IdeaJam(tm) : Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Domino Designer / : Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:06:26 +0000

Author: Stephen McCulloch
Tags: html class default rendering
Idea:

The default rendering in HTML of Domino design elements typically goes something like this:

<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <th>Staff</th> <th>Region</th> <th>Office</th> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td><img width="16" height="1" src="/icons/ecblank.gif" alt="" /> <a href="/myapp.nsf/...?OpenDocument">LastName, FirstName</a></td> <td>ON</td> <td>Toronto</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img width="16" height="1" src="/icons/ecblank.gif" alt="" /> <a href="/myapp.nsf/...?OpenDocument">SurName, GivenName</a></td> <td>Atlantic</td> <td>St. John's</td> </tr> </table>

It should insert class elements so that CSS and Javascript libraries could be used more easily:

<table class="NotesViewTable" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> <tr class="NotesViewHeaderRow"> <th class="NotesViewHeaderColumn">Staff</th> <th class="NotesViewHeaderColumn">Region</th> <th class="NotesViewHeaderColumn">Office</th> </tr> <tr class="NotesViewDataRow" valign="top"> <td class="NotesViewDataColumn"><img width="16" height="1" src="/icons/ecblank.gif" alt="" /> <a href="/myapp.nsf/...?OpenDocument">LastName, FirstName</a></td> <td class="NotesViewDataColumn">ON</td> <td class="NotesViewDataColumn">Toronto</td> </tr> <tr class="NotesViewDataRow" > <td class="NotesViewDataColumn"><img width="16" height="1" src="/icons/ecblank.gif" alt="" /> <a href="/myapp.nsf/...?OpenDocument">SurName, GivenName</a></td> <td class="NotesViewDataColumn">Atlantic</td> <td class="NotesViewDataColumn">St. John's</td> </tr> </table>

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:45:11 +0000

Author: Vlad Sh
Comment: Agreed. But the names of the classes are very large, which unnecessarily increases the amount of HTML-code, in my opinion they should be reduced.

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:47:23 +0000

Author: Stephen McCulloch
Comment: Vlad Sh,
I agree, the names that I used in the example were for illustrative purposes only and could be significantly shortened. I matters very little what class names they decide to use, other than there should be a way to avoid collisions with classes we may already be using.

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:35:39 +0000

Author: Matt White
Comment: In 8.5.x you can check the "Enable Advanced HTML Generation" box on the database properties then you will get better HTML being generated as you suggest.

Matt

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:25:44 +0000

Author: Stephen McCulloch
Comment: Thanks Matt, I'll add that to the list of reasons to present to the bosses for an upgrade.

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Tue, 04 May 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Author: Bruce Lill
Comment: It's all going to XPages so I wouldn't expect changes to classic web development. For XPages there are ID tags for almost everything so you can format with CSS or apply your own styles

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Sat, 08 May 2010 05:47:48 +0000

Author: John Smart
Comment: I don't like this idea. If you want your table like that, you should class the table or some surrounding element (like a div, or the body itself) then use CSS of

.foo th {text-align:center;}
.foo td {text-align: right;}

Or, if you always want it the same for any table headers or cells:

th {text-align:center;}
td {text-align: right;}

Either of these ways are much cleaner, I think.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're asking?

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Sat, 08 May 2010 21:54:28 +0000

Author: Ben Poole
Comment: Once you introduce something like this, people will want to tweak it. John makes a very good point: I wouldn't want my HTML to be that verbose, and would prefer selectors. So the odd id / class would indeed be useful, but it's easy to go over the top.

Couple that with endless arguments over the naming conventions to use, and you'd end up with a pretty iffy implementation I think :-)

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Mon, 17 May 2010 05:41:50 +0000

Author: Peter Presnell
Comment: I cant see the point of diverting any development away from XPages to Domino Web development. That is now part of a bygone era. If the Smithsonian choose to do this enhancement great. just not IBM.

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:08:11 +0000

Author: Stephen McCulloch
Comment: John Smart

I see your point. The whole thing could be done much more cleanly if we could specify the id of the rendered item and use CSS for the rest. I'd rather not have to put a div around what is going to be rendered as a table merely because the software does not allow me to put a class or id on the item itself.

#foo td { text-align: right }
#foo th { text-align: center }

re: Use of class in default HTML rendering of design elements, particularly views

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:04:56 +0000

Author: Stephen McCulloch
Comment: Status changed to Withdrawn