IE Filter Antialiasing problem

Question

So i have a page with a bunch of images. And I have a function which fades out these layers using IE's opacity filter through javascript.

Now when i fade in these elements. I have to set the particular element (which has the opacity filter applied to it) with a background image or a background color (to prevent anti-aliasing of clear type fonts, read this for more http://www.jonathancross.com/projects/Ugly_font_anti-aliasing_problem_in_Internet_Explorer_6_7_and_8.html ).

Now my questions are:

1. For a group of elements is there any better solution than a case structure for setting the background-image/background-color for each element?
2. Some text-boxes are not seen properly and appear to merge with the overall background image set (The background layer consists of a 1x1 px image which is repeated where ever necessary)

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

There is a trick I have used... if the background behind the text is such that you can pick a solid color that will match it within a reasonable degree, you can use the following pair of CSS rules to do faux-antialiasing on the text, in IE only:

background-color: #CCCCCC; / pick the color that matches your background / filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Chroma(color='#CCCCCC'); / use the same color here /

Answer 2

1. You have to define the background on each element, there's no getting round that as far as I am aware. You could do this with css, something like

   .mydiv p {background:#fff}

2. Using 1x1 px background causes repeating issues. Using 2x2 px does not.

Answer 3

I "got around" this by disabling Anti-Aliasing in IE completely by appending an Opacity filter of 1.0 on every element on the page...

Ok, so it looks nasty - but at least everything looks like (and IE6/7 is nasty anyway ^_^).