This document covers the following topics:

• About the Style Sheet Editor

• Developing Style Sheets in Your User Interface Component

• Creating a New Style Sheet

• Opening an Existing Style Sheet

• Changing a Style Sheet

• Overview of Variables

• Regenerating Your Own Style Sheet from the Style Sheet Template

• Using a Version Control Tool

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About the Style Sheet Editor

All controls that are contained inside the control library are rendered using a style sheet. Ajax Developer delivers a variety of predefined styles but also allows to you to create your own styles sheets.

The Style Sheet Editor simplifies the creation of your own style sheets: on the one hand, you can define the very basic style elements (main colors to be used), and on the other hand, you can change a controls' style definition on the lowest level.

For information on how to define a style sheet in the Layout Painter, see Defining a Style Sheet.

For further information on style sheets, see Adapting the Look & Feel in Special Development Topics.

Developing Style Sheets in Your User Interface Component

Style sheets are part of your application's user interface and should therefore be maintained in a user interface component. When a user interface component is created, a subfolder named styles is automatically created in your user interface component. If you already have your own style sheets, copy them into this folder.

Remember to always use the Style Sheet Editor tool to modify the style. The file you need to check in into your version control systems is the *.info file. The *.css file is simply a build result of the *.info file.

Be sure to put your style sheet into this predefined folder styles. Then the styles will automatically be built when building your project and they will automatically be packaged with your application when creating a deployment file.

Creating a New Style Sheet

When you create and save a new style sheet, it is written to the styles subfolder of your user interface component.

To create a new style sheet

1. Use the New Style Sheet wizard to create a new style sheet.

   

   The following is shown:

   

   In the wizard, enter a name for your style, for example "MyStyle" and click Finish.

2. The Style Sheet Editor is opened with "MyStyle" as Variant name.

   Click Open.

   The following is shown:

   

3. Modify the values on the different tabs according to your requirements. See Changing a Style Sheet for information on the Style Details tab.

4. To save your changes, click the Save button.

   Note:
   Do not forget to click Save before closing the Style Sheet Editor or clicking the Other Variant button. Otherwise all changes will be lost without warning. When you choose the Other Variant button, you can open another style sheet or create another new style sheet. If you have not saved your input previously, it is lost.

   When you save a new style sheet for the first time, it is created in your style sheet directory with the extension .css.

Opening an Existing Style Sheet

Right-click the *.info file in the style subfolder of your user interface component and open it with the Style Sheet Editor.

To open an existing style sheet

1. When the Style Sheet Editor is open you can also select a style name via the Variant drop-down list box. The style sheets of this user interface component and the central style sheets of the Natural Ajax framework are shown in the drop-down list.

   Note:
   In addition to the style sheet names, the drop-down list box also shows the paths to the corresponding files in the file system.

2. Choose the Open button.

   The dialog with the style sheet definitions appears.

3. Modify the values on the different tabs according to your requirements. See Changing a Style Sheet for information on the Style Details tab.

   Note:
   When you choose the Other Variant button, the dialog is shown again which appears when you invoke the Style Sheet Editor. You can then open another style sheet or create a new style sheet. Any changes that you have applied after the last save are lost.

4. To save your changes, click the Save button.

Changing a Style Sheet

Ajax Developer provides an internal style template in which all the default style information is kept. A newly created style sheet is identical to this template. All style updates that you apply to your style sheet are stored within a separate file which has the extension info. For example, if you named your style sheet "MyStyle", your style sheet folder contains the file MyStyle.info.

When you edit a style sheet, you define the standard settings such as the font size on the General tab. All of the settings defined on the General tab are then assigned to individual controls on the Style Details tab via the corresponding variable (for example, @@FONTSIZE@@). See Overview of Variables.

To change an attribute value in a single style sheet class

1. Go to the Style Details tab.

2. Expand the tree on the left and select the name of a style sheet class.

   Or:
   In the Variable field select a specific variable from the list of variables.

   The tree in the left pane will be rebuilt if a variable is selected from the list. The tree then shows only style sheet classes that contain the selected variable.

   Expand the tree on the left and select the name of a style sheet class.

   The attributes for the selected class are shown on the right.

3. Select the attribute that you want to change.

   The line is marked as selected and the attribute name and value are now shown in the text boxes at the bottom.

4. Specify another value for the attribute in the text box at the bottom. For example, if you want to define another color, you can define a color value such as #FF0000 (instead of @@FONTCOLORDARK@@).

   You can also define a different name for a property. As soon as you choose the Update button, a new entry is created in the style sheet. This entry must be a valid CSS style sheet definition. For example, when you change the attribute name from color to background-color, this is a valid definition. When you specify an invalid attribute name, this will not have any effect. For example, when you change the attribute name from color to hello, this will not have any effect even though the new entry hello @@FONTCOLORDARK@@ will be created.

5. Choose the Update button.

   When you have changed a default entry of the style template, the changed information is now shown in bold in an additional line. For example:

   

   Notes:

   1. If you do not want to take over a property from the style sheet template, specify "DELETE" as the attribute value and choose the Update button. All attributes that are marked with "DELETE" are not included in your style sheet.
   2. If you want to take back a style update (that is: a change which is indicated by a bold line), delete the corresponding attribute value (that is: set it to blank) and choose the Update button. The bold line will disappear.

To change an attribute value in multiple classes

1. Go to the Style Details tab.

2. In the Variable field select a specific variable from the list of variables.

   The tree in the left pane will be rebuilt if a variable is selected from the list. The tree then shows only style sheet classes that contain the selected variable.

   To end the variable search you can choose the blank entry in the variable list.

3. Enter a new value.

   The currently used value of the selected variable is displayed in the Value field. You can change the value of the selected variable by entering a new value.

4. Choose the Change Variable button to apply your changes.

   The new attribute value will be applied to all style sheet classes using that variable

5. If a variable is updated by choosing the Update button, the icon (Refresh list) is activated to indicate that the search result that is currently displayed can be refreshed to display the most current results.

Overview of Variables

The following variables can be defined on the Style Details tab:

@@FONTCOLORDARK@@
@@FONTSIZE@@
@@FONT@@
@@LIGHTBACKGROUND@@
@@HEADLINEBACKGROUND@@
@@BORDERCOLOR@@
@@DARKBACKGROUND@@
@@TITLEBARBACKGROUND@@
@@FONTCOLORLIGHT@@
@@BUTTONHEIGHT@@
@@BUTTONIMAGE@@
@@BUTTONCOLOR@@
@@FONTCOLORINACTIVE@@
@@CONTROLERRORBACKGROUND@@
@@CONTROLEDITBACKGROUND@@
@@CONTROLDISPLAYBACKGROUND@@
@@LIGHTTITLEBARBACKGROUND@@
@@VARIANT@@
@@FIELDHEIGHT@@
@@FIELDBORDERCOLOR@@
@@CONTROLPOPUPINPUTONLYBACKGROUND@@
@@SHADEDDARKBACKGROUND@@
@@SELECTEDCELLBACKGROUND@@
@@SELECTEDBACKGROUND@@
@@EVENCELLBACKGROUND@@
@@ODDCELLBACKGROUND@@
@@TABAREALEFTPADDINGFIRST@@
@@TABAREALEFTPADDINGSECOND@@
@@EMPTYCELLBACKGROUND@@
@@SHADEDSELECTEDBACKGROUND@@
@@ODDCELLBACKGROUNDVAR1@@
@@EVENCELLBACKGROUNDVAR1@@
@@SELECTEDCELLBACKGROUNDVAR1@@
@@EMPTYCELLBACKGROUNDVAR1@@
@@ODDCELLBACKGROUNDVAR2@@
@@EVENCELLBACKGROUNDVAR2@@
@@SELECTEDCELLBACKGROUNDVAR2@@
@@EMPTYCELLBACKGROUNDVAR2@@
@@TITLEBARHEIGHT@@
@@COLORTOPIC1@@
@@COLORTOPIC2@@
@@COLORTOPIC3@@
@@COLORTOPIC4@@
@@COLORTOPIC5@@
@@COLORTOPIC6@@
@@COLORTOPIC7@@
@@COLORTOPIC8@@
@@COLORTOPIC9@@
@@COLORTOPIC10@@

Regenerating Your Own Style Sheet from the Style Sheet Template

From release to release, new controls are added to the control library. As a consequence, the style sheet template is typically enhanced with every new control (for example, new style classes are added). As your style changes are kept in a separate file which has the extension info, your style sheet can easily include the enhancements. If your styles are located in a subfolder styles of one of your user interface components, you simply have to rebuild your project to regenerate the style.

If you want to manually regenerate your style without doing a "build all" on the project level, do the following:

To regenerate your own style sheet manually

1. Open your style sheet in the Style Sheet Editor as described above.

2. Choose the Refresh button.

   The following command buttons are now shown: Selected Variant and All Variants.

3. Choose the Selected Variant button.

   Note:
   Choose the All Variants button if you want to regenerate all existing style sheets.

Using a Version Control Tool

If you want to secure your style sheets with a version control tool, it is sufficient to keep the files with the extension info under version control. The actual style sheet file (with the extension css) is just a generation result out of the INFO file.