Template:Ombox/doc

This is the Ombox ([O]ther pages [m]essage [box]) metatemplate.

It is used to build message box templates for pages of the types User, Wikipedia, MediaWiki, Template, Help, Portal and any new future namespaces; i.e. for page types not covered by Ambox, Tmbox, Imbox or Cmbox. Thus, it should not be used for boxes for articles, talk pages, image pages or category pages.

This template works almost exactly like Ambox and uses the same parameters.

Introduction
As noted above, this template should be used for message boxes that are not articles, talk pages, image pages or category pages. Some message boxes for other pages may incorrectly use one of those four mentioned. Feel free to convert any message boxes used on "other pages" to use this meta-template. If you find any tricky cases then list them on the talk page of this template and you'll get help.

When this template is used to build other pages message boxes those boxes should contain explanatory texts just like before. (The same texts as before or new improved texts.) If there are more specific images in the boxes or you know a better image, then use them instead of the default images shown here.

Usage
Simple usage example:

Complex example:

Other pages message box types
The following examples use different type parameters but use no image parameters; thus, they use the default images for each type.

Examples
Some examples using the "notice" style:

Parameters
List of all parameters:

type
 * If no type parameter is given the template defaults to type notice. That means it gets a gray border.

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.

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

textstyle
 * Optional Cascading Style Sheets values used by the text cell. For example:

plainlinks
 * Normally on Wikipedia, external links have an arrow icon next to them, like this: Example.com. However, in message boxes, the arrow icon is suppressed by default, like this: Example.com . To get the normal style of external link with the arrow icon, use para|plainlinks|no.

text
 * The message body text.

The small parameters
small
 * yes = Makes it a smaller right floating message box. This also makes the default images smaller. Note that any data fed to the smallimage, smallimageright and smalltext parameters is only used if "small=yes". To make it so your template also understands the small parameter you can use this code:

smallimage
 * No parameter = If no smallimage parameter is given then this template falls back to use the image parameter. If the image parameter also is empty then a small default image is used.
 * An image = Should be an image with usual wiki notation. 30px width is usually about right. For example:
 * none = Means that no image is used. This overrides any image fed to image, when "small=yes".
 * none = Means that no image is used. This overrides any image fed to image, when "small=yes".

smallimageright
 * No parameter = If no smallimageright parameter is given then this template falls back to use the imageright parameter. If the imageright parameter also is empty then no image is shown on the right side.
 * An image = Should be an image with usual wiki notation. 30px width is usually about right. For example:
 * Anything = Any other object that you want to show on the right side.
 * none = Means that no right side image is used. This overrides any image fed to imageright, when "small=yes".
 * none = Means that no right side image is used. This overrides any image fed to imageright, when "small=yes".

smalltext
 * A shorter version of the message body text. If no smalltext parameter is given then this template falls back to use the text parameter.

Technical details
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 |}}. }}

This template uses the ombox CSS classes in MediaWiki:Common.css for most of its looks, thus it is fully skinnable.

This template calls tl|ombox/core which holds most of the code for ombox, while ombox itself does parameter preprocessing.

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

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