Customizing and cloning skins

Actuate Information Console ships with three standard skins. You cannot customize the standard skins. You can customize any skin clone, or copy, you create. The skins that Information Console provides may be modified during an upgrade, but any skin you create is preserved during upgrades. To customize any of the three standard skins, clone the skin to create a copy, and then customize the clone. When cloning a skin, select the skin that is closest to the required appearance. Perform additional customizations to a cloned skin at any time.

Table 2-8 lists the GUI components of cloned skins that you can customize.

Table 2-8  Customizable components of skins 

Item	Customizable components
Colors	Banner, footer, side menu, tabbed dialogs, pop-up menus, viewer, templates
Fonts	Multiple font families in order of preference
General	Skin description that appears on the Options page
Images	Banner logo, My Folder icon, volume icon, open and closed folder icons

The skin description appears on the Options page to identify the skin to users.

Colors are grouped into categories according to the GUI area they affect. Table 2-9 lists ways to specify colors.

Table 2-9  Techniques for specifying colors 

Specification	Description
Color code	Type a standard HTML color or hexadecimal RGB value.
Red Green Blue	Type individual RGB values, from 0 to 255.
Pick a color	Select from a palette of available colors.

To customize images for a skin, upload GIF or JPEG files to Actuate Information Console to replace the existing images. Images are grouped in categories by their GUI component. The categories and the images that you can replace depend upon the type of skin. For example, more images are available to customize in a skin based on the treeview than a skin based on the classic skin. Icon images must be consistent in size with the images they replace. Most icons supplied with Actuate Information Console are either 32x32 or 16x16 pixels.

After making changes to a skin, use the preview functionality to view different Actuate Information Console pages to show the skin’s current appearance. By checking multiple pages, you identify the areas that need modification.

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