Our picture searching and sorting software makes great use of Java Script and Dynamic HTML. Unfortunately the two popular browsers Netscape and Internet Explorer have slight differences when it comes to dealing with the features of these two languages. As a consequence there are a couple of occasions when features available in one browser are not available in the other.

The most awkward of these is in the closing of the lightbox windows. When sorting and selecting pictures the software attempts to refresh all your open windows so that they are up to date. An example being adding a picture to a light box. If the light box is open then you will see the picture appear in the box. A problem occurs if you close the box using the X button in the top right hand corner. Internet Explorer will flag the window as closed   and no attempt will be made to refresh it when it is changed in any way. Unfortuantely Netscape does not flag the window as closed and the software will treat it as still open. As a consequence when any changes are made to the light box the software will refresh it which means it will re-appear. To avoid this problem we have added a close window button to each light box window for use when closing the window.

A second problem occurs in the use of ALT tags for pictures in web pages. This is the message that appears when you leave the mouse over a picture of a short period . Use has been made of the feature to add a caption to a picture. It has also been used to remind you which light box a picture has been added to once it has been selected. This can be useful if you are doing a long search with several light boxes. Unfortunately it is not possible at present to change the ALT value of an image in Netscape so Netscape users will not see any change to the "Add Picture" button's ALT value i.e. the messaget they get if they rest  their mouse over the "Picture Added" button that will replace the "Add Picture" button when a picture is selected.