Marquee

Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Basics
Section 3 - Next Level
      Lists
      Basic Tables
      Advanced Text
      Marquee
         The basic idea
         Modifications
         You Try It!
      Meta
      Sounds
      Comments
Section 4 - Advanced
Section 5 - Publishing
Section 6 - Extras
Appendices

Marquee
Before we begin, note that marquees will only work on certain operating systems, and work best on Internet Explorer. If you're on Netscape, I recommend switching to see this page in all its glory.

A marquee is a simple tag to put into your document. Here it is:

<marquee> These are the words. </marquee>

This is what it looks like: These are the words. As you can see, a simple marquee will drag words across the width of your page forever. While this is fun, perhaps there are a couple things you can do to make it more exciting.

Background color
It is completely optional to change the background of a marquee. The default is the color of the page (a.k.a. clear). If you'd like to make the background another color, you modify the marquee tag as follows:

<marquee bgcolor="#ffff00"> These are the words. </marquee>

This is what it looks like:
These are the words.

Width and height
You can define your marquee to be as wide as a page, or as narrow as you'd like. You can put height and width commands into your marquee. Here's that same marquee, only this time, it's 300 pixels wide and 50 pixels high.

<marquee bgcolor="#ffff00" width="300" height="50"> These are the words. </marquee>

This is what it looks like:
These are the words.
A couple words of caution here. If you don't put a <br> tag after the marquee, the text will start immediately after the marquee. This can be fun or completely annoying. Also, notice that the height command didn't center the words, make them bigger, or do anything else constructive. It's pretty important when using pictures in your marquee though.

By the way, I think Ms. Lowe is awesome... fun... creative... scary... and should be treated as such. If you'd like your marquee centered, shifted left or right, use the commands you already know. Feel free to put a marquee in a table. Use your imagination when making a marquee, but don't get annoying with it.

Images and fancy text
Between the two <marquee> tags you can put almost anything in it you'd like. (I've even seen a table in a marquee!) You can put pictures in there and you can change the text using the commands you already know. Once you have the basics of the table outlined, making it look good is easy.

Here's how to make a really fancy one:

<center>
<marquee width=300 height=80 bgcolor="#eeeeff">
<table border=1 cellpadding=2>
<tr>
<td><img src="smileyhead.gif" border=0 align="center"></td>
<td><font size=+2 color="red">This is what you're going to learn to make!!!</font></td>
<td><img src="smileyhead.gif" border=0 align="center"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</marquee>
</center>

Here's what you see:

This is what you're going to learn to make!!!

Of course, if you're going to make that particular marquee, you'll need to download smileyhead.gif from my files.

So, that's the majority of stuff you need to know about the marquee tag. But we have one more lesson in this unit about marquees. What could be left? Plenty!