What is the replacement for a blinking text in a web page?

Question

Hi,

I have heard that using blinking text in a page to get user's attention is not a good practice.

What is the alternative for that?

Answer 1

Text that doesn't blink is a good alternative.

If you have to rely on blinking text or flashing images to get your users to look where you want, then your website probably has some serious design flaws. Here are some articles with some tips on good web design.

• 10 principles of effective web design
• 9 essential principles for good web design

Answer 2

<marquee>SCROLLING TEXT!!!</marquee>

Alright, maybe just stick with bold or

blockquotes

or italics or

headings...

Answer 3

HighLighted Text (stuff that doesn't link). Probably, that portion of the text is highlighted for a period of time, and fades out.

You can use Javascript Libraries to get that kind of effect.

Answer 4

blinking bullit in CSS is not the good choice. But you could use some JQuery plugin or flash to make some text pulsating with colors, or fading in and out

Answer 5

Start here!

.alternativeToBlink {
  font-family:
  font-size:
  color:
  background-color:
  border:
  text-decoration:
}

Answer 6

If you want to emphasise a piece of text semantically, use:

<em>this is important</em>

or

<strong>this is important</strong>

I'm not recommending these for their styles, but for their meaning. You can apply whatever style you want to these elements to make them stand out however you like.

Answer 7

Just some thinking about the opposites here: If you have something on the page that should catch the user's attention, does that not mean that you ALSO have things on the page that should NOT catch the user's attention?

Perhaps you should remove things that take away from the most important message?

This kind of minimalism is popular in big-fonted and margin-rich "web 2.0" sites. So one could say it is a BLINK replacement.

Answer 8

Besides using a Javascript highlight behavior, think about the goal of the page. If you want someone to notice one thing on the page, perhaps that's the only thing that should be there. Consider removing other elements to draw attention to what you need them to see.

If all else fails, there's always the Ajax-based blink tag: http://cheese.blartwendo.com/web21-demo.html

Answer 9

If you're worried about the validation:

• text-decoration: blink; is still valid CSS
• You could do it the AJAX way ;)

Having elements which blink can definitely be very annoying to your users, but, as with everything, don't pay too much attention to the rules which include the word "never". Right now in my operating system there are blinking icons to alert me to things which need my attention. In whatever web application you're making, you could have a similar situation.

Just remember to use it sparingly...