Category:Box drawing templates
Box drawing templates are templates that are used to provide boxes for content. They are arranged in a hierarchy from the most general to the most specific.
List of box drawing templates
General box drawing templates
This is the most general box-drawing template. It should be used only if you need complete control over the style and positioning of the box; you would normally use an intermediate box drawing template, which invokes this template with many of the arguments supplied for you leaving only the colour for you to worry about.
Intermediate box drawing templates
- Template:SideBox - presents a box for supplementary material, floated off to one side
- Template:TextBox - presents an inline box for important material
- Template:FullBox - presents a full-width box for important material
These are the most commonly used manual box-drawing templates. They invoke the general box drawing template and provide many of the required arguments, so that you only need to specify colour(s).
You should use one of these if you want a box with a particular colour.
Specific box drawing templates
- Template:AlertBox - red box for urgent alerts
- Template:CritBox - orange box for serious problems
- Template:WarnBox - yellow box for less urgent warnings
- Template:InfoBox - blue box for informational messages
- Template:WelcomeBox - green box for confirmations etc
- Template:NeutralBox - grey box for everything else
These are used to provide standardised boxes of specific colours for certain common types of alert. They invoke the intermediate full-width box drawing template and provide all of the required arguments except the content.
You should use one of these if you want a box for a particular type of content.
Precooked boxes
- Template:Tag - standardised box (and content) for tagging a page, article or section
This is the most specific box of all. It is used to generate the standardised tags used on many pages such as "trash related", "marked for speedy deletion", and so on..
You should use this if you just want a standard message box.
Which type of box should I use?
You should use the most specific box that is appropriate for what you want to put in it.
Consider the type of content. Is what youre communicating really an informational message related to the page content? Then of course use an InfoBox. Or do you just want it to look blue? Then use a FullBox (or one of the other intermediate ones). Using the wrong kind of box creates redundancy and legacy encumbrance; and worst of all, you will get a rolled-up newspaper across the snout.
What should I put in my box?
You can put anything you like in your box - its your box, after all.
However, the standard layout for this type of box has an image icon on the left or, less frequently, the right, a brief heading and a short text body. For most box drawing templates, you can use Template:BoxContent to take care of all this for you; however, if youre using the precooked Template:Tag, then you dont need to do anything, as it is populated automagically.
More information
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