Template:Tmbox/doc

This is the tmbox or talk page message box meta-template.

It is used to build message box templates for talk pages, such as central etc. It offers several different colours, uses default images if no image parameter is given and it has some other features.

This template works similarly to ambox and uses the same parameters.

Suggested style standard
The styles of talk page message boxes and the usage of this template are currently being standardised and discussed on the talk page of this template. Thus don't use this meta-template for real message boxes yet, but feel free to use it for testing. (The discussions that led to the creation of this template is available at the talk page of imbox.)

A number of alternative suggestions for the styles of this template (and thus for all talk page message boxes) are now shown at Template:Tmbox/styles with a special talk page to discuss the different designs.

Talk page message box types
These are the colours and styles that this meta-template currently produces. When this template is used to build actual message boxes they should contain the same (long) texts as before, with links to explanations and they can use more specific images than the default images shown here.

Note that the vast majority of talk page message boxes are expected to use the "notice" type and thus will look the same as they did before.

A number of alternative suggestions for these styles are now shown at Template:Tmbox/styles with a special talk page to discuss the different designs. Discussion about this meta-template is also ongoing at its talk page.

Usage
Simple usage example:

Complex example:

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
 * An optional CSS value used by the entire message box table. Without quotation marks . For example:

textstyle
 * An optional CSS value used by the text cell. For example:

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 are 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 are 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
This template currently uses hard coded styles. Later it will use CSS classes enabling it to be skinned.

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 calls tmbox/core which holds most of the code for tmbox, while tmbox 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.

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