Anyone have a native version of IE6 to test on?

[PicnicTutorials]

Anyone have a native version of IE6 to test on? I'm making a photo gallery. I'm using sprites for the buttons (3 states: normal, hover, active). Testing locally it works perfect in IE6. But live, the buttons flicker very, very badly! Can some one that has a real copy of IE6 test this for me and let me know if the navigation buttons on the photo gallery flicker for you?

 

Here is the page - thanks!

[Susie]

Well, I'm using IETester for IE 6 and it works fine there. No flicker.

[PicnicTutorials]

Well, I'm using IETester for IE 6 and it works fine there. No flicker.

 

Thanks Susie! Thats weird, thats what I use too, but I get the bad flicker. I'm tired of the inconsistancy. I'm trying different testing methods. VM's and microsoft superpreview seem promising...

[PicnicTutorials]

Nope! From what I can tell, superpreview only is a picture (no interaction). And I couldn't figure out the virtual set up. Anyone have a real version of IE6 to test with?

[Wickham]

I tested with IE6 on WIN98 SE and there was no flicker from the left side links Home, About Us, etc.

 

but the buttons under the image viewer did pause while loading when moving a mouse over them but didn't flicker at any other time. Have you tried using two-part images with an offset for the hover state?

[PicnicTutorials]

I tested with IE6 on WIN98 SE and there was no flicker from the left side links Home, About Us, etc.

 

but the buttons under the image viewer did pause while loading when moving a mouse over them but didn't flicker at any other time. Have you tried using two-part images with an offset for the hover state?

 

Thanks John! You tested in a real/native ie6? So for you the photo gallery buttons only flickered on the first load (first hover/click), and then were fine every other time you hovered over and clicked them??? Sorry, just want to make sure, this site is my bread and butter.

 

Yeah, I'm sure the two image hover rutine would work, but I wanted to do sprites this time. Plus there's three images, that would make that a little more complicated...

Edited June 16, 2009 by Eric

[Wickham]

The gallery buttons flicked while loading every time I put the mouse over them. I don't think this will happen if you make two-part images and put a margin to offset them on hover.

 

My IE6 is "original".

 

Edit: I've done three-part images, not a big problem. I used Irfanview to put them all into one image. I've never used Sprites.

Edited June 16, 2009 by Wickham

[PicnicTutorials]

can you show me what you mean John? If you put them all into one image, then wouldn't that be sprites? Are you just using negative margins to move the image then? I would need... normal, hover, and active... Like it is now...

 

Edit - guessing, I would say, you mean something like this... Put the one background image in a span, and then say #controls a:hover span {margin:-52px 0 0} etc...

Edited June 16, 2009 by Eric

[Wickham]

I wasn't sure what you meant by sprites until I looked it up:-

CSS sprites group multiple images into one composite image and display them using CSS background positioning.

 

so I do use sprites like this one with three images:-

http://www.wickham43.net/images/menuhomecombined.gif

in this example:-

http://www.wickham43.net/visitedbutton.php item 2.