called “alpha”).

The problem only exhibits if the PNG is not in the browser cache already, so I suppose one solution is to pre-load all possible PNG files initially so any AJAX returns can reference them, but that’s not the sort of workaround that gives me great confidence about maintainability.

IE7 doesn’t have this issue. Whoop-tee-doo. Even after corporate America finally migrates to another browser in 3-4 years, I’m sure we’ll find all sorts of basic flaws in IE7 (such as lack of min/max width/height support),

We’ll just discover more basic flaws in IE7 that makes web application development a pain and we’ll be saddled with those issues for another 6 years, plus the 3+ years it is going to take for corporate America to migrate to IE7.