Javascript : Change page title to get viewer attention

Nowadays, most browser users will open multiple tabs of web pages to view couple of pages by tabbing in and out. However, there are times that you might want to draw the attention of the users back to a page...such as when there are unsaved data or form that needs to be completed.

Below is a simple Javascript trick that you can deploy in your own web pages in order to draw the user's attention back to a web page. What this script does is to detect if the user has navigated to another tab on the browser and will change the page title to "Come Back!". Once the user clicks on the tab again, the script will restore back the original title. Here you go!

 <title>This is a random page title</title>

 <script type="text/javascript">
 var isTabActive;

 window.onfocus = function () { 
 isTabActive = true; 
 document.title = "This is a random page title";
 }; 

 window.onblur = function () { 
 isTabActive = false; 
 document.title = "Come Back!";
 }; 

 // test
 setInterval(function () { 
 console.log(window.isTabActive ? 'active' : 'inactive'); 
 }, 2000);
 </script>

In case you want to test this Javascript out together the Golang, please run the code below and point your browser to localhost:8080, open a new tab and you will instantly see that the page title change to "Come back!".

 package main

 import (
  "net/http"
 )

 func Homepage(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
  html := `

 <title>This is a random page title</title>

 <script type="text/javascript">
 var isTabActive;

 window.onfocus = function () { 
 isTabActive = true; 
 document.title = "This is a random page title";
 }; 

 window.onblur = function () { 
 isTabActive = false; 
 document.title = "Come Back!";
 }; 

 // test
 setInterval(function () { 
 console.log(window.isTabActive ? 'active' : 'inactive'); 
 }, 2000);
 </script>`

  w.Write([]byte(html))
 }

 func main() {
  mux := http.NewServeMux()
  mux.HandleFunc("/", Homepage)

  http.ListenAndServe(":8080", mux)
 }