The status bar is an optional horizontal display at the bottom of your browser window. You can turn it off (look under View) but if you get in the habit of watching it, you’ll find it a useful tool. When you hold your mouse over a link, the status bar will display the linking URL. And in most browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Netscape Navigator) the status bar displays a progress message when loading a new page that lets you know when the page is fulled loaded.