Alert dialog box

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An alert dialog is a colloquial (though commonly accepted) term for a particular type of dialog box that occurs in a graphical user interface. It is also known as an alert box, alert window, or alert popup.

The typical alert dialog provides information in a separate box to the user, after which the user can only respond in one way: by closing it. Closing an alert dialog will provide access to the original window, which is not available while the alert dialog is presented.

[edit] Example

alert() is the name of the method used in JavaScript to spawn an alert dialog. The argument to the method is the text to be displayed in the window.

A dialog created this way will contain a yellow triangle warning symbol (similar to those found on electrical devices), the text of the warning message, and a single button saying "OK" which will close the window.

Such a dialog also assumes control over the user interface, preventing the user from proceeding with any other task in the application until the dialog window is closed.

Used along with a technique to execute it in a web page, the following JavaScript code:

alert('This alert dialog tells you something important.');

will create the following alert dialog (when viewed with Mozilla running on Windows XP):