New Features in WebStyleManager v1.5

As the centralized theming requirements grows along in the complex web application development, WebStyleManager version 1.5 now comes with significant enhancements and new features to solve more advanced theming scenarios.

Automatic Output Partitioning

This new feature enables the style manager compiler to automatically break down the generated output file into separate smaller CSS files. By default, the WebUI.NET Framework runtime will compile the specified theme configuration on first request (in the condition when output file has not existed or has been outdated), then resulting into one single output file.

The single output file approach -- which is the default setting --  is recommended when applied to small or medium-sized web application. However, when it comes to larger complex application, the single output file could become too large (more than 50KB) and may cause performance issues.

With partitioned output, the runtime will break down the CSS file into smaller individual files according to the number of the themed components. This approach allows the web application to perform much faster and responsive because the runtime will selectively include the CSS files required by the page. For instance, in a page where only WebCombo is used, the runtime will include only the Default_WebCombo.css (size approximately 3KB) instead of the big single output file (Default.css with size up to 50KB).

Custom Stylesheet Inclusion

Custom stylesheet inclusion allows you to include your own specific stylesheets along with the theme. For instance, most of time a web application has global CSS stylesheet which is used throughout the entire application. However, the global CSS stylesheet doesn't match all themes. I.e. it looks good in Default theme, but not in other themes. This new feature solved this problem by allowing specific CSS stylesheets to be included automatically depending on the current active theme.

The custom stylesheet can be specified in two areas:

• Theme level
  The stylesheets specified in theme level will be applied to the entire web application. To add custom stylesheets in theme level, click on the ThemeGroup node in WebStyleManager, then click on the StyleSheets property editor.
   
• Page level
  The stylesheets specified in page level will be applied only to the specific page. To add custom stylesheets in page level, select the page node then click on the StyleSheets property editor.

How it works

When the StyleSheets are defined in either Theme or Page level, the runtime will include them automatically. For example, examine the following theme project file:

<ISTheme>
      <ThemeGroup Name="Default" IsDefault="true">
      </ThemeGroup>
      <StyleSheets>
               <StyleSheet>GlobalDefault.css</StyleSheet>
      </StyleSheets>
</ISTheme>

With above configuration,  the WebUI.NET Framework runtime will include the GlobalDefault.css when a page containing one of the themed control is requested.

The format of the stylesheet inclusion is as following:

<link src=[ThemePath]\[ThemeProject]\GlobalDefault.css>

 

Enhancements

WebStyleManager version 1.5 includes numerous enhancements to make the application easier to use and more robust, such as:

• Improved algorithm in detecting themeable Intersoft's components in more scenarios such as when multiple versions of the components are detected.
• Added "Recent Projects" to File menu in the WebStyleManager UI. You can now quickly access to the last four recent projects.
• Numerous bug fixes to ensure robustness of the application and better Exception management.

See Also

 

 

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