DotNetNuke > Products > Development

Style Attribute for Tabs

I propose to add a style attribute to the Tabs Info properties. This would allow for new levels of creativity in the UI for DNN and Navigation.

The cuurent Tab Info has no style attributes, making it difficult ar nearly impossible to add 'sectional' color changes, or Sub Menu styles that are different from other tabs.

This would allow for a wider range of UI styles, further enhancing the appeal for DNN.

Add either a single field to the Tabs Table (Style) allowing it to propogate into the Info Object. Or for a more advanced and flexible solution add a properties collection to the tabs object similar to the User Properties for other custom tab attributes other than style.

The single field method would have very little impact, a table and a stored proc and a field to esit the style in the Tab Settings Page.

There would be little to no risk as adding a field would be backwards compatible with no breaking changes.

Comments: 5 Created: 5/28/2007 10:58:02 AM by Brad Schafer

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Timo Breumelhof
3/7/2008 6:26:32 PM

"Or for a more advanced and flexible solution add a properties collection to the tabs object similar to the User Properties for other custom tab attributes other than style." Very good idea, would make DNN pages much more flexible to use. I could make my users select / enter a specific property for a page (like categories)
Then you could create a custom SKO that renders a list of pages of a property, order them on it, etc.
Or you could change (parts of) the skin depending on a property, create a statement property and use that in the skin.... etc. lot of possibilities...

John Mitchell
6/18/2007 9:52:41 PM

You can already style tabs at the page level. Either use the Page Header field, or put inline styles in your skin, or put inline styles in an html module.

Brad Schafer
5/30/2007 11:34:18 AM

In the case of skinners providing a list, this is perhaps a good idea, however, it doesn't change the need for the Style attribute to be directly linked to the tab (1:1), just the manor in which it is selected (which might improve over time). A text input would certainly be better than nothing at this point and provide much needed flexibility in menus.

As for seperator's this is easily accomplished by defining a style that has a visual separator in the style (ie. GreenSubMenuSep or the like).

Jon Henning
5/30/2007 10:00:13 AM

I have been pondering what is the best solution here for a while, as the question needs to be asked, who is the right person to create the css styles, the skinner or the site administrator. Ideally, this falls into the realm of skinner, but as you already know the skinner has no idea what menu items or how many levels deep your hierarchy goes. It almost seems as if we need the skinner to be able to provide an easy way to expose a list of styles meant to be applied at the item level, then the site admin gets a simple dropdown of available styles...

Jeremy White
5/30/2007 7:26:32 AM

Depending on the skin this may not work so well as the tab seperators may also need styled. Just something to keep in mind if you incorporate this idea.