Basic HTML Editing


Introduction

Almost all of the different forms, pages, and sections for the web applications are HTML pages, and their appearance can be modified by editing the HTML pages or by editing the associated cascading style sheet (CSS) files. The default images used in the web apps can also be replaced or edited.

Changing Images

A number of images are supplied for buttons, illustrations, heading layout, and style. These images are all stored in the corresponding HTML directory for the web application. Any of these images can be edited, substituted, or removed. All of the default images are GIF files; we recommend using GIF files rather than other formats like JPEG, PNG, EPS, or TIFF.

Changing Page and Element Colors

The web application pages have at least two HTML pages that format the page. The first is the header; this is used on every page for that web application. The other page (or pages) layout the body of the page, such as search forms. Additionally, the Directory Server Gateway, Org Chart, and Directory Express all use a style sheet to control almost all of the design elements in the page. The appearance of the web applications can be effectively customized by changing the colors used for the different page sections or by substituting default images with your own. It is also possible to rearrange page elements, change page text, and, for the gateway, change search parameters. For more advanced HTML editing information, see http://htmlprimer.com/ (for HTML techniques) and the specific configuration sections for the web applications (for editing gateway pages). The colors used for the different page elements in the web apps can be edited in two ways:

Editing CSS Files

Directory Server Gateway, Org Chart, and Directory Express all have a style.css file which is referenced by their HTML pages by default. Editing this file is the simplest way to change the page style. CSS formatting is the same format as inline formatting using the style parameter or styles set in the HTML page heading with <style> tags. For example, this sets colors for <body> and <td> (table cell) elements and for the .bgColor1; class:

body {
   background-color: #FFFFFF;
   font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif;
   font-size: 11px;
}

td {
   font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
   font-size: 11px;
   color: #000000; Sets the text color.
   vertical-align : middle;

.bgColor1 {background-color: #000000;} The period in front of the name means it's a class.

For a CSS tutorial and overview, check out http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/.

Editing Tags

All of the page elements for Admin Express are set inline on the tags; any element in any of the other web applications can also be changed by setting attributes on the tags, by using the style attribute, or by using <font> or <span> tags. The <body> can set attributes for five different page elements:

For example:

<body bgcolor="#A70000" text="#FFFFFF" link="#CCCCCC" vlink="#5C5C4F" alink="#FF8D00">

Other page elements, like table cells, paragraphs, lists, and individual words, can also be edited using inline tags. For example:

<td bgcolor="#006666" colspan=4>
 <p style="color: white;">
  This example paragraph is white. The <FONT FACE="ARIAL, HELVETICA" color="#A70000">example
  text</FONT> is in dark red.
 </p>
</td> 

Sometimes, elements in an HTML page inherit properties from their parent element (whatever tags they are inside). For example, since everything is inside the <body> tag, the background color in the body is the same for every element on the page, unless an inline tag overrides it. Setting the background color on a table will automatically use hat background for every cell and row in the table: <table cellspacing="2" bgcolor="#F2F2F2">

See Also

Last modified on 1 March 2024