Dreamweaver 8 Design and Construction (OReilly Digital Studio)

13.5. Placing Custom Messages in the Status Bar

The status bar appears along the bottom of the browser's window. The browser uses it to display brief messages of interest to humans, like what the browser is currently doing (opening the page, downloading images) or where the selected hyperlink leads.

Dreamweaver's Set Text of Status Bar behavior lets you put messages of your choosing into the status bar instead. For instance, when the visitor hovers over one of the buttons in your navigation, you might place "Go to the Theories section" into the status bar instead of the usual esoteric http://www.mysite.com/theories/theories.html.

To place a message in the status bar when the visitor hovers over a nav button, follow these steps:

1. In the document window, click a button in your nav bar.

2. Go to the Tag Selector at the bottom of the document window, and click the <a> tag to select the button's link.

3. In the Behaviors panel, click the plus button, and choose Set Text Set Text Of Status Bar from the menu that appears. Dreamweaver opens the Set Text Of Status Bar dialog box, which Figure 13-26 shows.

   Figure 13-26. Set custom messages in the browser's status bar

4. In the Message field, type the text that should appear in the browser's status bar when the visitor hovers over the button.

5. Click OK. Dreamweaver adds the necessary JavaScript to your page.

6. Choose File Save from the main menu, and update the pages of your site.

To test your custom messages, view any page of your site in a live browser.