Template:Cmbox/doc

This is the Cmbox ([C]ategory [m]essage [box]) metatemplate.

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

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

Usage
Simple usage example:

Complex example:

Category 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 convenience. In many cases it is more appropriate to use more specific images. These examples use the image parameter to specify an image other than the default images.

Special
Some other parameter combinations.

Parameters
List of all parameters:

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

imageright
 * No parameter = If no imageright parameter is given, no image is shown on the right side.
 * An image = Should be an image with usual wiki notation. 40px - 50px width is 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.

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:

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 no.

text
 * The message body text.

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 cmbox CSS classes in MediaWiki:Common.css for most of its looks, thus it is fully skinnable.

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 the other mboxes, their talk pages and related pages might also contain more details (see the See also section below).