How to Create a Website Marquee
Website marquees are based on the same principle as the marquees in Times Square and elsewhere around the world: They're used to draw attention to a special message, whether it's the announcement of an upcoming event or an advertisement for a sale. In the past, creating a marquee required HTML coding that the beginning web designer typically couldn't manage. Today, there are several software programs that allow novice users to create professional marquees. Here's how you can create a marquee for your website that will get your visitors' attention.
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Instructions
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Download one of the many software products for marquee creation (see resources). The products vary in price from free to marginal cost, but each of them works in basically the same way. Web Marquee Wizard (see resources) is nice because it's free and it generates the HTML code, so all you have to do is copy and paste it to your web page. Once you've selected the product that's right for you, install and open the software.
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Go to the "File" menu and choose "New." You will start with a blank marquee. Type the text that you want to appear in your marquee in the dialogue box and format it. You can choose from any of the fonts on your computer, then size and color the text however you like. You should also set the background color of your marquee. Transparent is good because it allows your visitors to pay attention only to the text.
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Decide how you want the marquee to scroll. You can choose from left to right, right to left or random. Some programs allow you to scroll your marquee at angles. This is not a good idea if you want to get your message across. Odd scrolling directions can lead more to distraction than anything else.
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Choose the scrolling speed of your marquee. Pay attention to this element of design. If you set your speed too fast, visitors probably will ignore the message as it speeds by. Also, a dark background will cause quickly scrolling text to leave behind a ghost trail. Setting the speed too slow might be distracting. Play with the settings and preview the speed until you're comfortable with it.
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Write various messages or phrase the same message several different ways to keep visitors reading. A single message, once viewed, is easy to ignore. Reiteration is the key to getting a message across with a web marquee.
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