29 October, 2005
CSS Filters
Microsoft-Specific Style Sheet Properties
Microsoft has already added some of its own properties to cascading style sheets. They are multimedia filters and transitions which can be viewed in Internet Explorer and accessed via a style sheet. You can also do all sorts of things such as change the cursor nad even use downloadable fonts. These are probably only the beginning of a horde of new useful properties introduced into style sheets.
Microsoft had already supported a variey of multimedia filters by using ActiveX controls included with Internet Explorer. But these were slightly limited because of lack of familiarity with the technology. So instead, Microsoft have introduced these multimedia effects through style sheets. This has been done in a very generalised manner, allowing other vendors to add their own filters. Here is the basic form of a filter rule the basic form of a filter rule:
Filter: filtername(filtervalue1, filtervalue2,...)
See the Microsoft documentation for a complete discussion of the possible values for the various filters. Here is a table of the possible values for filtername:
| Filter Name | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Alpha | Sets a uniform transparency level | Alpha |
| Blur | Creates the impression of moving at high speed | Blur |
| Chroma | Makes a specific colour transparent | Chroma |
| DropShadow | Creates a solid silhouette | DropShadow |
| FlipH | Creates a horizontal mirror image | FlipH |
| FlipV | Creates a vertical mirror image | FlipV |
| Glow | Adds radiance around the outside edges of the object | Glow |
| Grayscale | Drops colour information from the image | Grayscale |
| Invert | Revereses the hue, saturation and brightness values | Invert |
| Light | Projects a light source onto an object | Light |
| Mask | Creates a transparent mask from an object | Mask |
| Shadow | Creates an offset solid silhouette | Shadow |
| Wave | Creates a sine wave distortion along the X axis | Wave |
| Xray | Shows just the edges of the object | Xray |