15.9.2011 6:29, Dark Phoenix wrote:
I want to be able to add hints to any form elements that may need them, and have them only show up when they're needed (using some sort of hover mechanism).
That's an interesting and important issue but largely outside the scope of CSS. Or, rather, just a part of it is CSS, and the design issue and other implementation issues need to be solved first, before the CSS aspects can be discussed. In design, CSS considerations may be important, because the impossibility or difficulty of doing some things in CSS may affect the design choices. But I don't think that's the case here.
I do know that I'm going to indicate errors with a popup on the right side of the form element (that shows up when the element is focused or the error icon which will appear on the right side of the field is hovered), so I'm not sure if putting the information indicator to the right of the element is the right move.
Well that's a design issue too, but styling may help: if you use the same notification area for both status information and error messages, you could style it differently depending on contents. For example, error messages with red borders and yellow background.
Instead of popup, it has become more common to use information areas that become visible or change content as controlled by JavaScript and CSS. (Popups may annoy people, may get blocked etc.) Yet another possibility is to use <iframe> for them, as that way things can work without JavaScript.
I don't want to start a discussion on such design issues in this list - just mention a few of alternatives, to illustrate why it's too early to discuss CSS aspects - the different approaches have rather different CSS implications.
-- Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [[email protected]] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
