Use JavaScript to Change the Window Status Message

By  on  

Though I don't normally recommend modifying the browser's default behaviors, changing the window's status bar does have its place. The window status bar can pass descriptive information about the element the user is hovering over or can hide the URL from users that don't understand source code enough to figure it out for themselves.

The JavaScript

window.status = 'Hello!  You are hovering over me.';

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Animations Between Media Queries

    CSS animations are right up there with sliced bread. CSS animations are efficient because they can be hardware accelerated, they require no JavaScript overhead, and they are composed of very little CSS code. Quite often we add CSS transforms to elements via CSS during...

  • By
    Page Visibility API

    One event that's always been lacking within the document is a signal for when the user is looking at a given tab, or another tab. When does the user switch off our site to look at something else? When do they come back?

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a NoScript Compatible Select Form Element with an onChange Event

    I wouldn't say that I'm addicted to checking Google Analytics but I do check my statistics often. I guess hoping for a huge burst of traffic from some unknown source. Anyway, I have multiple sites set up within my account. The way to...

  • By
    jQuery Chosen Plugin

    Without a doubt, my least favorite form element is the SELECT element.  The element is almost unstylable, looks different across platforms, has had inconsistent value access, and disaster that is the result of multiple=true is, well, a disaster.  Needless to say, whenever a developer goes...

Discussion

  1. Thanks, but it wont work in IE7… Just IE6..

  2. Thank you for mentioning this Selim. It looks as though IE7 has disabled this functionality.

  3. Yes, unfortunately custom status messagges are removed from ie7. I have searched it for a month ago :)

  4. thank you, i really appreciate all your tuts

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!