JavaScript Examples Bible - UserWorks Technologies

Chapter 2 ✦ Window and Frame Objects (Chapter 16)
As a safeguard against platform-specific anomalies that affect the behavior of
onMouseOver event handlers and the window.status property, you should also
include an onMouseOut event handler for links and client-side image map area
objects. Such onMouseOut event handlers should set the status property to an
empty string. This setting ensures that the statusbar message returns to the
defaultStatus setting when the pointer rolls away from these objects. If you want
to write a generalizable function that handles all window status changes, you can
do so, but word the onMouseOver attribute carefully so that the event handler evaluates
to return true. Listing 16-18 shows such an alternative.
Listing 16-18: Handling Status Message Changes
Generalizable window.status Property
function showStatus(msg) {
window.status = msg
return true
}
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Notice how the event handlers return the results of the showStatus() method
to the event handler, allowing the entire handler to evaluate to return true.
One final example of setting the statusbar (shown in Listing 16-19) also demonstrates
how to create a simple scrolling banner in the statusbar.
Listing 16-19: Creating a Scrolling Banner
Message Scroller