Read Only appearance

[CaseyR]

Is there a way to set the appearance of read only field prompts globally?  I make extensive use of fields that are conditionally hidden, but I am finding this makes the page very jumpy for the user.  Conditional read only functions fine, but the user only finds out a field is read only when they try to enter something.

Is there a separate style sheet used for the prompts of read only entries?  Something that can be globally applied and if so any suggestions for getting the 'greyed out' look'.

Many thanks.

[CaseyR]

Sorry. Forgot to add using NT 4.49 but updating to NT 5 soon.

[Rene Simons]

Hi Casey,

Why don't you define the field as display?
That way you can make it look like regular "output text" so the user won't get confused.

E.g. Just type an equate for the field, define it as display.
In the Text-tab, set the sessionvar for the field in the value to display.
When you want the text to look bold, type 'FormPrompt' in NTWS4.xx or 'nt-prompt' in NTWS5

Cheers,
Rene

[CaseyR]

Thanks, Rene, but not quite what I was looking for.

The fields in question receive user input conditionally so a Display control won't really work.  The conditional read only works really well, it just doesn't look different from non-read only.   And being lazy, I was hoping to define the appearance change at a global level rather defining each field.   I think there is a way, so I will spend some time digging through generated code and post anything I figure out.

Thanks again for the response.   

[Rene Simons]

Hi,
There is a possibility withe changing the style.
Rene

[CaseyR]

For the sake of anyone following this thread, I have done some more digging in NT 4 and figured out there is probably a way to achieve global read only style, but doing it is ugly.  It involves not just creating a read only style, but changes to the base NetTalk Web Server templates and class.  As I said, not pretty.  I am going to leave this alone until after I update to NT 5.

[Bruce]

Hi Casey,

yes, it's easy to do in NT5, not so easy to do in NT4.

cheers
Bruce