How to Display Component Messages Inline

Displaying Tips, Messages, and Help 17-11 ■ label : Enter the label text to be displayed for the group of components. ■ for : Use the dropdown menu to choose Edit. In the Edit Property dialog, select the ID of the child input component. If there is more than one input component, select the first component. Set the for attribute to the first inputComponent to meet accessibility requirements. If one or more of the nested input components is a required component and you want a marker to be displayed indicating this, set the showRequired attribute to true. 4. To place content in the End facet, drag and drop the desired component into the facet. Because facets accept one child component only, if you want to add more than one child component, you must wrap the child components inside a container, such as a panelGroupLayout or group component.

17.5 Displaying Help for Components

ADF Faces provides a framework that allows you to create and display three different types of help whose content comes from an external source, rather than as text configured on the component. Because it is not configured directly on the component, the content can be used by more than one component, saving time in creating pages and also allowing you to change the content in one place rather than everywhere the content appears. The first type of external help provided by ADF Faces is Definition help. Like a standard tip, the content appears in a message box. However, instead of appearing when the user mouses over the component, Definition help provides a help icon a blue circle with a question mark. When the user mouses over the icon, the content is displayed, as shown in Figure 17–17 . Figure 17–17 Definition Text for a Component Table 17–1 shows the components that support Definition help. Tip: If the facet is not visible in the visual editor: 1. Right-click the panelLabelAndMessage component in the Structure window. 2. From the context menu, choose Facets - Panel Label And Message facet name . Facets in use on the page are indicated by a checkmark in front of the facet name. 17-12 Web User Interface Developers Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework The second type of help is Instruction help. Where Instruction help is displayed depends on the component with which it is associated. The panelHeader and Search panel components display Instruction help within the header. Figure 17–18 shows how the text that typically is displayed as Definition help as shown in Figure 17–17 would be displayed as Instruction help within the panelHeader component. Figure 17–18 Instruction Text for panelHeader All other components that support Instruction help display the text within a note window, as shown in Figure 17–19 . Note that no help icon is displayed. Figure 17–19 Instruction Text for a Component Table 17–2 shows the components that support Instruction help. Table 17–1 Components That Support Definition Help Supported Components Help Icon Placement Example All input components, Select components, Choose Color, Choose Date, Query components Before the label, or if no label exists, at the start of the field Panel Header, PanelBox, Show Detail Header End of header text Panel Window, Dialog Next to close icon in header Columns in table and tree Below header text