[patch] error_message_on should use SPAN not DIV

I concur that it is probably better to use SPAN elements, but... this will break backwards-compatibility for all those who already use self-made stylsheets.

Besides it's really not a "CSS hack", but a one liner to change the behaviour: div.someclass { display:inline; } 

So I'd vote to leave this as-is.

Re - display:inline is fix

True, but you also have to have the surrounding container set as display:inline for it to work in IE6. Which means your vertical spacing is now totally messed up on the blank form (no gaps between paragraphs) unless you are using tables.

And if you allow backwards compatibility to determine your bug-fix policy, you are on a long and very slippery slope! But a compromise: error_messages_on() acts as now, but the error_messages_on(:span, ...) does the obvious thing.

Cheers,

Jerry

small patch that selects span tag if use_span is true

This effects the form helpers too. You can't put DIV tags inside P tags - it's invalid HTML. You can't fix it with CSS.

The current state of affairs means you effectively can't use P tags around form fields created by the helpers. Unless I'm missing something this has got a be bad. I vote for making it all configurable by options (tag to use, classes to set, etc.) with the defaults as now for backwards compatibility.

Yeah, the use of DIVs for fieldWithErrors definitely breaks our site's HTML validation. Goynang's right; this isn't just a problem in error_message_on.

You can customize this yourself. From actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/active_record_helper.rb:

module ActionView
  class Base
    @@field_error_proc = Proc.new{ |html_tag, instance| "<div class=\"fieldWithErrors\">#{html_tag}</div>" }
    cattr_accessor :field_error_proc
  end

In, e.g., your config/environment.rb, you can do, e.g.:

ActionView::Base.field_error_proc = Proc.new {|html_tag, instance|  %(<span class="field-with-errors">#{html_tag}</div>)}

What marcel proposed when he closed the ticket was unrelated to this ticket. This ticket is about error_message_on() using DIVs, not fields with errors.

I request an additional parameter to be introduced to error_message_on() that allows us to specify either one of the following:

• a different HTML tag to be used
• prepend/append HTML
• a Proc that produces the HTML

Thanks, and please forgive me for reopening this ticket.