Message style attributes

Message style presentation attributes apply to an error or message.

Pseudo selectors ":message" or ":error" can be used to specify a different style for text displayed with the ERROR and MESSAGE instructions.

These pseudo selectors have to be used with the Message class: "Message:error" corresponds to the ERROR instruction, and "Message:message" corresponds to the MESSAGE instruction.

The ERROR and MESSAGE instructions have been extended to let you specify a STYLE attribute in the ATTRIBUTES clause:

MESSAGE "No rows have been found." ATTRIBUTES(STYLE="info")

A limited set of common style attributes are supported for error/message display. In addition to the attributes described in the section, you can only define font style attributes for messages.

Like simple form fields, TTY attributes have a higher priority than style attributes. By default, ERROR has the TTY attribute REVERSE, which explains why ERROR messages have a reverse background even when you use a backgroundColor style attribute.

This table shows the presentation attributes for ERROR and MESSAGE instructions:

Table 1. Presentation attributes for ERROR and MESSAGE instructions
Attribute Description GDC CLIENT HTML5 CLIENT
position Defines the output type of the status bar message field.
Values can be:
  • "statusbar" (default): will display the text in the regular statusbar of the window.
  • "popup": will bring a window popup to the front; it should be used with care, since it can annoy the user.
  • "statustip": will add a small "down" arrow button that will show the popup once the user clicks on it. This can be useful to display very long text.
  • "both": will display the text in a popup window and then in the status bar.
Yes No
textFormat Defines the rendering of the content of the widget.
Possible values are:
  • "plain" (default): the value assigned to this widget is interpreted as plain text.
  • "html", it is interpreted as HTML (with hyper-links).
Yes No