11.1 Understanding Style Basics

A style controls the colors and fonts used by pages and item regions and all the tabs, portlets, and items displayed within them. If you want a page or group of pages to use the same colors and fonts, apply a style. On the other hand, if you want to apply a consistent layout to a group of pages, use a template.

Because you can apply a style to a template, you can use a template to provide a standard approach to layout, fonts, and colors.

Note:

For information about choosing a default style for a page group, see Chapter 4, "Working with Page Groups". For information on using templates with Oracle Portal, see Chapter 12, "Providing a Standard Look and Feel".

You can give all your pages a uniform appearance by applying a single style. This means that you can change the look of all your pages just by changing the style the pages use. If you prefer, you can apply different styles to give each page a distinct look. You can even apply different styles to the item regions within a page.

Use care when editing a style: the changes you make affect the appearance of all pages and item regions that use the style. When you delete a style, all pages that use the style revert to the page group default style, or the system default style if the page group default style is <None>.

The amount of control you have over the style of a page depends on your page and page group access privileges:

The portal administrator can perform any action on any style in any page group.
If you have the page group privilege Manage Styles, you can perform any action on any style in the page group.
If you have the page privilege Manage or Manage Style and the Allow Privileged Users To Manage Page Style check box is selected for the page group, you can apply a different style to the page, edit existing styles to change the colors and fonts used, or create new styles.

If Allow Privileged Users … is not selected, only portal administrators or users with the page group privilege Manage All or Manage Styles can apply a different style to pages in the page group.
If you have the page privilege Personalize (Style) or greater on a page and the Allow Privileged Users To Personalize Page Style check box is selected for the page group, you can apply a different style to your view of the page.

If the Allow Privileged Users To Personalize Page Style check box is not selected, no user can apply a different style when personalizing a page.