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Completing the Skins tab

 About Portal rules

Use this array to identify a skin — a collection of styles defined by a skin rule — and other presentation styles for this portal.

TipAs a best practice for new applications, create composite portals for users and managers, or copy and evolve the standard sample composite portals User and Manager. See About composite portals.

The combination of selections for the Role and Type fields determines what other tabs are available in the rule form.

Field

Description

Role

Select:

  • User — to indicate that this portal rule supports application users who do not update rules. The style sheet and JavaScript files for this choice require substantially less memory on the user workstation Developer setting.
  • Developer — to provide portal capabilities used by developers or business analysts. While most aspects of the Designer Studio are fixed, you can customize styles. Skins, Custom, Options, and History tabs are available.

For details about the effect of changes in this setting, see More about Skin rules.

Type

Select a type. The default type is Composite, which provides the most flexibility in development and the greatest support for localization and accessibility. See About composite portals.

The available options depend on what is selected for the Role field.

  • For the User role:

    Fixed specifies a traditional (V5.1+) portal. The Skins, Tabs, Custom, Options, and History tabs are available.

    Composite specifies a composite (V5.5+) portal. The Skins, Spaces, and History tabs are available.

    Custom specifies a custom portal. Specify this when you want to use an activity to provide the capabilities you want to offer to users associated with this portal rule. The Skins and History tabs are available. Use the Activity field on the Skins tab to specify the activity.

  • For the Developer role:

    Classic provides the older Version 4.2 legacy standard development portal. This choice remains for backwards compatibility but is not recommended for new portal rules.

    Composite specifies a composite (V5.5+) portal. The Skins, Spaces, and History tabs are available.

    Fixed specifies a traditional (V5.1+)portal. The Skins, Custom, Options, and History tabs are available.

    Custom specifies a custom portal. Use an activity to provide the capabilities you want to offer to users associated with this portal rule. The Skins and History tabs are available. Use the Activity field on the Skins tab to specify the activity.

Skin

Select a skin rule to define CSS styles for work object forms, report displays, and portal elements. LAYOUT field removed MARTT 11/3/05 B-16271 GAGNP 3/6/06 METAL now works with Developer in SP6  B-20131 validation

If you selected User in the Role field, select User, Classic, or a custom skin rule developed with the Branding wizard. See About the Branding wizard.

The standard skin Developer is reserved for the standard Developer portal rule, which defines the Designer Studio.

The standard skin BusinessAnalyst is reserved for the standard BusinessAnalyst portal rule, which defines the Business Analyst portal.
Activity

Advanced featureIf you select Custom as the Type, an Activity field and a params button appear. Specify or create the activity that provides the capabilities you want to offer to users associated with this portal rule.

After you have selected the activity, click the params button. Enter appropriate values for each activity parameter.

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