You could also create your own validator widget based on kendo's. I have managed to do that and added these highlight, unhighlight and errorPlacement as events of the validator

Hey I was wondering if there has been any update on this. Would it help if I were to make a fork of the kendo source that implemented an ad-hoc version of this for you to see?

The problem is not the actual messages, those I knew we could customize. The problem is the way they are drawn to the screen.

Most of the time - especially in modern day web development where we want to be able to target mobile screen sizes, screen real estate is extremely important. For that reason, a simple baked solution of "add a div after the form element with the error message" is hardly sufficient.

Making things like tool tips has proven - while possible - far more difficult than it needs to be. In order to do tool tips for error messages, I basically had to insert a kendo template in the page that generates javascript code in line, and assign that template to the template part of the error validator.

Does this work? Yes. It does; But it's obscure, and obtuse. The ability to do javascript inline in templates is something I do not mind using, but it ought to be reserved for very important tasks that should require it - I'm of the personal opinion that something this trivial should not require it.

Take a look at how jQuery Validate handles its error displays; http://jqueryvalidation.org/validate/

Look at the `errorPlacement: function(error, element)` function. This, coupled with the `highlight` and `unhighlight` functions provides everything necessary to completely control every aspect of the way errors are presented to the user.

I do realize that there is the ability to do a custom template, but I truly feel this is not sufficient. I want - very, very badly - to use Kendo's Validator instead of jQuery Validate, because it works so seamlessly with the Kendo widgets without a lot of extra markup. But the limitation of having to do so much manual labor just to make it looks slightly different is extremely infuriating. I feel this is a very easy fix to make; If I felt that the Kendo team would ratify it into the final build, I may even try to do it myself and submit it - but it is an extremely simple change that would dramatically re-invent the usefulness of the validator because the user has a new, extremely flexible level of control over the output.

Right now, you have to use a template - which means some obscure javascript in some rather obtuse syntax, etc. etc. It works, sure... but it just doesn't work very well, for me.