Tag: user-experience

WebSphere Portal v8.x Theme Profiles and Modules

On By krisbarryIn TechnicalLeave a comment

A lot of work has been done to the theme architecture in the latest versions of WebSphere Portal. One of the nice things built into the theme architecture is being able to change the profile for each Portal page, the profile being made of web resources, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript files and libraries. This allows you to load only the necessary resources on a page-by-page basis. The profile is made up of one to many modules, the modules containing the various web-based resources (i.e. HTML, CSS, JavaScript). An example of a module would be jQuery, meaning, if the jQuery module is added to a profile, any page that uses a profile containing the jQuery module would pre-load the jQuery resources that make up that module, in turn, allowing any portlets on that page to use the jQuery resource (i.e. libraries) as well. Another example of a module would be the Content Template Catalog (CTC) module, which loads all of the web resources libraries required by CTC.

In a prior blog post (here), I discussed a way to show / hide the Edit Mode link contained within the theme. In v8.5, the Edit Mode link is replaced by the new Site Toolbar (click here to read more about the Site Toolbar). The Site Toolbar is another example of a module that is placed in all of the v8.5 profiles, so to remove the Site Toolbar, it would be as easy as removing the Site Toolbar module from any of the profiles associated with Portal pages in which you don’t want the Site Toolbar to be displayed.

Click here to learn more about Developing Themes for WebSphere Portal v8.5.

Who Says You Can’t Do Client-side Development using IBM Web Content Manager?

On By krisbarryIn TechnicalLeave a comment

I had the opportunity to develop a Proof of Concept using WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager for a customer recently in which I’ve been looking to incorporate more client-side capabilities into a WCM-based PoC. Working with the customer and understanding their requirements, I figured there was no better opportunity. In building out the PoC, the only server side requests required are to switch between pages (i.e. WCM site areas) and to create, edit or delete content (using the WCM in-context editing capabilities).

Let me give some brief details on how this was done. The core components that make up the PoC are mostly WCM HTML components used to markup the various sections of the page. Beyond that, it’s basically a single navigator component (for navigating between site areas or pages) and a single (hidden) menu component for getting all of the required content for the selected page or site area. Because of the nature of the application containing mainly client side functionality, the menu component was built to return a JSON object (versus HTML markup) representing all of the content on the page. This JSON object could then be manipulated and used throughout the various capabilities and/or HTML components provided within the application. I’ll also give a shoutout to jQuery, as this opportunity gave me a chance to further dig into the JavaScript library. I was thoroughly impressed by the ease, flexibility and native features it provides, such as drag-and-drop and type-ahead, as well as the number of JavaScript-based libraries the jQuery community has built. I was able to easily incorporate a couple of the jQuery libraries I found in the accompanying demo (i.e. content tiling, customized scrollbars) to provide a better user experience in meeting the customer requirements.

I’ll be posting a demo of the work done during this PoC shorty…