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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T02:08:08+00:00

update- sorry folks, i should have provided the link to the website where i

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update-
sorry folks, i should have provided the link to the website where i saw the effect. here you go – http://www.w3schools.com/Css/css_image_transparency.asp

and the code that i saw there (and the basis of this question) is as below –

    <img src="klematis.jpg" style="opacity:0.4;filter:alpha(opacity=40)"
onmouseover="this.style.opacity=1;this.filters.alpha.opacity=100"
onmouseout="this.style.opacity=0.4;this.filters.alpha.opacity=40" />

The original question is as below –

I was looking for rollover effects that can be done without using JS, and i stumbled upon the w3schools website teaching the opacity setting for images. In the code, there is no js involved, its just pure css.

i even tried using the same code into my webpage (which does not have any js, yet) and i noticed that the code happened to work perfectly in both chrome and IE 7.0. the code has a “onmouseover” event and another “onmouseout” event to give the hover effects based on the opacity settings.

wondering whether these effects (onmouseover and onmouseout) are –
1. pure css
2. standards compliant (xhtml 1+ and css2)
3. whether there are any hacks involved

i still cant believe these things worked on ie7, and wondering why there are no documentation on these events.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There’s no such “onmouseover” event or attribute in CSS, that’s JavaScript. CSS uses the “:hover” pseudo-class for mouse over events. A quick example,

    HTML:

    <div id="someid">I'm a random div.</div>

    CSS:

    #someid {
    background: #fff;
}

#someid:hover {
    background: #000;
}

    In this example, when you hover over the #someid element, it’s background will change from white to black.

    This is the correct way to handle mouse over events in CSS. It is standards compliant and will work in all modern browsers (and some older browsers too).

    Sidenote: It won’t always work in IE6, IE6 only recognizes the “:hover” pseudo-class when it’s applied to anchor tags (“a:hover”, etc).

    Based on the update to your question:

    <img src="klematis.jpg" style="opacity:0.4;filter:alpha(opacity=40)"
onmouseover="this.style.opacity=1;this.filters.alpha.opacity=100"
onmouseout="this.style.opacity=0.4;this.filters.alpha.opacity=40" />

    That is using JavaScript to change the style. The only bit of this which is CSS is the style='...' part. The text in onmouseover and onmouseout is JavaScript.

    To do what you want in pure CSS, it should be like this,

    <html>
<head>
    <style>
    img.opacity-image {
        opacity: 0.4;
        filter:alpha(opacity=40); /* This is IE specific and NOT standards complaint */
    }

    img.opacity-image:hover {
        opacity: 1;
        filter:alpha(opacity=100); /* Again, 'filter:' is IE specific. */
    }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    ...
    <img src="klematis.jpg" class="opacity-image" />
    ....
</body>
</html>

    opacity is CSS3 and only supported by modern browsers (IE6,7,8 don’t support it). You can use filter:... to get opacity to work in IE (although it won’t handle PNGs correctly, but since you’re using JPG that’s not an issue), but then your code isn’t technically standards compliant as “filter” is not in the CSS standard. That doesn’t generally matter too much though since it’ll still render correctly in any modern browser.

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