Applying Themes to Reports

On the Format tab, in the General settings, in the General Options section, you can select a theme (.sty file, or StyleSheet), to apply to your report from the Theme menu. Themes style multiple components of a report, such as headers, column titles, and data text, all at once. Themes include associated cascading style sheet files along with a StyleSheet to help coordinate styling between an individual report and the entire visualization.

When creating a stand-alone report, the default theme is Designer 2018. When you change a visualization into a page by adding a second new content item, the theme used for the report is applied to the page. When you add items to the page, either by creating them or adding them as external content, the page theme is used as the default for all content items. You then can change the theme for each individual item.

If you prefer, you can specify one of the themes included with WebFOCUS, such as the Designer 2018, Light, Midnight, or Vivid theme, select a custom theme saved to the Global Resources area in the repository, or you can click Custom to select a legacy template or a StyleSheet saved to a workspace in your repository. When you select a StyleSheet using the Custom option, it is applied to the report and added to the Theme list.

To make a custom theme available directly from the Theme menu, create a folder for it in the Global Resources area, in the Custom folder within the Themes folder. In the new folder that you create inside the Custom folder, you can add a custom StyleSheet to use with charts and reports, and a custom CSS file to use for pages. The .sty file and .css file must both be named theme. An .sty file and .css file that share the same theme folder are associated. If you select a theme for a report, which uses the .sty file, then when you convert it to a page, the associated .css file is used as the page theme by default.

Tip: When creating a custom theme, you can copy the CSS and StyleSheet syntax from existing themes to use as a model.

Note: Charts and reports created for use on pages can use a transparent background to allow the defined background color of the page containers to show through. Since the themes used for charts and reports (.sty files) can be associated with themes for pages (.css files), you can coordinate the background, text, and element colors used in both themes to create content with unified styling. At design time, the page theme associated with the chart or report theme is used for the canvas background. This is for visibility purposes only, and shows how the chart or report will appear when added to a page with the associated theme. The stand-alone chart or report does not include this background.

If a chart or report is run stand-alone instead of being added to a page, the run-time view displays a white background only. This means that if, in order to display on a dark colored page, the font color in the selected theme is defined as white and uses a transparent chart background, then the text will not be visible on the white preview background. An example of such a theme is the Midnight theme, provided as one of the default themes in the Global Resources folder. To view the white text, build your chart or report on the canvas, or add it to a page container with a dark background.