Status Bar Scroller

text effects 1996 dead

Scrolls a message along the browser status bar at the bottom of the window.

In 2026: Dead. Browsers shut window.status off one by one through the 2000s because it was used to fake link targets: IE7 turned it off by default in 2006 and Chrome never drew it at all. The code still runs, it just has nowhere to draw. The original looped with a string setTimeout, which a Content Security Policy blocks like eval, so the loop here uses a function reference instead.

Where it came from: Netscape JavaScript examples, 1996. Reprinted by every script archive of the period. MDN ↗

<script language="JavaScript">
<!-- hide from old browsers
var msg = "Welcome to my home page!!!   Thanks for visiting!!!   ";
var pos = 0;
function scrollStatus() {
  window.status = msg.substring(pos) + msg.substring(0, pos);
  pos = (pos + 1) % msg.length;
  setTimeout(scrollStatus, 150);   // the original passed the string "scrollStatus()"
}
scrollStatus();
// end hide -->
</script>

<p>This scrolls a message along the browser's status bar. Modern browsers ignore
   <code>window.status</code>, so the bar at the bottom stays empty and nothing
   appears on screen. The code is running; it just has nowhere to draw.</p>

sandboxed demo · breaks nothing but itselfrestart

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