A Look & Feel file is a simple XML file that determines the skin and skeleton used for the desktop Look & Feel. When you create a Look & Feel file, you can select the new Look & Feel in the Portal Designer for your portal desktops. Look & Feel files are located in the Web Application tree in:
<application>/<project>/framework/markup/lookandfeel
where <application> is the name of your portal application and <project> is the name of your portal project. For example:
portalApp/sampleportal/framework/markup/lookandfeel
To create a Look & Feel file
File Name | Enter a filename for the new look and feel. A .laf extension is added automatically. |
Title | Enter a title that will appear in the look & feel drop-down list in the Property Editor. |
Description | Enter a brief description of the look & feel. |
Skin | Click the ellipsis icon [...] and select the skin.properties
file you want the look & feel to use. The skins are located in:
For example: |
Skeleton | Click the ellipsis icon [...] and select the skeleton directory you want the look & feel to use. The skeletons are located in: <application>/ <project>/framework/skeletons/. For example: |
Selecting a Look and Feel for a desktop in Weblogic Workshop simply gives the portal a default Look and Feel setting. Portal administrators and end users can also change the Look and Feel used for a desktop.
Note: You can also set the default icon to be used in portlet titlebars by opening the .laf file as XML in WebLogic Workshop and adding defaultWindowIcon and defaultWindowIconPath attributes. For example, if the icon you want to use is located at <application/<project>/images/window-icon.gif, set the attributes like this:
defaultWindowIcon="window-icon.gif" defaultWindowIconPath="images/"
The WebLogic Workshop Portal Extensions include a set of predefined Look & Feel files. You can find these predefined files in the sampleportal project at <BEA_HOME>/weblogic81/samples/portal/portalApp/sampleportal/framework/markup/lookandfeel. The predefined Look & Feels are also included with any Portal Web Project you add to a portal application. The files are located in <application><project>/framework/markup/lookandfeel.
The Tutorial Portal contains examples of Look & Feel implementations that let end users change a portal's Look & Feel. For instructions on viewing the Tutorial Portal, see Portal Samples.
How Look and Feel Determines Rendering
Creating Skins and Skin Themes
Creating Skeletons and Skeleton Themes