Choose colours with enough contrast between them. A dark background with light text (the default) reads well on both phones and desktops.
Simple HTML works too, the same as in the footer and property widgets: <strong>bold</strong>, <em>italics</em>, <a href="/contact">a link</a>, <br/>. Links take the bar's own text colour. Headings, lists and paragraphs lose the spacing they would have elsewhere so they sit on the strip, but each still takes its own line — a two-item list is two lines, and the bar grows to fit.
Press Enter in the message box to break the line: every break you type shows on the site exactly where you put it, including one sitting between two tags. So if you write HTML across several lines to keep it readable, those blank lines show up too — keep it on one line instead.
Scripts, iframes and the obvious inline event handlers are stripped before the page is sent. Treat the field as trusted all the same: it is a place for your own HTML, not a sandbox that will catch every mistake.
One caveat that comes with HTML: anything shaped like a tag is read as one. Write to <info@example.com> loses the address, because <info@example.com> looks like markup — leave the angle brackets out. A lone < followed by a space or a digit, as in Discounts < 50%, is safe.
The bar wraps onto more lines on narrow screens rather than cutting the message off, so a long announcement pushes the rest of the page further down on a phone. One short sentence still works best.
Leaving the message empty hides the bar even when the switch is on — clearing the text is a quick way to take an announcement down and keep the colours for next time.
Typing something in a HEX field that is not a colour is replaced with the default when you save, so the field always shows the colour the bar is actually using. Both the full #1A5276 form and the short #1A5 form are accepted.
