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CSS

Rationale

Form Runner has a built-in theme for forms. This page documents how you can make changes to that default style.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and is the standard technology to add style to web pages and web applications. Orbeon Forms supports custom CSS files which allows you to change your forms' appearance. This assumes that you have some CSS knowledge.

Adding your own CSS files

  1. 1.
    Place your CSS file(s) under one of the following recommended locations:
    • WEB-INF/resources/forms/assets: CSS for all forms
    • WEB-INF/resources/forms/APP/assets: CSS for app name APP
    • WEB-INF/resources/forms/APP/FORM/assets: CSS for app name APP and form name FORM
  2. 2.
    Define the oxf.fr.css.custom.uri property to point to the file(s) you added. The path points to location under the WEB-INF/resources directory.
<property as="xs:string" name="oxf.fr.css.custom.uri.*.*">
/forms/acme/assets/acme.css
</property>
You can add more than one file, and just separate the paths by whitespace in the property.
Note that the locations suggested are just about how to organize the files for clarity. In addition, if some CSS files apply to specific app or form names, you must specify the app and form name in the property or properties. For example:
<property as="xs:string" name="oxf.fr.css.custom.uri.APP.*">
/forms/APP/assets/my-app.css
</property>
​
<property as="xs:string" name="oxf.fr.css.custom.uri.APP.FORM">
/forms/APP/assets/my-app.css
/forms/APP/FORM/assets/my-app-and-form.css
</property>
The names APP, FORM, my-app.css and my-app-and-form.css are just placeholders for your own app name, form name, and CSS files names.
If a specific property is defined for an app/form, such as oxf.fr.css.custom.uri.APP.FORM, only that property is considered and other properties defined only for a given app but without a specific form, such as oxf.fr.css.custom.uri.APP.*, will be ignored. This means that you must repeat references to CSS resources in the more specific property if desired. For example above /forms/APP/assets/my-app.css is repeated.
[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2017.1]
In addition to oxf.fr.css.custom.uri, you can also use the following properties, which apply only to the Summary and Detail pages respectively:

Authoring CSS

Disable the minimal and combined resources. When working on your CSS, you might want to temporarily set the following properties in your properties-local.xml, which will disable the combined and minimized resources, so the files and line numbers you see in your browser correspond to what you have on disk.
```xml
<property
as="xs:boolean"
name="oxf.xforms.minimal-resources"
value="false"/>
​
<property
as="xs:boolean"
name="oxf.xforms.combine-resources"
value="false"/>
```
​
Note that with the [Form Runner Liferay Proxy Portlet](/form-runner/link-embed/liferay-proxy-portlet.md), you cannot disable combined resources as URL rewriting does not work in that case.
Know which class names to use in your CSS selectors. We strongly recommend you use the Chrome Dev Tools to check which classes are generated by Orbeon Forms. Once you have your CSS working with Chrome and/or Firefox, it is likely that the CSS will work with other modern browsers.

Orbeon Forms CSS classes

Prefixes

Orbeon Forms standardizes on the following prefixes for CSS classes:
  • xforms-: for built-in standard XForms controls
  • xxforms-: for built-in extension XForms controls
  • fr-: for Form Runner constructs
  • xbl-: for XBL components

Form structure

Class Name
Element
Comment
orbeon
<body>
body or enclosing embedding element
xforms-form
<form>
enclosing <form> handled by Orbeon Forms
fr-view
​
enclosing element for the Form Runner view
fr-mode-MODE
.fr-view
MODE: new, edit, view
fr-body
​
main form body
xbl-fr-section
​
section
fr-section-title
<h2>, etc.
section title
xbl-fr-grid
​
grid

Grids

Class Name
Element
Comment
fr-grid
​
enclosing grid element
fr-repeat
.fr-grid
indicate a repeated grid
fr-repeat-single-row
.fr-grid
indicate a repeated grid over a single row
fr-grid-head
​
grid head (repeated grids only)
fr-grid-master-row
​
grid header row (repeated grids only)
fr-grid-body
​
grid body (multiple for repeated grids)
fr-grid-tr
​
grid row
fr-grid-th
​
grid header cell (repeated grids only)
fr-grid-td
​
grid cell

Wizard

Class Name
Comment
xbl-fr-wizard
enclosing wizard element
fr-wizard-toc
wizard table of contents
fr-wizard-body
wizard body

Built-in controls and components

Form controls can either be built-in or components.
Class Name
Element
Comment
xforms-control
​
built-in control
xforms-NAME
.xforms-control
NAME: input, textarea, etc.
xbl-component
​
component
xbl-PREFIX-NAME
.xbl-component
PREFIX: fr, etc.; NAME: date, etc.

Aspects of a control or component

Built-in controls and components can have extra CSS classes.
Class Name
Comment
xforms-disabled
the control is not visible (non-relevant)
xforms-readonly
the control is readonly
xforms-type-TYPE
TYPE: date, boolean, integer, etc.
xforms-visited
the control has been visited by the user, i.e. tabbed out once
xforms-invalid
the control has an error level
xforms-warning
the control has a warning level
xforms-info
the control has an info level
xforms-required
the control is required
xforms-empty
the control is required and empty
xforms-filled
the control is required and filled
xforms-incremental
the control is in incremental mode
xforms-select1-appearance-APPEARANCE
APPEARANCE: full, etc.
xforms-mediatype-TYPE
TYPE: image, text etc.
xforms-mediatype-TYPE-SUBTYPE
SUBTYPE: html, etc.
xforms-static
the control is in static-readonly mode
xforms-field
in static-readonly mode only, outputs which look like fields [SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.5]
NOTE: A data type is not present if the control is xforms-disabled.
xforms-field applies to xf:input, xf:secret, xf:select/xf:select1. It is used to highlight (by default display a field box around) readonly fields in review and PDF modes.

Classes on other elements

Class Name
Element
Comment
xforms-label
​
a label
xforms-help
​
a help
xforms-hint
​
a hint
xforms-alert
​
an alert
xforms-active
.xforms-alert
an active alert
xforms-items
​
radio/checkbox items
xforms-selected
​
wrapper around a selected checkbox/radio button
xforms-deselected
​
wrapper around a deselected checkbox/radio button

Other considerations

Separate vs. inline CSS

You can either:
  1. 1.
    Store your CSS is a separate CSS file, which you either provide in addition or that overrides the default CSS provided by Orbeon Forms. For more on this, see the oxf.fr.css.custom.uri configuration property. This is the recommended technique if your CSS is intended to be shared by several forms.
  2. 2.
    Put your CSS inline, in the form. Uf your CSS is quite short, and specific to a given form (not to be shared amongst forms), this is a possibility. For this, put the rules within your own <style> section of the form:
    <xh:title>My Form Title</xh:title>
    <xh:style type="text/css">
    #fr-view .fr-grid .fr-grid-content .my-class input.xforms-input-input {
    width: 8em
    }
    </xh:style>
NOTE: Since 2018.1, it is no longer recommended to place any inline CSS, as some servers use the Content-Security-Policy header to disable inline scripts and CSS. Orbeon Forms 2018.1 doesn't include any inline scripts and CSS anymore by default.

Strength of CSS rules

Bootstrap, XForms engine, Form Runner and Form Builder CSS rules are contained within an enclosing .orbeon CSS class. This ensures that the Orbeon CSS rules only apply within an element with that class. It also makes Orbeon CSS rules a bit stronger (more specific) than before. You might have to update your custom CSS to take this into account.
When defining your own CSS, make sure to use a strong selector, so its precedence is higher than CSS provide by Orbeon Forms, e.g. something like:
.orbeon .fr-grid .my-class .xforms-input-input {
...rule...
}

Twitter Bootstrap

Since Orbeon Forms 4.0, Form Runner uses Twitter Bootstrap for some aspects of its layout and styling.
NOTE: If you have custom CSS which works with Orbeon Forms 3.9, it is likely that you will have to update it to work with Orbeon Forms 4.0.

Configuring the presentation of automatic PDF output

Changing the page width

The default width with Bootstrap is 940px, but you can change this by overriding the Bootstrap/Orbeon CSS. As usual, to do so, we recommend you use a tool like the Chrome DevTools to find the exact rules you need to override in your environment. For instance, with an out-of-the-box Orbeon Forms deployed as a servlet, you can set the width to 720px with:
.orbeon .container, .orbeon .span12 { width: 720px }

See also

Previous
Styling
Next
Grids CSS
Last modified 2mo ago