<com:TContent ID="Main"> <h1>Using Themes and Skins</h1> <p> PRADO has intrinsic support for <a href="http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Advanced.Themes">themes</a>. By using themes, we can better separate logic and presentation, and we can also change the overall appearance of our blog system more easily. </p> <h2>Creating Theme</h2> <p> We first create a new directory <tt>themes</tt>. This is the parent directory of all themes for a particular PRADO application. Any subdirectory under this directory will become a theme whose name is the subdirectory name. </p> <p> To create a theme named <tt>Basic</tt>, we create a subdirectory <tt>theme/Basic</tt>. Under this directory, we may place theme-dependent stylesheet files, Javascript files, images, and skin files. </p> <com:InfoBox> The <tt>themes</tt> directory must be Web-accessible, like the <tt>assets</tt> directory. Do not place sensitive data files under this directory. You can change the name or location of this directory by configuring the <a href="http://www.pradosoft.com/docs/classdoc/TThemeManager">TThemeManager</a> module in the application configuration. </com:InfoBox> <h3>Creating Stylesheet File</h2> <p> Under the <tt>themes/Basic</tt> directory, we create a CSS stylesheet file named <tt>style.css</tt>. When a page uses this theme, PRADO will automatically import this stylesheet to the page. The same occurs for Javascript files. </p> <p> The CSS file is shown as follows. </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source"> body { font-family: verdana, 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; background: white; } #page { margin: 0 auto 0 auto; width: 600px; } #footer { text-align: center; margin-top: 10px; padding: 10px; border-top: 1px solid silver; } .post-box { margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 5px; } .post-box h3 { padding: 5px; font-size: 13pt; background: lightgray; } .post-box a { color: black; text-decoration: none; } .post-box a:hover { color: red; } </com:TTextHighlighter> <h3>Creating Skin File</h2> <p> We use skins to initialize the properties of PRADO controls. Skins are stored as skin files (suffix name <tt>.skin</tt>) under a theme directory. Each skin file can contain multiple skins for one or several types of control. </p> <p> As a test, we will try to create a skin that changes the background color of the link buttons in the page footer. We create a file named <tt>button.skin</tt> under the theme directory <tt>themes/Basic</tt>. </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="prado"> <com:THyperLink SkinID="MainMenu" BackColor="lightgreen" /> </com:TTextHighlighter> <p> The <tt>button.skin</tt> skin file contains only one skin for <tt>THyperLink</tt> controls whose <tt>SkinID</tt> property is <tt>MainMenu</tt>. The skin sets the background color of the control to be light-green. </p> <p> Accordingly, we need to modify <tt>protected/common/MainLayout.tpl</tt> so that the link buttons in the footer use <tt>MainMenu</tt> as their <tt>SkinID</tt>. </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="prado"> ...... <div id="footer"> ...... <com:THyperLink Text="Home" SkinID="MainMenu" NavigateUrl="<%= $this->Service->DefaultPageUrl %>" /> <com:THyperLink Text="New Post" SkinID="MainMenu" NavigateUrl="<%= $this->Service->constructUrl('posts.NewPost') %>" Visible="<%= !$this->User->IsGuest %>" /> ...... </div> ...... </com:TTextHighlighter> <com:InfoBox> The syntax for skin files is very similar to that of PRADO templates. Each <tt><com:></tt> tag defines a skin for a particular type of control. PRADO automatically aggregates all skin files in a theme and applies them when a themed page is being rendered. </com:InfoBox> <h2>Using Theme</h2> <p> To use the theme we just created, we modify the application configuration as follows. As we see, the <tt>Theme</tt> property for all pages is set as <tt>Basic</tt>, the name of the theme we created. </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="xml"> ...... <services> <service id="page" class="TPageService" DefaultPage="posts.ListPost"> <pages MasterClass="Application.layouts.MainLayout" Theme="Basic" /> </service> </services> ...... </com:TTextHighlighter> <com:InfoBox> It is possible to specify different themes for different pages, and this can be done either in application/page configurations or programmatically (note <tt>Theme</tt> a page property). For the latter, it is must be done in <tt>onPreInit()</tt> method of the page because PRADO applies a theme to a page early in the page lifecycle. </com:InfoBox> <h2>Testing</h2> <p> To see how our blog pages look like, visit the URL <tt>http://hostname/blog/index.php</tt>. We shall see the font, layout, borders are changed in the page. Also, the link buttons in the footer have light-green background. </p> <img src="<%~ output.gif %>" class="output" /> </com:TContent>