<Insert Picture Here>

Advanced Oracle ADF

Oracle A-Team

Layout Managers and Skins

Layout Managers

Introduction to layout managers

• The case for layout managers• We are not web designers! • Abstraction from HTML (<div>, <table>,

<li>, etc.)• Consistent layout behavior• Consistent behavior across browsers• Manages browser geometry (stretching

and flowing)

Working with layout managers

• To stretch or to flow?

• Stretching• Maximizes browser’s viewport usage• Can also stretch its child components

• Flowing• Isolated components not supposed to stretch

• Where do I start?• Start with a stretchable outer frame• Inside this frame, have flowing islands, e.g., scrollable areas

Stretchable UI example

Flowing (fixed size) UI example

UI layout with JSF – general tips

• Try to minimize the number of layout containers on the page. It will make it smaller and faster.

• Minimize the number of components you need to stretch; it will make the page faster

• Use spacer instead of padding/margin*

• Use JDev built-in page style gallery

• Make sure to test everything in multiple browsers. Yes, it can still behave differently.

(* instructor‘s note)

Poetry of

Wisdom

“The cost of geometry management is directly

related to the complexity of child components.

Therefore, try minimizing the number of child

components that are under a parent geometry-

managed component. ”Oracle® Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide - Chapter 8, section 8.2.1.

Stretchable Layout Managers

af:panelStretchLayout af:panelSplitter

af:panelGroupLayout af:panelDashboard

Flow vs Stretch

Poetry of

Wisdom

“You cannot place components that cannot stretch into

facets of a component that stretches its child

components. Therefore, if you need to place a

component that cannot be stretched into a facet of the

panelStretchLayout component, wrap that component

in a transition component that can stretch (eg,

panelGroupLayout=scroll).”

Oracle® Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide - Chapter 8, section 8.2.2.

Page layout containers cheat sheet Stretchable by Parent ? Stretch its children?

panelStretchLayout YES YES

panelSplitter YES YES

panelGroupLayout(scroll, vertical)

YES NO

panelGroupLayout(default, horizontal)

NO NO

panelFormLayout NO NO

panelBorderLayout NO NO

panelDashboard YES YES (inside a grid; see also

panelBox)

panelTabbed YES YES(stretchChildren=“first”)

ADF Faces Page Layout – DONTS

Do NOT embed raw HTML in your pages.

Do NOT use inlineStyle. Use skinning instead or at least a

peer CSS file. Use the af:resource tag

Do NOT try to stretch something vertically when inside of a

flowing (non-stretched) container.

Do NOT specify a height value with percent unit.

Do NOT use the position style.

Poetry of

Wisdom

“Do not attempt to stretch any of the

components in the list of components that

cannot stretch by setting their width to 100%.

You may get unexpected results. Instead,

surround the component to be stretched with

a component that can be stretched”

Oracle® Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide - Chapter 8, section 8.2.2.

Deconstructing Facebook

panelStretchLayout

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panelGroupLayout=“vertical”

panelGrouLayout=“horizontal”

Leverage JDeveloper Quick Layouts!

Page Templates

Page Templates

•Provides layout and behavior

•Layout

•Uses default ADF Faces layout managers

•Can have custom facets for content stamping

•Template is referenced, not compiled: easy to change at design time and run time

•Behavior

•Can have bindings

•Can have attributes

Code review

•Switching the template dynamically

<af:pageTemplate id=“pt1” viewId=“#{yourBean.templateURI}”>

<f:facet name=“Master”>[…]

</f:facet>

</af:pageTemplate> public class YourBeanClass{ […]

public String getTemplateURI(){

//Add your dynamic code here

return “/yourPageTemplate.jspx”;

} […]

}

TIP: viewId attribute can never be null; always use a fallback EL:

viewId=“#{empty bean.template ? ‘/defaultTemplate.jspx’ : beanTemplate}”

How JavaServer Faces Renders the UI

• JavaServer Faces components are display agnostic• Know about state• Know about behavior

• The component display is device specific handled by component renderers• External classes• One renderer per component• Device related renderers are grouped to renderer kits

• To customize a layout you don't change the renderer• ADF Faces provides CSS hooks instead

ADF Faces Rich Client Components

ADF Binding

ADF DataControl

RDBMS

EJB 3.0 Web Service BPEL …

Ajax Render

Kit UI Component

“bindings” ObjectExpr. Language

MODEL UI RENDERING

ADF Ajax Page Lifecycle

Client

About Skins

• A skin is a style sheet based on the CSS 3.0 syntax that is specified in one place for an entire application

• Developers can change the styles, icons, properties, and text of an ADF Faces component using skinning

• Skins use CSS to define the layout of ADF Faces and Trinidad components• Do not operate on HTML elements• Use component selectors

• Consistent change of the application look and feel• Skins are located relative to public_html directory• Skins consist of

• CSS file• Images• Localized strings

About Skins

• Any changes to the skin is picked up at runtime• No change to code is needed

• With custom skins, the component's default css styles like color, font, background-images, images , default text strings and component properties can be changed

• Each component has skinning 'hooks'• Also known as keys or selectors• Define what pieces of a component you can skin

• Skin information can be created for a particular agent orreading direction

• Skins automatically transform into the appropriate CSS-2 page and component styles

• Skins can be switched dynamically at runtime

Skin Examples

Skin Examples

<Insert Picture Here>

Cascading Style Sheets

Basics

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

• W3C Standard

• Current Version is CSS 3

• Separates Markup from Presentation

• Stores presentation definition in central location

• Helps reducing HTML page sizes

• Cascading rules define that local definitions overrule global rules

Document Object Model

• Document Object Model (DOM) is a W3C specification and represents an in memory hierarchy representation of the page

• In web pages, components may be nested in other components

• CSS definitions set on the inner component precede the definition on the parent component• If the parent component has defined styles that are not

explicitly overridden on the child component, then the child component inherits this style

• Styles are added through styling rules that impact a single component or many at once

CSS Rules

• CSS rules are applied to elements, attributes or ID selectors as property-value pairs• Selector{attribute:value; attribute2:value}• h1{color:red; background:yellow}

• Rules can be grouped• h1, h2, h3 {color:red; background:yellow}

• Element selectors• Markup identifers like table, h1, h2, h3, button etc

• Class selectors• .someClassName{color:red}• <p class="someClassName" >• h1.someClassName{color:red}

CSS Rules

• ID selectors• #SomeId {color:red}• <p id="SomeId">• Can only be used once per document because it is a unique

identifier

• Attribute selectors• h1 [class] references all <h1> elements that have a "class"

attribute• h1 [class = "value"] references all <h1> elements that have a

"class" attribute with exact the iven vaue• Allows to reference attributes with partial value matches as

well

CSS Pattern Matching

Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/selector.html

CSS in ADF Faces

• ContentStyle• controls the width of a form

control• Styles "box around value"• Works for

• Input components• listboxes • Choices• richTextEditor • Shuttle

• contentStyle applied to each list in a shuttle

CSS in ADF Faces

• StyleClass• Can be used in conjunction with

skinning• Applies styles to the root DOM

element• Can use EL for context specific

CSS

• InlineStyle• Styles the root DOM element• Can use EL for context specific

CSS

Adding Inline Styles Dynamically

• Reference InlineStyle string in managed bean method using EL

• In managed bean, access table cell value and determine CSS to return• Salary > 1000

background-color:greenwidth: 100 %height: 100 %

• Salary > 5000background-color:orangewidth: 100 %height: 100 %

• Salary > 10000background-color:redwidth: 100 %height: 100 %

<Insert Picture Here>

ADF Faces Skinning

Basics

How Skinning Works

• ADF Faces skins are created as server side CSS files using defined ADF Faces component Selectors

• The skinning framework processes the skin file and generates regular CSS-2 documents that are linked to the rendered page

• Skin selectors are resolved to CSS classes• af:inputText::label to af_inputText_label

Skinning vs. CSS

• In CSS the <p> element is styled• P {color: red }

• In ADF Faces the af:inputText component is styled using a skin selector• af|inputText {color:red }

• To skin pieces of a component, CSS uses the pseudo-element syntax• p::first-line { text-transform: uppercase }

• Pseudo-elements also exist in ADF Faces components like inputText• The entire component: af|inputText {...}• The label: af|inputText::label {}• The content (the input): af|inputText::content {}

Artefacts

• A skin consists of the following artifacts:

• A CSS file that defines the actual look of the components• A configuration file – trinidad-skins.xml - that lists all skins

available for this application • trinidad-skins.xml has to be located in your applications

WEB-INF directory• An entry in the ADF Faces configuration file – trinidad -

config.xml• Any other resources need to create the actual look of the

componets - additional CSS files, Images

<Insert Picture Here>

Developing Custom Skins

“Skinning is artwork. You cannot teach good taste, but you can show the techniques to achieve the goal ”

How-to build Custom Skins

• Consult the skin-selectors.html page for all skinning keys defined for each component and global keys

• Creates a skinning .css file that uses the skinning keys to style the icons, properties, and styles

• The CSS file for your skin must be stored under the root of your Web application

• Make sure that all resources like images and other CSS files required for the skin are accessible

How-to build Custom Skins

• Create a trinidad-skins.xml that gives the skin an id, family, render-kit-id, resource bundle

• Set the trinidad-config.xml's <skin-family> element value to the skin family name

• Place trinidad-skins.xml into WEB-INF directory or a JAR file's META-INF directory

Configuration in trinidad-config.xml

• Static name

• Expression

<trinidad-config

xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/config">

<skin-family>custom_de</skin-family>

</trinidad-config>

<trinidad-config

xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/config">

<skin-family>

#{facesContext.viewRoot.locale.language =='de' ?'custom_de' : 'custom_en'}

</skin-family>

</trinidad-config>

Skin Configuration Elements

• <id>• Used when referencing a skin in an EL expression

• <family>• Configures an application to use a particular family of skins

• <extends>• Extends an existing skin

• <render-kit-id>• Determines render kit to use for the skin

• org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.desktop• org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.pda

• <style-sheet-name>• Fully qualified path to the custom CSS file

• <bundle-name>• Not needed if no custom resource bundle exists

trinidad-skins.xml Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<skins xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/skin">

<skin>

<id>blafplus-rich-extended.desktop</id>

<family>blafplus-rich-extended</family>

<render-kit-id>org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.desktop

</render-kit-id>

<style-sheet-name>

skins/blafplus-rich-extended.css

</style-sheet-name>

<extends>blafplus-rich.desktop</extends>

<bundle-name>AdcsResourceBundle</bundle-name>

</skin>

</skins>

Creating a Custom Resource Bundle

• Replace default string labels of ADF Faces• Component labels• Validator message text

• Create message bundle class • Extending java.util.ListResourceBundle

public class AdcsResourceBundle extends ListResourceBundle {

public Object[][] getContents() { return contents; }

static final Object[][] contents =

{

{"af_dialog.OK","Okay"},

{"af_panelWindow.CLOSE", "Close"},

{"af_document.SPLASH_SCREEN_MESSAGE","Hello and Welcome"}};

}

Inherit from Selector

• -tr-rule-ref• Avoids CSS code duplication• Improves readability

.DarkBackground:alias{background-color:#323232}

.MediumBackground:alias{background-color:#707070}

af|document{

-tr-rule-ref:selector(".DarkBackground:alias");

}

af|panelTabbed::body {

-tr-rule-ref:selector(".MediumBackground:alias");

}

Inhibit Inheritance

• -tr-inhibit• inhibits styles from a base skin

• -tr-inhibit:all• -tr-inhibit:background-color• -tr-inhibit: …

af|document::splash-screen-content{

-tr-inhibit:background-image;

-tr-inhibit:background-repeat;

border:transparent;

background-color:transparent;

}

Skinning Keys

• Skin Selector• A skin key is used to style a component or components in an

application, not a particular instance • A skin key usually starts with af|, contains the name of the

component, the piece of the component to skin, via a pseudo-element • ::label• ::content • ::read-only

• A skin key might look like styleclass, but ends with :alias• skin keys can only be used in a Skinning CSS file • Skin key cannot be used in a component's styleClass attribute

Connecting the Dots

• "."• Do not use leading dot for selectors• Do not use leading dot in styleclass properties• Use to define style class in CSS files

• ":"• Refers to a CSS element of an ADF Faces or Trinidad component

• "::"• Refers to a part of the component• af|inputText::content

• Mixing styles• af|panelHeader af|inputText:content• Refers to the content part of a textfield in a panelHeader

Functionality Available to "Skinners"

• Skinning keys to skin pieces of a component, including icons

• Resource bundle keys to skin text of a component

• @platform {/skin definitions go here/}• Possible values are: windows, macos, linux, solaris, ppc • Does not work for icons

• @agent {/skin definitions go here/} - > • Possible values are: netscape, ie, mozilla, gecko, webkit , ice• Does not work for icons

• :lang or :locale

• :rtl pseudo-class to create a style or icon definition when the browser is in a right-to-left language

• :alias skinning keys

Using Images in Skins

• Absolute• .AFErrroIcon:alias {content: url(http://foo.com/images/err-logo.gif)};

• Relative• No protocol and no leading "/"• .AFErrroIcon:alias {content: url(images/err-logo.gif)};

• Context relative• Resolved relative to the web application context root• Starts with a single "/"• .AFErrroIcon:alias {content: url(/images/err-logo.gif)};

• Relative to server • Allows to reference resources that are not part of the application

deployment• URL starts with "//"• .AFErrroIcon:alias {content: url(//<folder>/images/err-logo.gif)};

Skin Custom Tree Icons

af|tree::expanded-icon

{

content: url(/skins/mycompany/skin_images/expand.gif);

width:16px;

height:16px;

}

af|tree::collapsed-icon

{

content: url(/skins/mycompany/collapse.gif);

width:16px;

height:16px;

}

<Insert Picture Here>

JDeveloper Skinning Support

Skin Development Support

• Code editing support• ADF Faces Skin Extension

• Tool > Preferences >CSS Editor• Check ADF Faces Extension

• Syntax Help• Image selection• Code Completion

• E.g. type "af|inputr" then press ctrl+Enter

• Code Folding• Collapses CSS style definitions• Mouse-over code info

Syntax Help

Skin Development Support

• Structure Window Support• Classes• Elements• ID• Use to navigate and

uncomment entries

• Error Margin• E.g. syntax error

Theme

• Provide a consistent look and feel across multiple components for a portion of a page

• A component that sets a theme, exposes that theme to its children components

• Common usage for themes is in a page template where certain areas have a distinct look• af:document• af:decorativeBox• af:panelStretchLayout• af:panelGroupLayout

Theme

• A theme is exposed to skinning developers as an attribute

• BLAF+ skins that provide theme support are medium and rich desktop skins • dark• medium• light• none (default)

af|panelTabbed[theme="dark"] {color: red;}

<af:document theme="dark">

<af:panelTabbed>...</af:panelTabbed>

</af:document>

Theme

• Enabling themes in web.xml

<context-param>

<param-name>

oracle.adf.view.rich.tonalstyles.ENABLED

</param-name>

<param-value>false</param-value>

</context-param>

<Insert Picture Here>

Component Skin Example

PanelBox Skin Selectors

• The panelBox component has attributes "ramp" and "background" to provide 8 color schemes • :core :highlight• :default, :light, :medium, :dark• Example: af|panelBox::header-center:core:medium

• Skin selectors• af|panelBox, af|panelBox::header-start, af|panelBox::header-center, af|

panelBox::header-end,af|panelBox::content,af|panelBox::icon-style, af|panelBox::disclosure-link,

• Alias• .AFPanelBoxHeaderCoreDefault:alias• .AFPanelBoxContentCoreDefault:alias• .AFPanelBoxHeaderCoreLight:alias • .AFPanelBoxContentCoreLight:alias• more ...

PanelBox Component Skin Example

af|panelBox {width:80%;}

af|panelBox::content {height: 200px;}

af|panelBox::header-start:core:default

{background-image:

url(/skins/images/ccont_p_header_start.png;

}

af|panelBox::header-center:core:default

{background-image:

url(/skins/images/ccont_p_header_bg.png);}

af|panelBox::header-end:core:default

{background-image:

url(/skins/images/ccont_p_header_end.png);}

<af:panelBox

icon="/skins/images/guy.gif"

text="PanelBox Skinned">

<f:facet name="toolbar"/>

</af:panelBox>

PanelBox Component Instance Skin Example• Use additional styleClass property value

• Class name doesn't need to exist

• Use style class name with skin selector• .panelBoxInstanceClass af|panelBox::disclosure-link

{ display:none;

} <af:panelBox

icon="/skins/images/guy.gif"

text="PanelBox Instance Skinned"

styleClass="panelBoxInstanceClass">

<f:facet name="toolbar"/>

</af:panelBox>

<af:panelBox

icon="/skins/images/guy.gif"

text="PanelBox - Skinned">

<f:facet name="toolbar"/>

</af:panelBox>

Contextual Skins

• Instance specific skins that are based on the page the component is in

• Components that are added on a template may need to be skinned based on the context they are in

• Use styleClass property on component• Reference class property by EL• Use Template parameters if componen part of a template

• Resolve context in managed bean

Contextual Skins

• Example: references the current view ID for instance specific skinning of a PanelBox that is part of a template

template

panelBox

page3 page2

panelBox

page1

CSS:

page1 af|panelBox::header-center:core:default

{background-image: url(/skins/images/ccont_p_blue_header_bg.png);}

af|panelBox::header-center:core:default

{background-image: url(/skins/images/ccont_p_header_bg.png);}

public String getViewId() {

FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();

String viewID = fctx.getViewRoot().getViewId();

return viewID.substring(1); }

<f:attribute name="viewIdString" value="#{bean.viewId}"/>

<af:panelBox styleClass="#{attrs.viewIdString}">

panelBoxpanelBox

<attribute>

<attribute-name>viewIdString</attribute-name>

<attribute-class>java.lang.String</attribute-class>

<default-value>"NONE"</default-value>

<required> true</required>

</attribute>

Changing the Splash Screen

• The Splash Screen can be skinned• Change image• Change load message• Change background color

From ... To ...

af|document::splash-screen-content{background-color:Green;}

af|document::splash-screen-icon {content:url("../images/cow.gif");}

Skin the Unskinnabel

• Some of the generated HTML is not accessible by a skin selector because it is an implementation detail of the component rendering

• How to skin a generated HTML fragment anyway?• Use your CSS knowledge

<body class="af_document p_AFMaximized">...

<div id="j_id__ctru1">

...

</div>

HTML Body

First DIV

Skin CSS

af|document > div { ... }

<Insert Picture Here>

Skin Deployment

Option 1: Adding the Skin Sources to the Application Sources

• The Skin definition file is contained in the application'sWEB-INF directory• Trinidad-skins.xml

• The skin CSS is located in the application's PUBLIC_HML directory

• The images are located relative to the CSS file• In PUBLIC_HTML directory• Subfolder of PUBLIC_HTML directory• Subfolder of CSS folder

• All sources are deployed with the application• Easy to do but hard to maintain if a consistent look and

feel should be ensured across applications

Option 2: Deploying a Custom Skin in a JAR file

• A skin can be deployed and developed separately from the application

• Specific rules must be followed when creating the JAR file• The trinidad-skin.xml file that defines the skin and that

references the CSS file must be within the META-INF directory

• All image resources and CSS files too must be under the META-INF directory

• The images - and this is important - must be in a directory that starts with an "adf" root directory or any directory name that is mapped in the web.xml file for the resource servlet.

• Place the JAR file in the WEB-INF/lib directory of the ViewLayer project of the application to deploy

How-to: Deploy Custom Skins in JAR (I)

• Create a directory structure similar to the following

• The image directory in the META-INF directory must start with "adf" or whatever string that is defined as the resource loader path in web.xml

c:\temp\META-INF\adf\oracle\skin\images

  META-INF\skins\custom.css

    META-INF\trinidad-skins.xml

af|inputColor::swatch-overlay-icon:rtl {

  content:url(../adf/oracle/skin/images/cfsortl.gif);

  width: 12; height: 12;

}

How-to: Deploy Custom Skins in JAR (II)

• trinidad-skin.xml file in the META-INF directory has the following content

• Example to create "custom" skin

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<skins xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/skin">

  <skin>

    <id>custom.desktop</id>

    <family>custom</family>

    <render-kit-id>org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.desktop</render-kit-id>

    <style-sheet-name>skins/custom.css</style-sheet-name>

  </skin>

</skins>

How-to: Deploy Custom Skins in JAR (III)

• Create jar file• jar -cvf customSkin.jar META-INF/

• Copy JAR file to WEB-INF\lib

• Configer trinidad-config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>

<trinidad-config xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/config">

  <skin-family>custom</skin-family>

</trinidad-config>

<Insert Picture Here>

Example: Skin Discovery at Runtime

Changing Skins at Runtime

<managed-bean>

<managed-bean-name>skinChooserHandler</managed-bean-name>

<managed-bean-class>view.SkinChooserHandler</managed-bean-class>

<managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>

</managed-bean>

<trinidad-config xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/config">

<skin-family>#{sessionScope.skinFamily}</skin-family>

</trinidad-config>

<af:selectOneChoice id="skinSelector"

label="Select Skin"

value="#{sessionScope.skinFamily}">

<f:selectItems value="#{skinChooserHandler.SkinChoices}"/>

</af:selectOneChoice>

Managed Bean

Trinidad Config file

SelectOneChoice

Discover Skins at Runtime Example

public class SkinChooserHandler {

public SkinChooserHandler() {

// Set the default skin to be "blafplus-rich"

ADFContext adfctx = ADFContext.getCurrent();

Map sessionScope = adfctx.getSessionScope();

sessionScope.put("skinFamily", "Oracle");

}

...

}

Discover Skins at Runtime Example

public List getSkinChoices() {

List choices = new ArrayList();

String skinFamily;

String skinLabel;

SkinFactory sf = SkinFactory.getFactory();

FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();

Locale locale = context.getViewRoot().getLocale();

for (Iterator i = sf.getSkinIds(); i.hasNext(); ) {

String skinID = (String)i.next();

Skin skin = sf.getSkin(context, skinID);

skinFamily = skin.getFamily();

if (skin.getRenderKitId().indexOf("desktop") > 0) {

choices.add(new SelectItem(skinFamily, skinLabel));

}

}

return choices;

}

Product Demonstration

Skin Discovery and Setting at Runtime

<Insert Picture Here>

Skin Debugging

Disable Content Compression

• web.xml

<context-param>

<param-name>

org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.DISABLE_CONTENT_COMPRESSION

</param-name>

<param-value>true</param-value>

</context-param>

Firebug

• Use within FireFox

• Inspect and edit HTML

• View and Visualize CSS

• Instantly change CSS definitions

• Exploring the DOM tree

• Execute JavaScript

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/

Web Developer PlugIn

• Firefox and Mozilla• Menu and a toolbar various

web developer tools• http://chrispederick.com/

work/web-developer/