Comments on: No More IE6 Background Flicker

By: Imenik

Imenik — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:46:01 +0000

Works out fine for me too , thanks for sharing this tutorial with us.

By: Friseur Muc

Friseur Muc — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:02:23 +0000

It seems, the problem is in IE7 too?

By: H. Dufort

H. Dufort — Thu, 24 May 2007 02:19:23 +0000

This solution is great but it breaks mouse event support in Opera 9. Events are stacked but never executed. Then, when you close the page or reload it, they ALL fire up at once! So it’s a good idea to try to apply this fix only on MSIE.

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:15:21 +0000

your a star!

I love it….no thinking required ;-)

By: Fabian Robok

Fabian Robok — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:15:35 +0000

There’s one big misconception about browser sniffing: Looking at the user agent string might be bad, but not simply because of itself. It’s bad because it will never tell you for sure if the browser providing this user agent string will or will not support a certain feature. On the other hand, checking for a specific browser feature (or it’s absence) will never tell you for sure which browser is making a request.

So, always check for the exact browser property you intend to use. Do not check for some property, that is completely unrelated to the problem (like document.body.style.maxHeight in this case) just to try and identify a certain browser version. This is at least as bad as relying on user agent strings.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:19:26 +0000

Here’s my mini-IE6 detector. IE7 doesn’t exhibit the flicker problem so why do anything? This will probably fire on IE5, IE5.5, etc. but who should really be using those anyway? ;)

//-- for IE6 but not IE7, Moz, Safari, Opera... if (typeof document.body.style.maxHeight == "undefined") { try { document.execCommand('BackgroundImageCache', false, true); } catch(e) { /* unless it's not IE6... */ } } // if

By: My Blog

My Blog — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:07:30 +0000

No More IE6 Background Flicker

By: Dan POPA

Dan POPA — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:26:10 +0000

The BackgroundImageCache command identifier was introduced by IE6 SP1.It will actually generate a JavaScript error in IE prior to that vesion.
So, someone might want to really sniff for IE6 gte IE6 SP1.
Check my site for details or go directly to the
Microsoft KB article.

The easiest thing to do is to stuff the command into any browser, without mercy, hidding the garbage inside a try{}catch(){}

By: Arno

Arno — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:34:51 +0000

Seems to be fixed with todays security patch for some reason.

I had the problem and did the fix but found out later that it was fixed without this hack too.
Can anyone confirm this? Would this be a positive message for IE6 for once ;-)

By: Jason Kichline

Jason Kichline — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:32:57 +0000

Why not use conditional comments already supported by all versions of IE?

document.execCommand(â€BackgroundImageCacheâ€, false,true);

By: Klaus Hartl - StilbÃ¼ro : Flicker Fixed

Klaus Hartl - StilbÃ¼ro : Flicker Fixed — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 07:18:31 +0000

[...] Via Ajaxian. [...]

By: Klaus Hartl

Klaus Hartl — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 06:58:11 +0000

All that sniffing… why not simply use conditional compilation:

/*@cc_on document.execCommand(â€BackgroundImageCacheâ€, false ,true); @*/

That is by far the safest way to do it.

By: Hedger Wang

Hedger Wang — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:15:02 +0000

For Javascript fix, we can simply add this :

//Fix for IE6-
if(document.uniqueID && !window.XMLHttpRequest ){
document.execCommand(“BackgroundImageCache”,false,true)
}

By: Patrick Corcoran

Patrick Corcoran — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:56:59 +0000

You absolutely do not want to do this with an expression.

It’s a cute way to write it, sure. But keep in mind that expressions are evaluated over and over again, many times per second, ad infinitum. This is the equivalent of a infinite setTimeout loop with an interval of 100ms. Not exactly what you’re aiming for…

Just use JavaScript.

if (dojo.render.html.ie60) { … }
// …or whatever library you prefer

By: Kevin Davison

Kevin Davison — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:33:34 +0000

This is great, for SP1 users but I wish it worked with the “:hover” pseudo-class for background changes.

By: Dee Zsombor

Dee Zsombor — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:11:58 +0000

An old alternative would be a simple webserver configuration, to send out caching instructions for static assets like images and javascript files. Beside solving the flicker issue, this would also improve performance from page to page basis. See more at http://deezsombor.blogspot.com/2006/05/flickering-css-background-images-ie6.html

By: Andy Kant

Andy Kant — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:55:29 +0000

I prefer the .htaccess/modexpires server-side method. That method doesn’t require any code on the client.

By: Sam Foster

Sam Foster — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:43:51 +0000

I'd agree that an expression is probably not the best way to deliver this. Probably a script block inside conditional comments. But what I'd really need to know is does this fix have any side-effects? Reading the MSDN support article that is apparently the only(??) reference for this command identifier, it seems to be new functionality added post SP1 to address a specific bug. Does that mean its safe to apply elsewhere? everywhere? Presumably there's a reason IE6 doesnt do this by default...

By: Ben Galbraith

Ben Galbraith — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:27:48 +0000

Cristi: We fixed the post, thanks!

By: Scott Schiller

Scott Schiller — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:09:26 +0000

It appears a “less-than” terminated my comment. Should be “IE less than 7″. Then I ranted about how this might fix an issue on a large project I’m involved with, where we ditched using drop shadows on photo thumbnails due to an IE cache-related performance issue, which this may fix. (Shouldn’t be “re-requesting” either, but maybe client-side caching-related – the images are already being sent with future “Expires” headers, so requests should not be sent – this seems like another, separate caching-related issue which this tweak fixes.)

Bottom line, it sounds like a potentially great fix! Kudos to Dan Popa, “Mr. Pixel.”