Hello everyone!
I have already read three books on programming. One of them was Beginning HTML, XHTML, CSS, and Javascript, by Jon Ducket (I'm in the middle of it). How come in all the programming books I read there is no mention of marquees (stuff that scrolls across the page). I know the code myself, but I can't find it in any of the books.
Is there a reason for this?

EDIT: Can a Wrox staff member move this thread into the correct forum - Wrox and P2P feedback? I think Wrox staff members can do this. I didn't realize that it was in the wrong forum when I created it.

It's a non-standard tag, and you are not supposed to use it. On the other hand, it is supported not only by IE, but also Firefox, Safari and Opera.

What's a non-standard tag?
Also, what should I use instead of a marquee? I use it so much on my site!

EDIT: Should I use Javascript instead?

It is non-standard as it is not an element specified in W3C HTML specification.

Yes, you can use javascript to generate scrolling text.

Do you mean it was deprecated and removed?

And thanks for telling me about the Javascript!

It actually never made its way into the HTML specification. If you look at this from the view of the HTML specification, "marquee" never existed, and there is really no such tag to be deprecated or removed.

On the other hand, this tag was first introduced by Microsoft, and at this point, it is supported by all major browsers. However its support can be dropped any time, since it is not part of the specification. In this sense, you can safely call this tag "deprecated", and try to stay away from it.

Ok thanks!
Before I knew this, I used marquee a lot in my pages. On my computer, which is a PC, the text that was placed in a marquee moved correctly. What I mean is only the text between the opening and closing marquee tags moved. This was the same when I saw the page on other PC's. However, when I viewed my website on a Mac, the entire page was moving. Is the reason because it is not a real W3C specification, and if I used Javascript it would work?
EDIT: I should also say what the browswer was. That may be the true reason.
1st PC - IE. I'm not sure which version - I think IE7
2nd PC - Mozilla Firefox
Mac - Safari

I should also add that on the 1st PC, which is my computer, the font is displayed in a smaller font than the second PC. And my computer is larger! Can I control this using CSS?

marquee seemed to work properly in Safari (at least the latest version 4.0.5). I only tried on PC, but I do expect the same behavior on Mac. Maybe your observation was based on an old version of Safari...

Frameworks like jquery can help to hide some difference between browsers for you.

However, the hard fact is that, even with those frameworks, you will still see different behavior among browsers from time to time.

Hmm... I'll try to find the version of Safari on the Mac.
So basically, I need to figure out the best way to display my web site so that viewers with all types of browsers can see it.
That's a challenge.
I love it!

It actually never made its way into the HTML specification. If you look at this from the view of the HTML specification, "marquee" never existed, and there is really no such tag to be deprecated or removed.

On the other hand, this tag was first introduced by Microsoft, and at this point, it is supported by all major browsers. However its support can be dropped any time, since it is not part of the specification. In this sense, you can safely call this tag "deprecated", and try to stay away from it.