Hi Pete, Cheers for the tip. I'd seen that but my components are in simple="true" mode so I lose this sort of behaviour. I can't really change this either since: 1. simple="false" causes most components to use tables for their layout and this has implications for accessibility/screen readers etc. therefore I am avoiding it like the plague; 2. my screen design is sensitive to changes in the size of the fields - my fields are constrained to a relatively small space, so any expansion of my fields' real estate due to error messages will cause problems with layout; 3. Yes, I would need to customise the l&f. A custom skin would probably allow this, but the <s:decorate> offers the ideal solution in that I can report errors globally and then use simple field highlighting (say, change border colour or add a small icon) to draw attention to the offending field. Are you familiar with the <s:validateAll> <s:decorate> UI tag code? I might look to creating a patch to handle Trinidad components - I wonder if making this modification is simple or potentially opening a huge can of worms? Cheers, Chris. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4020071#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...