Banners and notices

Banners are added to some pages, in particular API reference, in order to highlight important factors that will affect how the described content is used. For example, banners are used to highlight when a particular interface, method or property is deprecated, and should not be used in production code.

This article describes the more important banners, and how they are added.

How to add a banner

Banners are added using macros. Banners macros should be inserted below the page metadata, alongside the page sidebar macro. For example, the {{SeeCompatTable}} macro is added below to indicate that the Ink API is Experimental. 

---
title: Ink API
slug: Web/API/Ink_API
page-type: web-api-overview
status:
  - experimental
browser-compat: api.Ink
---

{{DefaultAPISidebar("Ink API")}}{{SeeCompatTable}}

A page that has a banner will usually also have "complementary" page metadata. For example, a page that has {{SeeCompatTable}} should usually have the experimental status added too (as shown above) to ensure that it has appropriate icons in the sidebar.

Note: Banner macros do not depend on the metadata, but some other macro-inserted content does. For example, the {{Compat}} macro depends on the browser-compat metadata value.

What banners can/should be added

The Page type templates include the most important macros. In summary:

  • {{SeeCompatTable}} — generates a This is an experimental technology banner that indicates the technology is experimental. Also add status of experimental to the page front-matter.
  • {{Deprecated_Header}} — generates a Deprecated banner that indicates that use of the technology is discouraged. Also add status of deprecated to the page front-matter.
  • {{Non-standard_Header}} — generates a Non-Standard banner that indicates that use of the technology is not part of a formal specification, even if it is implemented in multiple browsers. Also add status of non-standard to the page front-matter.
  • {{SecureContext_Header}} — this generates a Secure context banner that indicates the technology is only available in a secure context.