Longer time I'm curious about HTML tag <marquee>.

You can find in MDN specification:

Obsolete This feature is obsolete. Although it may still work in some browsers, its use is discouraged since it could be removed at any time. Try to avoid using it.

or on W3C wiki:

No, really. don't use it.

I searched several articles and found some mention about CSS relevant replacement. CSS attributes like:

marquee-play-count
marquee-direction
marquee-speed

but it seems, they don't work. They were a part of specification in year 2008, but they were excluded in year 2014

One way, proposed by W3 Consortium, is using CSS3 animations, but it seems for me much more plicated than easy-to-maintain <marquee>.

There are also plenty of JS alternatives, with lots of source code that you can add to your projects and make them larger.

I'm always reading things as: "don't ever use marquee", "is obsolete". And I don't get why.

So, can anybody explain to me, why is marquee deprecated, why is so "dangerous" using it and what can I use instead?

I found an example, it looks nice. When you use all prefixes needed for good browser support, you have around 20-25 lines of CSS, with 2 values hardcoded (start and stop indent), depending on text length. This solution is not so flexible, and you can't create bottom-to-top effect with this.

Longer time I'm curious about HTML tag <marquee>.

You can find in MDN specification:

Obsolete This feature is obsolete. Although it may still work in some browsers, its use is discouraged since it could be removed at any time. Try to avoid using it.

or on W3C wiki:

No, really. don't use it.

I searched several articles and found some mention about CSS relevant replacement. CSS attributes like:

marquee-play-count
marquee-direction
marquee-speed

but it seems, they don't work. They were a part of specification in year 2008, but they were excluded in year 2014

One way, proposed by W3 Consortium, is using CSS3 animations, but it seems for me much more plicated than easy-to-maintain <marquee>.

There are also plenty of JS alternatives, with lots of source code that you can add to your projects and make them larger.

I'm always reading things as: "don't ever use marquee", "is obsolete". And I don't get why.

So, can anybody explain to me, why is marquee deprecated, why is so "dangerous" using it and what can I use instead?

I found an example, it looks nice. When you use all prefixes needed for good browser support, you have around 20-25 lines of CSS, with 2 values hardcoded (start and stop indent), depending on text length. This solution is not so flexible, and you can't create bottom-to-top effect with this.

• javascript
• html
• css
• marquee

• 57 The easiest substitution is not moving text you want the user to read :) – doldt Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 20:25
• 3 Well, using marquee won't kill users, but if a browser vendor decides to remove it in a next version, users can't see the content anymore. – Teemu Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 20:28
• 3 @doldt, yes I agree, but you have it everywhere, imagine for example playlist with songs and when they have longer names, they are in most of applications moving - this is real problem "hard" to do with JS/CSS – areim Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 20:31
• 1 @areim you should consider switching to a better music player :-) – Lucas Trzesniewski Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 20:33
• 5 Yes, I also don't like it and ignore all annoying moving things on web, but why it is deprecated? It was clear and easy. Is there some real issue with it? It couldn't be just "most of people don't like it". There are tones of paralaxes, sliders today :-D – areim Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 20:40

7 Answers 7

I don't think you should move the content but that doesn't answer your question.

Right to Left

.marquee {
  width: 450px;
  line-height: 50px;
  background-color: red;
  color: white;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  box-sizing: border-box;
}
.marquee p {
  display: inline-block;
  padding-left: 100%;
  animation: marquee 15s linear infinite;
}
@keyframes marquee {
  0%   { transform: translate(0, 0); }
  100% { transform: translate(-100%, 0); }
}

<div class="marquee">
  <p>Test</p>
</div>

Alternative: Bottom to Top

.marquee {
  width: 450px;
  height: 450px;
  text-align: center;
  background-color: red;
  color: white;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  box-sizing: border-box;
}
.marquee p {
  display: inline-block;
  padding-top: 100%;
  animation: marquee 2s linear infinite;
}
@keyframes marquee {
  0%   { transform: translate(0, 0); }
  100% { transform: translate(0, -100%); }
}

<div class="marquee">
  <p>Test</p>
</div>

<marquee> was never part of any HTML specification and what you link to is a CSS spec so it's hard to deprecate something that was never included. HTML is about structure of a document, not its presentation. So having a self-animated element as part of HTML does not abide by those goals. Animation is in CSS.

You just have to define class and attached looping animation once in CSS and use it afterwards everywhere you need. But, as many people said - it's a bit annoying practice, and there is a good reason, why this tag is being obsolete.

.example1 {
  height: 50px; 
  overflow: hidden;
  position: relative;
}
.example1 h3 {
  position: absolute;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  line-height: 50px;
  text-align: center;

  /* Starting position */
  -moz-transform:translateX(100%);
  -webkit-transform:translateX(100%);   
  transform:translateX(100%);

  /* Apply animation to this element */ 
  -moz-animation: example1 5s linear infinite;
  -webkit-animation: example1 5s linear infinite;
  animation: example1 5s linear infinite;
}

/* Move it (define the animation) */
@-moz-keyframes example1 {
  0%   { -moz-transform: translateX(100%); }
  100% { -moz-transform: translateX(-100%); }
}
@-webkit-keyframes example1 {
  0%   { -webkit-transform: translateX(100%); }
  100% { -webkit-transform: translateX(-100%); }
}
@keyframes example1 {
  0%   { 
    -moz-transform: translateX(100%); /* Firefox bug fix */
    -webkit-transform: translateX(100%); /* Firefox bug fix */
    transform: translateX(100%);        
  }
  100% { 
    -moz-transform: translateX(-100%); /* Firefox bug fix */
    -webkit-transform: translateX(-100%); /* Firefox bug fix */
    transform: translateX(-100%); 
  }
}

<div class="example1">
  <h3>Scrolling text... </h3>
</div>

When inspecting this, I found this:

@keyframes scroll {
    from {
        transform: translate(0,0)
    }

    to {
       transform: translate(-300px,0)
    }
}

.resultMarquee {
    animation: scroll 7s linear 0s infinite;
    position: absolute
}

As stated before: the easiest substitution is CSS animation

To all the critics of the marquee:

It is a very useful tool for UI, I am using it just on hover, to display more information in a limited space.

The example for the mp3-player is excellent, even my car-radio is using the effect to show the current song.

So nothing wrong about that, my opinion ...

I have created a jQuery script that will replace the old marquee tag with standard div. The code will also parse the marquee attributes like direction, scrolldelay and scrollamount. Actually the code can skip the jQuery part but I felt too lazy to do so, and the vanilla JS part is actually a solution that I modified from @Stano answere from here

Here is the code:

jQuery(function($) {

  if ($('marquee').length == 0) {
    return;
  }

  $('marquee').each(function() {

    let direction = $(this).attr('direction');
    let scrollamount = $(this).attr('scrollamount');
    let scrolldelay = $(this).attr('scrolldelay');

    let newMarquee = $('<div class="new-marquee"></div>');
    $(newMarquee).html($(this).html());
    $(newMarquee).attr('direction', direction);
    $(newMarquee).attr('scrollamount', scrollamount);
    $(newMarquee).attr('scrolldelay', scrolldelay);
    $(newMarquee).css('white-space', 'nowrap');

    let wrapper = $('<div style="overflow:hidden"></div>').append(newMarquee);
    $(this).replaceWith(wrapper);

  });

  function start_marquee() {

    let marqueeElements = document.getElementsByClassName('new-marquee');
    let marqueLen = marqueeElements.length
    for (let k = 0; k < marqueLen; k++) {


      let space = '&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;';
      let marqueeEl = marqueeElements[k];

      let direction = marqueeEl.getAttribute('direction');
      let scrolldelay = marqueeEl.getAttribute('scrolldelay') * 100;
      let scrollamount = marqueeEl.getAttribute('scrollamount');

      let marqueeText = marqueeEl.innerHTML;

      marqueeEl.innerHTML = marqueeText + space;
      marqueeEl.style.position = 'absolute';

      let width = (marqueeEl.clientWidth + 1);
      let i = (direction == 'rigth') ? width : 0;
      let step = (scrollamount !== undefined) ? parseInt(scrollamount) : 3;

      marqueeEl.style.position = '';
      marqueeEl.innerHTML = marqueeText + space + marqueeText + space;

      setInterval(function() {

        if (direction.toLowerCase() == 'left') {

          i = i < width ? i + step : 1;
          marqueeEl.style.marginLeft = -i + 'px';

        } else {

          i = i > -width ? i - step : width;
          marqueeEl.style.marginLeft = -i + 'px';

        }

      }, scrolldelay);

    }
  }

  start_marquee();
});

.wrap {
  width: 50%;
  margin: 0 auto;
  overflow: hidden;
}

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare./ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<div class="wrap">
  <marquee direction="left" scrollamount="5" scrolldelay="1"> Timses Jokowi: Apa Urusan Pilpres dengan masuk surga? ---&nbsp;Ma'ruf Amin: Semua orang tahu saya tua, tapi... ---&nbsp;Kata Cak Imin soal pidato Jokowi dan Prabowo yang jadi kontroversi ---&nbsp;2 tahun ditahan, pendeta AS Andrew Brunson dibebaskan
    Turki ---&nbsp;Perkembangan terbaru kasus SPG yang buang bayi dari lantai 3 Mal --- Breaking News --- </marquee>

  <marquee direction="rigth" scrollamount="10" scrolldelay="2"> Timses Jokowi: Apa Urusan Pilpres dengan masuk surga? ---&nbsp;Ma'ruf Amin: Semua orang tahu saya tua, tapi... ---&nbsp;Kata Cak Imin soal pidato Jokowi dan Prabowo yang jadi kontroversi ---&nbsp;2 tahun ditahan, pendeta AS Andrew Brunson dibebaskan
    Turki ---&nbsp;Perkembangan terbaru kasus SPG yang buang bayi dari lantai 3 Mal --- Breaking News --- </marquee>
</div>

It is surprising that today 04/04/2024 this "obsolete" tag still has support in all browsers, I have searched a bit how to obtain the same result with CSS and Javascript without being able to achieve the same result.

The problem is that the same result is not achieved with any text length.

Conclusion: If something works, don't touch it.