Integrating APEX items into an HTML Login Screen

Question

I've just been presented with an attractive html login screen that our art department has created for our new application. The only problem is that the art department doesn't know a thing about APEX. They've drawn a nice looking screen using several images laid out into tables and even included an html form for the login credentials.<br>
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I'd really like to use as much of their page as possible and I'm close to getting something that at least looks like it might work. I've encapsulated the entire thing into htp.p statements inside of a PL/SQL region on my Login page. I've removed their form elements and placed my own fields using HTMLDB_ITEM.TEXT calls. I also believe that I will be able to read back the values using calls to HTMLDB_APPLICATION.G.Fxx for each of my IDX values. I haven't tested that part yet, but it seems like it should work.<br>
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The part that has me stumped right now is modifying the TEXT item into a PASSWORD item type. I've tried adding type="password" into the attributes parameter and I do see that in the page source, but it's after the default type="text" statement and is therefore ignored. The statement I'm executing for my password field is: <br><br><b>htp.p(htmldb_item.text(22,NULL,30, 100, 'type="password" onkeypress="return submitEnter(this,event)"', 22, 'Password:'));</b><br>
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It doesn't seem like there is much reason to go on if I can't hide the contents of my password field, so I though I should ask for some advice before going too much further.<br>
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Am I missing a better way to override the item type here, or is there a better way to place my login fields at specific locations inside of an existing html document? I can get the fields above, below or next to their page but that looks terrible. I could also break up their page into a top section and a bottom section with my fields in a middle region, but that would also ruin the look of the page.<br>

Answer 1

Hi, Etown88.
You've learned two important lessons:
1. Undocumented features are undocumented for a reason.
2. Never try "tricks" you read in magazines or on the Web unless they also clearly specify how to undo the trick. In fact, you should skip tricks like this: review Lesson 1 above.
The specific "trick" you cite was in Macworld recently and can be found on their web site here and here, the latter under the heading "Make your login window informative".
You'll also note at the end of the second article that it contains a correction: sometimes tricks have typos that can really ruin your day.
The "trick" probably originated as a post on the Mac OS X Hints site since the column was written by Rob Griffiths who runs that site.
To "undo" this, simply specify HostName, which is the default:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo HostName
This is stated in the articles cited above, but one has to realize it as its stated subtly, e.g."• HostName to show the default display"Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X