CSS marquee-style

Try it

Important: Since writing this article, the marquee module has been dropped from the CSS3 specification. The W3C suggests using CSS animations instead.

Therefore, do not use any of the marquee properties listed on this page. Instead, check out these CSS Marquee codes and examples (which are standards-compliant).

The CSS marquee-style property is used for specifying the style - or behavior - of a marquee. For example, the marquee could scroll, slide in, or bounce back and forth.

The marquee-style property works in conjunction with the overflow, overflow-style, marquee-play-count, marquee-direction, and marquee-speed properties.

What is a Marquee?

A marquee is an effect where the content within an HTML element moves - or "scrolls" - (either horizontally or vertically) so that eventually, all content has been displayed at least once. The content can keep scrolling or it can stop after a certain number of times. It can slide in and stop. It can bounce back and forth - either once or a pre-determined number of times.

How Do Marquees Work in CSS?

In CSS3, marquees work like this:

If the contents of an element are too large to fit inside the element, it is said to "overflow". The overflow property can be used to hide the parts that don't fit inside the box. Now the overflow-style property can be used to specify that a marquee should be used to display the content (a marquee-line for horizontally scrolling marquees and marquee-block for vertically scrolling marquees). The marquee-style property specifies the marquee behavior. For example, the marquee could scroll, slide in, or bounce back and forth.

Note that at the time of writing, browser support for CSS3 marquees is limited. Also, marquees have since been dropped from the CSS3 specification. Therefore, the examples on this page may not work as expected.

Syntax

Possible Values

The value can be one of the following.

scroll
Specifies that the content should start at one side, then scroll right across the element, then off the other side. Once it has disappeared off the other side, it starts again (assuming more than one iteration has been specified). This is often referred to as "scrolling" (eg, scrolling text, scrolling images, etc).
slide
Specifies that the content should slide in and then stop.
alternate
Specifies that the content should bounce back and forth.

In addition, all CSS properties also accept the following CSS-wide keyword values as the sole component of their property value:

initial
Represents the value specified as the property's initial value.
inherit
Represents the computed value of the property on the element's parent.
unset
This value acts as either inherit or initial, depending on whether the property is inherited or not. In other words, it sets all properties to their parent value if they are inheritable or to their initial value if not inheritable.

Basic Property Information

Initial Value
scroll
Applies To
Non-replaced block-level elements and non-replaced 'inline-block' elements
Inherited?
No
Media
Visual

Example Code

Vendor Prefixes

For maximum browser compatibility many web developers add browser-specific properties by using extensions such as -webkit- for Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera (newer versions), -ms- for Internet Explorer, -moz- for Firefox, -o- for older versions of Opera etc. As with any CSS property, if a browser doesn't support a proprietary extension, it will simply ignore it.

This practice is not recommended by the W3C, however in many cases, the only way you can test a property is to include the CSS extension that is compatible with your browser.

The major browser manufacturers generally strive to adhere to the W3C specifications, and when they support a non-prefixed property, they typically remove the prefixed version. Also, W3C advises vendors to remove their prefixes for properties that reach Candidate Recommendation status.

Many developers use Autoprefixer, which is a postprocessor for CSS. Autoprefixer automatically adds vendor prefixes to your CSS so that you don't need to. It also removes old, unnecessary prefixes from your CSS.

You can also use Autoprefixer with preprocessors such as Less and Sass.