Using Spacers to separate plugin parameters in Joomla 2.5

In our last article, we showed you how to use fieldsets to divide parameter settings in a Joomla 2.5 plugin. Within each feildset, you can use spacers to help divide the parameters even further.

Look at the following sample code:

<fieldset name="basic">
    <field name="text-options" type="spacer" default="Text Settings" label="&lt;b&gt;Text Settings&lt;/b&gt;" description="Text Settings" />
        <field name="alt-text"  type="text" default="" label="Alternative Text" description="Besides Hello World, you can specify other text here to print to the screen instead." />
    <field name="font-options" type="spacer" default="Font Settings" label="&lt;b&gt;Font Settings&lt;/b&gt;" description="Font Settings" />
        <field name="color" type="radio" default="black" description="Which color should the message be displayed in?" label="Color">
            <option value="black">black</option>
            <option value="red">red</option>
            <option value="blue">blue</option>
        </field>
        <field name="font-size" type="list" default="12" description="What size font should the message use?" label="Font size">
            <option value="8">8px</option>
            <option value="12">12px</option>
            <option value="16">16px</option>
        </field>
</fieldset>

Highlighted in red are two fields with a type of spacer, type="spacer". You can see in the screenshot below how spacers can be used to divide parameters.