Template:Fmbox/doc

This is the fmbox or footer & header message box template.

It can be used to build message boxes for system messages such as MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon. It can also be used for footer and header boxes on user pages and for editnotices.

This template works similarly to ambox and mostly uses the same parameters. The main differences are that this box is 100% wide and has different colour styles.

Usage
Simple usage example:

Complex example:

Footer and header message box types
The following examples use different type parameters but use no image parameters thus they use the default images for each type.

Other images
The default images shown above are mostly for testing and demonstration. In most cases it is more appropriate to use a more specific image or no image at all. These examples use the image parameter to specify an image other than the default image.

Special
Some other parameter combinations.

Parameters
List of all parameters:

type
 * If no type parameter is given the template defaults to type system. That means it gets a light grey background.

image
 * No parameter = If no image parameter is given the template uses a default image. Which default image it uses depends on the type parameter.
 * An image = Should be an image with usual wiki notation. 40px - 50px width are usually about right depending on the image height to width ratio. (But the message box can handle images of any size.) For example:
 * none = Means that no image is used.
 * none = Means that no image is used.

imageright
 * No parameter = If no imageright parameter is given then no image is shown on the right side.
 * An image = Should be an image with usual wiki notation. 40px - 50px width are usually about right depending on the image height to width ratio. (But the message box can handle images of any size.) For example:
 * Anything = Any other object that you want to show on the right side.
 * Anything = Any other object that you want to show on the right side.

id
 * Optional CSS id used by the entire message box table. Without quotation marks . Mostly meant to be used to tag a message box with its name, to make it easy to detect the presence of the message from javascript. For instance MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer would use:

class
 * Optional CSS class names used by the entire message box table. Without quotation marks . Mostly meant to be used to tag a message box with its name so it can be individually skinned. For instance MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer would use:

style
 * Optional CSS values used by the entire message box table. Without quotation marks  but with the ending semicolons  . For example:

textstyle
 * Optional CSS values used by the text cell. For example:

text
 * The message body text.

Technical details
This template currently uses hard coded styles and class names. Later it will only use CSS classes making it easier to skin. (In the meantime it can be skinned by using the " " keyword.)

If you need to make a box that is less than 100% wide, then do not use this box, instead use the ombox. Since this box doesn't have the "1px empty image cell" code that makes it so the other mboxes get proper box flow in all browsers when less than 100% wide.

If you need to use special characters in the text parameter then you need to escape them like this:

&lt;/nowiki>. And now a pipe and end braces &lt;nowiki>|}}&lt;/nowiki>. }}

. And now a pipe and end braces |}}. }}

Internally this meta-template uses HTML wikimarkup instead of wikimarkup for the table code. That is the usual way we make meta-templates since wikimarkup has several drawbacks. For instance it makes it harder to use parser functions and some special characters in parameters.

The default images for this meta-template are in png format instead of svg format. The main reason is that some older web browsers have trouble with the transparent background that MediaWiki renders for svg images. The png images here have hand optimised transparent background colour so they look good in all browsers. Note that svg icons only look somewhat bad in the old browsers, thus such hand optimisation is only worth the trouble for very widely used icons.

Note to admins: MediaWiki does not parse and convert HTML wikimarkup in system messages the same way as it does for normal pages. This means for instance that  is not automatically converted to   and missing   and   tags are not automatically added. Thus see to that any HTML code you use in system messages are valid XHTML. That is, close all tags that you begin. However, regular wikimarkup works fine in most system messages.

For more technical details see the talk page. Since this template works almost exactly like ambox, tmbox, imbox, cmbox and ombox their talk pages and related pages might also contain more details.