First, MSIE is not the only browser that ‘supports’ this. Safari does, and I believe Icab, OmniWeb, and possibly Shiira do too.

Second, this isn’t really the right way to go about setting a status message. If you use this method, then when the user mouses over a link, for example, the message will go and will not return after they mouseout. It’s better (from the point of view of getting your message in the statusbar) to use window.defaultstatus – then your text becomes a default status message, and is shown in the statusbar again after any temporary notification has gone.

That said, it’s still best from a usability perspective to do neither. Plese add a warning! (I, myself, don’t actually mind this too much – it’s certainly not, in my opinion, as bad as forcing new windows all over the place when your visitor clicks on external links. I have even been known to use status messages myself in the past – but at least I was aware of the effects and implications first!)

Excluding the author, I count six unique commenters here, unanimously booing the article. Reflexion, are you going to react in some satisfactory fashion? (ie: editing the article, removing it entirely, or at least trying to defend the article)

Do you even know what your commenters are talking about? Quick quiz: What is the title attribute? (not the title tag, which is entirely different)

Am actually starting to think I have traveled back to 1998, what is this “language” attribute you speak of?

// <script type=’text/javascript’>

If you want to teach your readers something simple, yet useful, how about the title attribute? All the handiness of window.status, plus portability across Web browsers, minus JavaScript, minus interfering with normal status bar functionality.

Where is the object detection? You say that it will only work with IE, but there is no checking to see if it is supported, everyone else be damned huh?

// if(window.status) {

And why are you polluting the global namespace? There’s this great new thing in Javascript (I hear some other languages might be getting them soon as well) called ARGUMENTS.
These new fangled things let you pass all manners of information into a function, even strings!! wow!

// function statustype(txt) {

Am actually starting to think I have traveled back to 1998, what is this “language” attribute you speak of?

//

Look I get what you are saying about helping people at a lower level and expanding the reader base, but please if you want to help them don’t provide such crappy code for them to learn from

I was under the impression that most Devlounge readers are relatively savvy web designers/developers, so doing little tricks like this isn’t really beyond what any of us could Google for within seconds if we wanted to actually do it (which we don’t).

Not really an attack at this article in general, but I doubt anyone who’s been reading Devlounge for a while hasn’t noticed the BIG drop in complexity to articles.

I mean, making galleries? Using favicons? Changing the status bar text? Activating caching in WordPress? This is all seriously amateur stuff — and Devlounge’s readership isn’t a bunch of amateurs AFAIK. I haven’t seen a compelling Devlounge article in months.

Please, ignore this article and don’t manipulate your visitors browser. Don’t show any informations where they are not expected. For sure, the status bar alerts are not for usability.