Building A Great DHTML Chaser

September 21, 2000 5:06 PM

Building A Great DHTML Chaser -- by Aaron Boodman. I've built one or two of these - what Aaron calls "Chasers" - you know, the little floating layer that follows you on a web page as you scroll. I was never too thrilled with the outcome for various reasons, but Aaron really put in extra efforts to resolve DHTML animation issues and came up with a fairly slick bit of code. A sample can be seen here. Whether you think they're annoying or useful, the based-on-refresh-rate animation info is still fairly useful.
posted by kokogiak (10 comments total)

Excuse me if I sound like a DHTM-illiterate, but how does that compare to MetaFilter's own Floating Menu, or is that one created by some haughey.com-exclusive secret-formula?
Or has everyone forgotten about the Floating Menu, and now that I've reminded him, Matt's going to update it and throw my sorry-ass unupdated-for-a-month weblog off the list? (Wait! Wait! I'm just redesigning!!! I'll start using Blogger!!! Aaaarrrggghhh!)
posted by wendell at 7:42 PM on September 21, 2000

Um... didn't know Metafilter _had_ a floating menu. Where does one go to see it?
posted by kokogiak at 9:39 PM on September 21, 2000

The floaty menu is an option that can be found under "customize" in the top menu.
posted by dangerman at 9:45 PM on September 21, 2000

Aha. Well, it's bizarre that I'd choose this subject as my first Link Post. No offense was intended to the author(s) of MetaFilter's floaty menu.
posted by kokogiak at 10:09 PM on September 21, 2000

Be warned, the MeFi floater doesn't seem to like browsers past version 4, especially on the Mac.
posted by aaron at 10:09 PM on September 21, 2000

Works fine for IE5 and 5.5 on PC... And I *think* (don't flame if I'm wrong plz) it's canned code. i.e. If you view source the MeFi floaty menu, you'll see there's some comments there and that it's been written by someone specifically for ColdFusion-powered pages.

I'm not trying to detract from any of Matt's skill. It's not whether you know how to do it, but how you use it. :) And I'm sure Matt knows how anyway.... just too lazy like me to write the script out... why reinvent the wheel?
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 10:22 PM on September 21, 2000

I was too lazy, yeah. Does this WebTechniques floaty thing work in Mozilla/NN 6?
posted by mathowie at 10:49 PM on September 21, 2000

No, doesn't work in Mozilla.
posted by alana at 11:31 PM on September 21, 2000

I't s WebReference, not WebTechniques. :)
posted by katelevy at 6:55 AM on September 22, 2000

can't find the meFi floating menu... was it removed from the preferences screen?
posted by aboodman at 7:28 AM on December 12, 2000