It is the term 'window.status=' that tells the browser to place the following message in the status bar. Any message can be used, as long as it is contained within 's. In addition, it is conventional to include the 'onmouseout' command, telling the browser to remove text from the status bar by using the blank term 'window.status=' '' - a blank version of that included in this onmouseover command. The link will then look like this (pay attention to the status bar!):

a link
WARNING: Do not make your message too long, or it will be cut down to fit the limited space available in the status bar. So keep it short and sweet!

Step back
Most browsers have a 'back' feature - but how does this work, and how can you present a 'back' button on your page that works in similar fashion? Quite simply, the browser 'back' function recalls pages stored in its 'history' - it remembers the pages you have visited, and stores their address should you wish to return to them. In web pages, however, 'back' functions that have been coded by the web-page creator cannot usually operate in this way. Instead, the link is 'anchored' to a particular page, providing a logical sequence of pages - this was the last, this is next, and so on. This can be a problem when creating a hyperfiction, as such fictions to not operate in a logical sequence. Instead, the reader jumps around a stack of pages almost randomly. Moving 'back' using a link provided on the webpage would in all probability not therefore move the reader back to the page they had previously visited, but to the page one step back in the logical sequence provided by the coder. How can this be avoided? Once more, Javascript provides the answer. With a little code, a 'back' link on a webpage can point not to a particular page, but can call upon the 'history' store of the browser. The link will appear as normal, but the 'a href' code is a little more complex:

The code is quite self-explanatory. The Javascript merely tells the browser that this link points to the page before this (history-1) - the last page. Quite a useful command... but be careful. If you use links that point to different areas on the same page, this command will point not to the last page, but to the last area viewed on that page. You should therefore use this feature sparingly.

Menu systems
Although it is possible to create a menu system using HTML, this can be quite complex, as it requires 'CGI' scripts (code files that reside on the server and process input information from a HTML source). It is, in the short term, far easier to employ a small piece of Javascript code. As with all Javascript, this code is included in the HTML source document. The code required for a menu system is:

Quite confusing, eh? Well, we don't really need to understand what is going on - we merely need to know how to use this example. I have highlighted in green the code that provides the items within the drop-down menu. The first section ["menu item",] contains the text that will appear in the menu. The second ["menu item URL",] contains the URL for the page. It is vital that the label and URL for each menu item appear in the same order, else the reader would be directed to the incorrect URL when selecting a particular menu item. Any number of menu items can be included - the only restriction is that the last item on the menu contain ); instead of just a ,. The above code would produce the following menu (I have deliberately not coded any external URLS, to prevent any leaps to other sites):

Why not have a play and see what you can come up with?

Dynamic images
Although an interesting way to organise links, menu systems are restrictive, and can look quite boring. An alternative is to use dynamic images as links. 'Dynamic' here means that the image changes when the user's mouse moves across it, displaying the fact that this image has an unusual feature. An extremely useful piece of code, this Javascript is a little more difficult to use than the above menu system. The basic code is:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- HIDE JAVASCRIPT FROM OBSOLETE BROWSERS

version = false;
if (document.images) {
version = true; }
if (version == true)
{

???on = new Image;
???on.src = "image_mouseon.gif";
???off = new Image;
???off.src = "image_normal.gif";

}

function rollon(imgName) {
if (version == true) {
imgOn = eval(imgName + "on.src");
document [imgName].src = imgOn; }
}

function rolloff(imgName) {
if (version == true) {
imgOff = eval(imgName + "off.src");
document [imgName].src = imgOff; }
}

// STOP HIDING -->
</SCRIPT>

This code provides the basic function 'onmouseover' - in other words, it causes particular elements on the page to change when the mouse moves across them. In this particular example, the code changes an image that has been given the name '???' (this can be any text label). Two images are used - image_mouseon.gif and image_normal.gif. The 'normal' image would be displayed until the mouse moves across the image, when the 'mouseon' image would be displayed. Any number of dynamic images can be created in this way. However, some aditional code is required. The above example does not, on it's own, display any image or create any link. The 'image src' and 'a href' tags are still required, although with some small additions. The usual code would be: