The Rise and Fall of the Marquee Tag
If you've been online since the late 90s or early 2000s, you've probably seen text scrolling across a webpage like a mini news ticker. Maybe it said "Welcome to my website!" and slid lazily from right to left, over and over. That's the marquee element in action, and it was everywhere back then.
Let's talk about what it actually is, why it existed, and why most developers today steer clear of it.
So What Is the Marquee Element?
The <marquee> tag is an HTML element that makes text or images scroll automatically across the screen. You didn't need to write any JavaScript or CSS animation to use it. You just wrapped your content in the tag, like this:
<marquee>This text will scroll across the screen</marquee>
And that was it. The browser handled the rest, sliding your text from one side to the other without you lifting a finger.
You could also tweak how it behaved. Want it to bounce back and forth instead of looping? There's an attribute for that. Want it to scroll up and down instead of side to side? There's an attribute for that too. Some common ones included:
direction – controls which way the content moves (left, right, up, down)
behavior – decides if it scrolls continuously, bounces, or slides once and stops
scrollamount – controls the speed
loop – sets how many times it repeats
It was simple, quick, and required zero coding skill beyond copy-pasting a tag.
Why Did People Use It?
Back in the early days of the web, things were a lot less polished. There was no CSS animation, no JavaScript libraries built for smooth transitions, and definitely no fancy frameworks. If you wanted movement on your page, your options were limited.
The marquee tag filled that gap. It let regular people, not just professional developers, add a bit of motion and personality to their sites. A scrolling "Under Construction" banner or a ticker of site updates felt exciting at the time. It was one of the few ways to make a static page feel alive.
It was also incredibly easy to use. You didn't need to understand programming logic or timing functions. You just typed the tag and your text moved.
Why It Fell Out of Favor
Here's the thing: the marquee element aged badly, and for good reason.
It was never a proper web standard. It started as something Internet Explorer introduced, and other browsers copied it just to keep up. It was eventually added to HTML5, but only as an "obsolete" element, meaning browsers still support it, but you're not supposed to rely on it going forward.
It's bad for accessibility. Constantly moving text is distracting and can be genuinely difficult for people with certain cognitive or visual conditions to read. Screen readers also don't handle it gracefully. Good web design today puts a lot of weight on accessibility, and marquee just doesn't fit that mindset.
It gives you no real control. You can't style it with much precision, you can't easily pause it on hover without extra tricks, and it doesn't play nicely with responsive design. Modern websites need to look good on everything from a small phone screen to an ultra-wide monitor, and marquee just wasn't built with that flexibility in mind.
It looks outdated. Fair or not, scrolling text now reads as a signal that a site hasn't been updated in twenty years. It's become a bit of a running joke among developers, a symbol of early, clunky internet design.
What Do Developers Use Instead?
Today, if you want scrolling or moving text, you reach for CSS animations. Something like the animation and @keyframes properties gives you full control over speed, direction, easing, and behavior. You can pause it on hover, make it responsive, and style it however you like.
For example, a basic CSS scroll effect might look like this:
.scrolling-text {
display: inline-block;
white-space: nowrap;
animation: scroll-left 10s linear infinite;
}
@keyframes scroll-left {
from { transform: translateX(100%); }
to { transform: translateX(-100%); }
}
It takes a bit more setup than the old <marquee> tag, but it gives you way more control, works consistently across browsers, and doesn't carry the same accessibility baggage, especially if you add ways to pause the animation.
There are also JavaScript libraries built specifically for smooth scrolling banners, news tickers, and carousels if you need something more advanced, like pausing on hover, syncing with user interaction, or adding fade effects.
Should You Ever Use the Marquee Tag?
Honestly, no, not in real, modern projects. Browsers still support it for backward compatibility, so old websites won't break, but it's not something you should build with today. If a client or a project asks for scrolling text, the better move is to explain the accessibility and design concerns and offer the CSS animation approach instead.
That said, there's nothing wrong with knowing about it. Understanding the marquee element gives you a bit of web history and helps you recognize why certain modern practices, like accessibility-first design and separating structure (HTML) from presentation (CSS), matter so much today.
The marquee element was a product of its time. It solved a real problem when the web didn't have good tools for animation, and it gave ordinary people an easy way to add movement to their pages. But as the web matured, better, more flexible, and more accessible tools came along and made it obsolete.
It's a good reminder of how web development evolves. What felt cutting-edge in 1998 can look clumsy by today's standards, and that's not a bad thing. It just means the tools got better, and so did our understanding of what makes a website actually work well for everyone.
Reena Meena
Web Development Specialist
AeroSoft Corp
