How to flash web browser's window using JS

Question

In a web app that I am writing there is web page (dashboard) which gets refreshed every 10 seconds. On refresh if there is any new data then I have to draw users attention.

According to me the only possible solution for this is to draw users attention by flashing browser's window. So if browser's window is not the active window then the user will see the blinking icon on Windows task bar.

How can I do this in Java Script?

Currently we have implemented Google's way by changing title bar contents.

But our clients want to blink browser's window because he has see something like this on a web (Maersk) with live support (chat).

Answer 1

What if you just changed the title text of the web page every few seconds to say "new data" or something like Google does with gchat when someone sends you a new message?

Answer 2

I would recommend what ryanulit is saying + add moving indicatiro to the title bar 9via settimeout in javascript - e.g. a moving dot or rotating pipe (8 angles) or any other symbol animation of which will draw attention.

Answer 3

Please see this related question

Although the given answer is quite ugly - a Script and Link tag inside the Head tag, it might work (I have not tested this).

In my opinion it won't work. You could try using some client side VBScripting.