Skins

 

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Skins represent the border rendering around components, such as row containers, column containers, or portlets. The skin is loaded in the portal page by the <portal-skin:pageRender/> tag. Skins are installed independently from themes. However, a skin can be associated with a theme.

Skins define more than the look and feel of portlets; they define the look and feel of components. These components include the containers and controls. This hierarchical structure is depicted in the following diagram.

Skin composition

The components of the skin are called in the following order.

  1. The <portal-skin:pageRender/> tag in the Home screen (Home.jsp) displays the components for the selected node.

    The components are implemented as...

    • row containers
    • column containers
    • controls

    ...depending upon the portal layout that is defined in portal page customization.

  2. The row and column containers display their nested components using either Java code or the elements...

  3. Each portlet is rendered by the <portal-skin:portletRender/> tag within the Control.jsp file, which also builds the border and title bar around the portlet output.

    Some of the icons in the portlet title bar have an impact on performance.

 

Provided skins

Bundled skins include...

  • IBM
  • Noskin
  • Thin
  • IFRAME

The IFRAME skin cannot be set as the Portal's default skin, nor should it be assigned to the IBM theme. The IFRAME skin is only to be assigned to portlets that have been specifically designed for the skin.

If the IBM theme directory is either deleted or renamed, the portal resource loader uses...

themes/html/Default.jsp

In this case, you should also use the fallback skin. To do this, rename the skins directory. For example,...

skins\html\IBM

...should be renamed...

skins\html\IBM1

If you have a broken theme, we can rename the theme and skin directories which are causing the problem to get to a working minimal theme.

 

More about the IFRAME skin

The IFRAME (inline frame) skin provided has a more practical purpose than the other skins. It renders portlet content in an HTML IFRAME on the page. IFRAMES are treated as separate browser windows and are used for the inclusion of external objects including other HTML documents.

The IFRAME skin is especially useful for portlets that are slow to render, allowing the rest of the portal page to render without waiting on the content from the portlet within the IFRAME. The width of this skin is set to 100% and height is set to 250 pixels.

To change this setting...

  1. Edit...

    ../skins/html/IFrame/Control.jsp

  2. Locate the markup for the IFRAME: 

    <iframe src='<%wpsURL.write(out);%>' 
        SCROLLING="auto" 
        FRAMEBORDER="0" 
        Width="100%" 
        height="250">

  3. Change the width and height attributes.

  4. Save and close the file.

 

Automatic portlet maximization

In earlier versions of WebSphere Portal, the state of a portlet was automatically set to maximize when the portlet mode was changed from view mode to another mode. For example, when switching to edit mode, the portlet would be changed to maximized state until the user changed back to view mode. This automatic maximize behavior has been removed by default, but can be implemented at the following levels.

Automatic maximization can create problems for standard portlets, which are not developed to be maximized when going into edit or configure mode, and therefore do not provide the correct window state information when creating Done or Cancel buttons. Also, in IBM portlets, automatic maximization can lead to undesired effects in conjunction with return URIs created by the tags...

...or the createReturnURI() method. Portlet modes and window states are orthogonal, such that combinations of portlet modes and windows states may occur that were not present before the user click Back to return to view mode.

 

Related information