The portal style sheets are an important tool for UI customization, beyond simple style changes. In AquaLogic Interaction (formerly called the Plumtree Portal) version 6.0, the portal's CSS template file allows you to customize page layout and content. For details, see Using CSS Customization.
The CSS Style Sheet Mill facilitates the management and maintenance of style sheets. The CSS Mill allows you to create new style sheets quickly and easily using property files to define key attributes used in the portal's style classes. The portal comes with a set of standard property files, and you can create new files for use in custom style sheets.
The portal supports 18 different color schemes and 8 languages. Without the CSS Mill, this combination would require the active maintenance of 150 different style sheets. Instead, the CSS Mill creates these style sheets dynamically, making them disposable. You can create the entire set by running a batch file. This configuration also allows you to update portal style attributes (e.g., the background color across all pages) by editing a single root property file; when the batch file is run, the changes are propagated through all instances of the attribute in every style sheet.
The files used by the CSS Mill are located in the PT_HOME\ptimages\tools\cssmill directory in the Image Service. This directory includes the following folders:
\prop-text contains text property files; a different file is provided for each language supported by the portal.
\prop-color contains color property files; a different file is provided for each of the 18 standard color combinations available in the portal.
\templates contains the files that define the styles used by the portal. Other products can have their own templates.
Each property name in a property file represents a marker used in a template. The CSS Mill uses the values set in the property files to replace the corresponding markers in the associated style sheet template and create new style sheets for use by the portal. To view where a property name is used within a style sheet, look for the corresponding marker in one of the templates. Markers use the syntax @MarkerName@.
The root \cssmill folder contains the batch files and the build.xml file that provides the necessary Ant scripts to create the style sheets. There are three commonly-used batch files:
make_all creates all portal style sheets by replacing the markers in the templates with the corresponding values from the property files. This script creates a version of each style sheet for each language supported by the portal and places the files in the \css folder, and saves a backup of the previous version in the \backup directory.
make_portal_css creates only the default portal style sheets. The default portal style sheet is the single color style sheet that appears in the default portal.
make_community_css creates only the Community style sheets. Community style sheets are the 18x8 style sheets used in ALI Publisher Header portlets.
Basically, there are two ways to use the CSS Mill. The easiest way to change the look of the portal is to change the default style sheet. If none of the provided style sheets fulfill your requirements, you create new style sheets. The pages that follow walk you through an example of each process.