[Rails] Rails 3.1 - Need to show a JS pop-up with the contents of a field - can it be easily done?

Wow! Walter, thank you so much for taking the time to put all this
together for me.

I've looked it over, and although my JS skills are meager at best, I
believe I see the mechanism now. This is the piece of your code that
helped me see the bridge between JS and my model data, namely 'title' :
if (elm = evt.findElement('span.more')){
$('message').update(elm.readAttribute('title'));
$('overlay').show();
}else if(elm = evt.findElement('#overlay')){
elm.hide();
}

I don't think I would have got it without seeing this code segment tied
into my example. Thanks again. Very, very much appreciated.

Don