Howdy all. This has been a thorn in my side for years. I want faster rollovers in HTML. I have tried tiny image sizes and that doesnt seem to improve the speed. Anyone have any input on this topic? Any tricks?

Dear Chad,
You can't do rollovers in HTML - what scripting language do you currently implement them in - Javascript?

Regards,
Brent

Aaah. Sorry about that. I sometimes tend to think of things in only two terms. Either Flash or everything else(HTML). A bad habit.

I use the basic rollover feature offered in Dreamweaver. Here is the code for a sample button:

a href="#" onClick="MM_goToURL('parent.frames[\'mainNav\']','nav_main.htm');return document.MM_returnValue" onMouseOver="MM_swapImage('nav1','','images/navigation_main/1-nav-on.jpg',1)" onMouseOut="MM_swapImgRestore()"><img src="images/navigation_main/1-nav.jpg" name="nav1" width="192" height="51" border="0"

I assume it is Javascript.

Thanks for replying.

Dear Chad,
If you examine the top area of the source in your page, you'll see the actuall Javascript being called by the code you posted - MM's code is pretty heavy, just because it needs to be relatively modular - llook at the simple example here:

javascript.about.com/library/scripts/blrollover.htm

Replace MM's code with a simple script like that & you might get a slight performance gain - the main speed trap in this equation is the size of the graphics to be swapped - I've never bothered with anything over 2K.

Regards,
Brent

Thanks bcolflesh. I will try that out.

I have a question though. I noticed all of my images are "preloaded". If they are, then why would file size effect load time?

Dear Chad,
The preloading starts when the page is requested - otherwise the image would have to load the first time you rolled over it's trigger area.

Regards,
Brent