Change Tab Title with JavaScript
Changing the tab (or window) title is an age old practice. Gmail does it to notify the user of a new chat message and this blog does it to update the tab title after a new page loads via AJAX. How is it done? By setting a property on the document object, of course:
That property, of course, is document.title:
document.title = 'Hello!'; // New title :)
One common misconception is that you change the window.title property, but you must use the document object, otherwise you'll see no effect. You'll oftentimes see a setInterval used with document.title to quickly change title to get the user's attention.
![Convert XML to JSON with JavaScript]()
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I've been working on a super top secret mobile application using Appcelerator Titanium. The experience has been great: using JavaScript to create easy to write, easy to test, native mobile apps has been fun. My...
![fetch API]()
One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for. We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better. Our effort to...
![CSS Fixed Positioning]()
When you want to keep an element in the same spot in the viewport no matter where on the page the user is, CSS's fixed-positioning functionality is what you need.
The CSS
Above we set our element 2% from both the top and right hand side of the...
![Use Custom Missing Image Graphics Using MooTools]()
Missing images on your website can make you or your business look completely amateur.
Unfortunately sometimes an image gets deleted or corrupted without your knowledge.
You'd agree with me that IE's default "red x" icon looks awful, so why not use
your own missing image graphic?
The MooTools JavaScript
Note that...
This is great – in 15 years of working in web design the thought of changing page title never crossed my mind. Could be useful though, cheers!
If you want to be evil about it change it to:
And see how many people wonder what is unread :)
If that’s not in evil.js, it should be added immediately
Thats pure evil.
That’s really nice – I always did that via
getElementsByTagNameandinnerHTML, but this solution’s way more convenient.Of-course this is tricky. It also affects DOM document ( element in HTML). Also In XUL, retrieving
document.titlebefore document gets completely loaded has unfixed behavior (document.titlemight pull an empty result or may effect-less.)I’m happy to be corrected on this, but if you change the tab title after a screen reader initially caches the page, they are not informed of this change. So, if you are changing the page for a relevant reason, could this be a problem? The page title is the first thing screen readers hear when a page loads, and it is like a road map to where they are, where they want to be.
This is such a simple tweak and can make us look our website state of the art!