Before and After text for fields

It is possible to add text to the field value before or after the field value. There are not many good reasons to do this:

  • Repeated static text just clogs up the screen, headings are better.
  • Adding html for styling reasons is not suggested.
  • Better to style with css.

However let us assume for example that you wish to add the text ‘Born: ‘ to every Birthdate field with content. You can add it to the ‘before’ text of the Configure list> Before & After tab. See screen shots below.

Note that:

  • This ‘before’ text is not shown if the field is empty.
  • Note that the text becomes part of the field value.The full text is included in the cache and the csv and excel extracts.
  • It is strongly suggested that you do NOT use this feature for styling. CSS is a better way to style fields. There are a lot of meaningful css selectors offered in the user lists so that one can target almost any field.
  • It is also possible to keep the field values clean for csv and excel and to use css to add the extra text. This can be done using the before and after pseudo elements. These pseudo elements can also be used to hide and replace content as you can see on this user list demo page where the field content can be replaced by text or an image.
Specifying the text to display before a field
The ‘before’ text is displayed when there is a value in the field
In the current ‘cache’ versions the ‘before’ and ‘after’ text is included in the cache and the csv (historical reasons).
An alternative to adding text in the configuration, is to add the extra text via css, so that it does not appear in the csv or excel extracts.