jquery plugin 'blockUI' doesn't gray out screen in firefox

Question

I'm attempting to use blockUI to block the interface of my web app while performing an ajax operation, but the screen was refusing to gray out for me in firefox (although the message box does show up). I finally figured out that everything was working except the calls to jquery's fadeIn or show.

blockUI starts with elements that have explicitly declared styles of "display: none;" and calls jquery's "fadeIn()" or "show()" functions do display them. Is there anything I'm missing in either jquery or blockUI that would explain this behavior?

Edit: I just discovered that the code works find in Windows Firefox; the issue I am having is on Ubuntu. I do not know whether it affects OS X or not.

Answer 1

Solution according to the plugin's FAQ

Why don't I see overlays in FF on Linux?

Several people informed me that full page opacity rendering in FF/Linux is crazy slow, so by default it's disabled for that platform. You can enable it by overriding the applyPlatformOpacityRules property like this:

// enable transparent overlay on FF/Linux 
$.blockUI.defaults.applyPlatformOpacityRules = false;