Blink element

The blink element is a non-standard HTML element that indicates to a user agent (generally a web browser) that the page author intends the content of the element to blink (that is, alternate between being visible and invisible).^[1] The element was introduced in Netscape Navigator^[2] but is no longer supported and often ignored by modern Web browsers; some, such as Internet Explorer, never supported the element at all.^[1]

Despite its initial popularity among

... At some point in the evening I mentioned that it was sad that Lynx was not going to be able to display many of the HTML extensions that we were proposing, I also pointed out that the only text style that Lynx could exploit given its environment was blinking text. We had a pretty good laugh at the thought of blinking text, and talked about blinking this and that and how absurd the whole thing would be. ... Saturday morning rolled around and I headed into the office only to find what else but, blinking text. It was on the screen blinking in all its glory, and in the browser. How could this be, you might ask? It turns out that one of the engineers liked my idea so much that he left the bar sometime past midnight, returned to the office and implemented the blink tag overnight. He was still there in the morning and quite proud of it.^[2]

The blink element is non-standard, and as such there is no authoritative specification of its syntax or semantics. While

Netscape only agreed to remove the blink tag from their browser if Microsoft agreed to get rid of the marquee tag in theirs during an HTML ERB meeting in February 1996.^[7]

Some software supports the blink element as an

<span style="text-decoration: blink;">Down to the porshrop, down to the streep</span>

The blink element may also be implemented using CSS animations.

@keyframes blink {
	0% { opacity:1 } 75% { opacity:1 } 76% { opacity:0 } 100% { opacity:0 }
}

blink, .blink-css {
	animation:blink 0.75s ease-in infinite alternate!important;
}

When elements are then given the tag or class blink, such as:

<span class="blink-css">Down to the porshrop, to the porshrop family treep</span>

This produces the following:

Down to the porshrop, to the porshrop family treep

Similar effects can also be achieved through the use of JavaScript.

<script type="text/javascript">
  (function() {
    var blinks = document.getElementsByTagName('blink');
    var visibility = 'hidden';
    window.setInterval(function() {
      for (var i = blinks.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        blinks[i].style.visibility = visibility;
      }
      visibility = (visibility === 'visible') ? 'hidden' : 'visible';
    }, 250);
  })();
</script>
<blink>Text to blink here</blink>

Or alternatively, the blink functionality can be implemented with the help of jQuery.

<script type="text/javascript">
    setInterval(function(){
      $('blink').each(function() {
        $(this).toggle();
      });
    }, 250);
</script>
<blink>Text to blink here</blink>

Even before the implementing of the blink tag in HTML, the

The blink element has been consistently criticized by usability and accessibility experts. In 1996 Jakob Nielsen described the element as "simply evil" in his Alertbox column "Original Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design".^[12] The World Wide Web Consortium's