CSS

Description

Creating and registering CSS files for Plone and Plone add-on products. CSS-related Python functionality.

Introduction

This page has Plone-specific CSS instructions.

In Plone, most CSS files are managed by the portal_css tool via the ZMI. Page templates can still import CSS files directly, but portal_css does CSS file compression and merging automatically if used.

View all Plone HTML elements

To test Plone HTML element rendering go to test_rendering page on your site:

http://localhost:8080/Plone/test_rendering

It will output a styled list of all commonly used Plone user interface elements.

Registering a new CSS file

You can register stylesheets to be included in Plone's various CSS bundles using GenericSetup XML.

Example profiles/default/cssregistry.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- Setup configuration for the portal_css tool. -->

<object name="portal_css">

 <!-- Stylesheets are registered with the portal_css tool here.
      You can also specify values for existing resources if you need to
      modify some of their properties.
      Stylesheet elements accept these parameters:
      - 'id' (required): it must respect the name of the CSS or DTML file
        (case sensitive). '.dtml' suffixes must be ignored.
      - 'expression' (optional, default: ''): a TAL condition.
      - 'media' (optional, default: ''): possible values: 'screen', 'print',
        'projection', 'handheld', ...
      - 'rel' (optional, default: 'stylesheet')
      - 'rendering' (optional, default: 'import'): 'import', 'link' or
        'inline'.
      - 'enabled' (optional, default: True): boolean
      - 'cookable' (optional, default: True): boolean (aka 'merging allowed')

      See registerStylesheet() arguments in
      ResourceRegistries/tools/CSSRegistry.py for the latest list of all
      available keys and default values.
      -->

     <stylesheet
        id="++resource++yourproduct.something/yourstylesheet.css"
        cacheable="True"
        compression="safe"
        cookable="True"
        enabled="1"
        expression=""
        media=""
        rel="stylesheet"
        rendering="import"
        insert-after="ploneKss.css" />

</object>

In this case there should be a registered resource directory named yourproduct.something. In the directory should be a file yourstylesheet.css. If you have registered the stylesheet directly in zcml

<browser:resource
name="yourstylesheet.css" file="yourstylesheet.css" />

then id must be

id="++resource++yourstylesheet.css"

Expressions

The expression attribute of portal_css defines when your CSS file is included on an HTML page. For more information see expressions documentation.

Inserting CSS as last into anonymous bundles

Plone compresses and merges CSS files to bundles.

For Plone 3.x, the optimal place to put CSS file available to all users is after ploneKss.css, as in the example above, to override rules in earlier files.

Todo

Also for Plone 4.x?

CSS files for logged-in members only

Add the following expression to your CSS file:

not: portal/portal_membership/isAnonymousUser

If you want to load the CSS in the same bundle as Plone's default member.css, use insert-after="member.css". In this case, however, the file will be one of the first CSS files to be loaded and cannot override values from other files unless the CSS directive !important is used.

Condition for Diazo themed sites

To check if theming is active, will return true if Diazo is enabled:

request/HTTP_X_THEME_ENABLED | nothing

Conditional comments (IE)

cssregistry.xml example:

<!-- Load stylesheet for IE6 - IE8 only to fix layout problems -->
<stylesheet
    id="++resource++plonetheme.xxx.stylesheets/ie.css"
    applyPrefix="False"
    authenticated="False"
    cacheable="True"
    compression="safe"
    conditionalcomment="lt IE 9"
    cookable="True"
    enabled="1"
    expression=""
    media="screen"
    rel="stylesheet"
    rendering="link"
    title=""
    insert-before="ploneCustom.css" />

Generating CSS classes programmatically in templates

# Try to put string generation code in your view/viewlet if you have one.

# If you do not have a view (e.g. you're dealing with main_template)
you can create a view and call it as in the following example.

View class generating CSS class spans:

from Products.Five.browser import BrowserView
from Products.CMFCore.utils  import getToolByName

class CSSHelperView(BrowserView):
    """ Used by main_template <body> to set CSS classes """

    def __init__(self, context, request):
        self.context = context
        self.requet = request

    def logged_in_class(self):
        """ Get CSS class telling whether the user is logged in or not

        This allows us to fine-tune layout when edit frame et. al.
        are on the screen.
        """
        mt = getToolByName(self.context, 'portal_membership')
        if mt.isAnonymousUser(): # the user has not logged in
            return "member-anonymous"
        else:
            return "member-logged-in"

Registering the view in ZCML:

<browser:view
        for="*"
        name="css_class_helper"
        class=".views.CSSHelperView"
        permission="zope.Public"
        allowed_attributes="logged_in_class"
        />

Calling the view in main_template.pt:

<body
    tal:define="css_class_helper nocall:here/@@css_class_helper"
    tal:attributes="class string:${here/getSectionFromURL} template-${template/id} ${css_class_helper/logged_in_class};
                    dir python:test(isRTL, 'rtl', 'ltr')">

Defining CSS styles reaction to the presence of the class:

#region-content { padding: 0 0 0 0px !important;}
.member-logged-in #region-content { padding: 0 0 0 4px !important;}

Striping listing colors

In your template you can define classes for 1) the item itself 2) extra odd and even classes.

<div tal:attributes="class python:'feed-folder-item feed-folder-item-' + (repeat['child'].even() and 'even' or 'odd')">

And you can colorize this with CSS:

.feed-folder-item {
        padding: 0.5em;
}

/* Make sure that all items have same amount of padding at the bottom,
whether they have last paragraph with margin or not.*/
#content .feed-folder-item p:last-child {
    margin-bottom: 0;
}

.feed-folder-item-odd {
    background: #ddd;
}

.feed-folder-item-even {
    background: white;
}

plone.css

plone.css is automagically generated dynamically based on the full portal_css registry configuration. It is used in e.g. TinyMCE to load all CSS styles into the TinyMCE <iframe> in a single pass. It is not used on the normal Plone pages.

plone.css generation:

CSS reset

If you are building a custom theme and you want to do a cross-browser CSS reset, the following snippet is recommended:

/* @group CSS Reset .*/

/* Remove implicit browser styles, to have a neutral starting point:
   - No elements should have implicit margin/padding
   - No underline by default on links (we add it explicitly in the body text)
   - When we want markers on lists, we will be explicit about it, and they render inline by default
   - Browsers are inconsistent about hX/pre/code, reset
   - Linked images should not have borders
   .*/

* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
* :link,:visited { text-decoration:none }
* ul,ol { list-style:none; }
* li { display: inline; }
* h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,code { font-size:1em; }
* a img,:link img,:visited img { border:none }
a { outline: none; }
table { border-spacing: 0; }
img { vertical-align: middle; }

Adding new CSS body classes

Plone themes provide certain standard CSS classes on the <body> element to identify view, template, site section, etc. for theming.

The default body CSS classes look like this:

<body class="template-subjectgroup portaltype-XXX-app-subjectgroup site-LS section-courses icons-on" dir="ltr">

But you can include your own CSS classes as well. This can be done by overriding plone.app.layout.globals.LayoutPolicy class which is registered as the plone_layout view.

layout.py:

""" Override the default Plone layout utility.
"""

from zope.component import queryUtility
from zope.component import getMultiAdapter

from plone.i18n.normalizer.interfaces import IIDNormalizer
from plone.app.layout.globals import layout as base
from plone.app.layout.navigation.interfaces import INavigationRoot


class LayoutPolicy(base.LayoutPolicy):
    """
    Enhanced layout policy helper.

    Extend the Plone standard class to have some more <body> CSS classes
    based on the current context.
    """

    def bodyClass(self, template, view):
        """Returns the CSS class to be used on the body tag.
        """

        # Get content parent
        body_class = base.LayoutPolicy.bodyClass(self, template, view)

        # Include context and parent ids as CSS classes on <body>
        normalizer = queryUtility(IIDNormalizer)

        body_class += " context-" + normalizer.normalize(self.context.getId())

        parent = self.context.aq_parent

        # Check that we have a valid parent
        if hasattr(parent, "getId"):
            body_class += " parent-" + normalizer.normalize(parent.getId())

        # Get path with "Default content item" wrapping applied
        context_helper = getMultiAdapter((self.context, self.request), name="plone_context_state")
        canonical = context_helper.canonical_object()

        # Mark site front page with special CSS class
        if INavigationRoot.providedBy(canonical):

            if "template-document_view" in body_class:
                body_class += " front-page"

        # Add in logged-in / not logged in status
        portal_state = getMultiAdapter((self.context, self.request), name="plone_portal_state")
        if portal_state.anonymous():
            body_class += " anonymous"
        else:
            body_class += " logged-in"

        return body_class

Related ZCML registration:

<browser:page
    name="plone_layout"
    for="*"
    permission="zope.Public"
    class=".layout.LayoutPolicy"
    allowed_interface="plone.app.layout.globals.interfaces.ILayoutPolicy"
    />