Totally good for now (and I will merge as such), but in the future I prefer to pass in optional arguments like this via an options hash, where the defaults are set immediately inside the method, e.g.:

    def attention_tag(messages, type, options={})
      options[:classes] ||= ''
      ...
      content_tag :div, :class => "ui-widget #{options[:classes]}" do

That way we can add other options in the future (e.g. an "id" option) without breaking the interface or relying on unclear argument orders.