KarenArt — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:45:22 +0000

Yep... sorry... I'm afraid I'd have to see it working to understand the problem.

If you get it sorted out, I'd love to know.

abudabit — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:43:01 +0000

One was a generic html text element, another was an image. Both ways didn't work.

It was absolute positioned.

Maybe I'll look around the script sites and see if someone has a work around.

KarenArt — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:38:37 +0000

That really does sound cool... and what an interesting way to do that!

I'm not conviced you have to give up on it yet (unless you want to).

What type of html object did your javascript create? Was it an image?
Did your javascript add style="position:absolute; or style="position:relative; to your html element? If not then z-index wouldn't work on it.

abudabit — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:29:59 +0000

I guess it doesn't matter because it doesn't seem possible. For some reason the elements created dynamically by javascript couldn't be z-indexed properly. Anyways I deleted the script and just replaced it with a generic moving watermark script.

But here is how I did it up to the point where it failed:

1. When the page loads, at the bottom right corner of the entire document there is an invisible image. That image on loading loads my watermark script.

2. The watermark function detects the absolute position of the image, thus knowing the total size of the document. It multiplied the x by the y and divided that by 3000 and that was the number of background images to be loaded.

3. The watermark function then enters into a loop (ending after x*y/3000 cycles) and creates an html element each time, giving it a random position on the document. This is also where I set the zindex to no avail. I know I was setting the zindex because I read it back in an alert.

And that is pretty much how it worked. It would have been a very good and dynamic substitute for backgrounds if I could only have gotten the zindex to work. Because you can tweak each individual background element with javascript you would have had a really wide array of options. Like I could have had each randomly select one of xnumber of images, or had those images or texts be random sizes. What I was going to do was have each image/text one of 5 random sizes/zlayers/shades, so that a closer appearing one would have had a higher zindex, been a larger size, and been a bit dark. The farther appearing ones would be the opposite. It would have created a very cool multilayered effect.

KarenArt — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:53:08 +0000

Sounds very cool! I'm still just a bit confused on how you're doing it.

Are you saying you have strait text that you want to convert to a background image or do you have images that you want to place in "random" spots on the background of your different pages?

Bear with me... it takes me awhile to catch on.

abudabit — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:24:52 +0000

Basicly I wanted to have in the background randomly splattered all over the page both the websites name or logo and the specific pages name or logo. I was going to make them look faint like a real watermark and have them at different sizes / z-indexes so it looked 3d.

Needless to say, ordinary html / css doesn't have this function but with java script I was able to do everything except the z layering. I even had the javascript detect the x y size of the page (not just the window) and create a number of watermarks based the size so that it wasn't too crowded/sparse. Would have been cool.

If I use plain css all I can do is have an even patterned grid of the watermarks, and if I wanted to do the page name thing I will have to have a different background image for each page.

KarenArt — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:15:12 +0000

One more question...
You said

Quote: create background images dynamically

Are you loading a different background on each page? Does the image change if someone clicks a link or picture?
I think I could help you better if I know what exactly you want to do.

KarenArt — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 19:58:08 +0000

I've got to ask...
Is there a reason you need to create the images with javascript?
Are the images just words or is there a picture involved?

I can see what I can find for you.

abudabit — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 19:55:07 +0000

Ahh, it's not going to work. I wonder if there is a way to create background images dynamically with javascript...

KarenArt — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 19:35:09 +0000

Ahh well... at least you know what the problem is then.
Good luck with it!
Let us know what you find.