How can I get rid of the Hourglass in Netscrap 4.08?

[JoeSplendid]

I'm trying to make a site work for all the major DHTML browsers, including netscrap 4.08. The following code is the simplist which exempifies my current problem....

<A href="javascript:var i;">
<IMG src="images/Lozenge-hilite.gif" border="0">
</A>

In netscrap 4.08, the 'finger' cursor appears when you rollover the image, but when you click the image, the cursor becomes an hour glass. After the javascript completes, the status bar says 'document:done' and the stop icon becomes disabled as you'd expect, but the hour glass remains. It is only possible to get the 'finger' back again by rolling off the 'button', then rolling back over it again. This is really messy.

The Question! Is it possible to get N4.08 to reset the hour glass back to the 'finger' pointer after the javascript has run?

Any help on this one would be very much appreciated!!!!

JoeSplendid

[Dr. Web]

uhm... Joe? Netscape 4.08? Cmon now.... I mean, I do advocate support browsers in current release.... N6, N4.79, IE 5, 5.5, 6..... but Netscape 4.08?! I think that may be digging too far into the past to support realistically.

I see the same reaction in n4.79. I don't think its that big of a deal, really. Why does it bother you so much? Most people don't leave the mouse on a image for a really long time anyway.

Is this for a mouseover or something?

[JoeSplendid]

Dear Dr Web

Thanks for your reply. I think that at the present time there is still a significant number of NS4 users out there who should be supported. NS4 and IE4 seems like a rational baseline to aim for at present. I'm ashamed to say that my very own brother, whose web site this shall be, is currently running NS4.02. I use IE6 on XP myself.

My Brother is a designer and his website showcases his portfolio and as such it has to be posh, slick and designerish. This hourglass problem just looks like a bug. If there really is'nt a way past this, it would be more aesthetic to ditch the href approach and perhaps use divs to capture the mouse events. I'd lose the pointy finger, but at least it would'nt behave in a wierd way. Everything works (and looks) fine in IE and Mozilla 1.0.

FYI, I read this great sentence the other day about GUI design that goes something like this. 'A good interface is one which behaves exactly the way the user expects it to'.

I'm still hoping for a fix. Is a fix possible?

JoeSplendid

[Dr. Web]

"My Brother is a designer and his website showcases his portfolio and as such it has to be posh, slick and designerish."

and he's trying to design for IE 4.0 and N4.02? I can not agree that there is a statistically sufficeint user base for N4.02. There is simply no evidence to support this.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm

as I said earlier, perhaps enough users using netscape 4.7/ 4.79/ 6. But definately NOT the antiquated N4.02.


If your brother is a designer, and wants his site to be all those things mentioned, he'd want to at least take advantage of current browsers. Or at least browsers that are still being made, and still have usage statistics.

back to the hourglass. Style sheets can change the cursor in supported browsers (netscape isn't one of them). I've not seen a method to get rid of this, but I'd have to say... I don't think anyone has put the effort into it. It seems like a moot point.

Good luck.

[JoeSplendid]

Dr Web,

I've changed my mind! Actually, You've changed my mind.
I followed the links re: the current state of the browser wars, and was amazed at the swiftness of the decline of the NS4 community to circa 2.6%. I would have guessed 10%, but I'm clearly way out of touch. I'm going to forget the hour glass problem now I've seen the 'big picture'.

I'll still support NS4 as I've already done alot of work with dynamically putting text into layers etc., which would be a pity to waste.

The most worrying thing I found via your links was that 11% of surfers disable Javascript. I had no idea. As the site stands, with no javascript, they won't be able to access any content. Whoops, I'll have to do some thinking about that.

Thanks very much for your help and wisdom. You've certainly set me straight.

JoeSplendid

[scoutt]

what exactly is that Javascript doing? I see it doing nothing. maybe it is a bug in NS4.08 and that is it suspecting the javascript to finish but never does.

as far as NS4.02-4.08 is concerened I have to agree with the good Doc. I don't even get users using 4.08 or lower. I get some using 4.79 and above. if you code for 4.02+ then you are wasting your time. but from what you say you changed your mind and that is the best desicion you have made.

[JoeSplendid]

Hi Scoutt,

Thanks for your posting. The original code fragment

<A href="javascript:var i;">
<IMG src="images/Lozenge-hilite.gif" border="0">
</A>

demonstrates the problem in the simplist possible way. I've put some stuff on my pipex webspace which shows the problem in context. The URL is:

http://www.apck13.dsl.pipex.com/index.htm

The website is currently in bits on the Garage floor and
none of the code, or content, on pipex is in anyway finished - its very much work in progress. The functionality is basically there and you can see what I'm trying to do. Click around in MSIE 6.0 first to see roughly what its about, then try NS4. When you click through the pictures in NS4 that horrid Hourglass looks totally wrong!

A lot of the code is missing. The NS4 text box stuff is not in as yet, and I'm still working on the context sensitive dynamic content loading mechanism that is absolutely necessary on a 'one page' website such as this.

[scoutt]

ahh I see. mouseovers. wel it gives me a hour glass but as soon as I move teh cursor it goes away. like the function didn't work.