The portal Web 2.0 theme
The portal Web 2.0 theme extends conventional JSP or servlet based
portal themes by adding a Javascript-based Client-Side Aggregation (CSA).
Using AJAX techniques with Portal Model REST services, CSA provides a more
responsive user experience and lower load on the server.
How the Web 2.0 theme works
The CSA aggregator
is initialized using a JavaScript onload() function. The
CSA aggregator then makes multiple AJAX requests to the portal to retrieve
the contents of the theme navigation elements, the page content layout, and
then the contents of the portlets on the page themselves.
After the
initial loading of the page, subsequent user actions are handled by the CSA
aggregator. Rather than updating and refreshing the entire page on every user
interaction, the CSA aggregator only updates the parts of the page that have
actually changed. If the user interacts with a portlet, only that portlet
with its new contents will be requested and updated on the page. If a user
selects a new page from the theme navigation links, only the affected navigation
elements are updated, and the new page contents are rendered.
Comparison of the Web 2.0 theme to traditional themes
Version
6.1 WebSphere Portal Express
includes two new themes:
- Portal
- The Portal theme is a new look and feel for the portal, and is compatible
with the new Theme Customizer portlet, which allows end users to easily customize
the visual styles and layout of the theme. It is a traditional JSP server-side
aggregated theme.
- PortalWeb2
- The PortalWeb2 theme is based on the Portal theme, but is enabled to use
the CSA aggregator.
The two themes can serve as examples of what is required to
add the CSA aggregator to an existing Server-Side Aggregation (SSA) theme.
You can determine what was added or modified in the PortalWeb2 theme by using
a comparison tool. Here is a brief summary of the differences:
- Default page markup
- The primary difference in the theme JSPs is that the Portal theme renders
the page navigation with custom JSP tags, whereas the PortalWeb2 theme simply
includes empty division ( <div> ) tags that are later
populated by the CSA aggregator.
- head_csa.jspf
- Changes to the theme required for CSA are consolidated as much as possible
into the head_csa.jspf. This includes initialization and bootstrapping of
the CSA aggregator, and all other variables or references required in CSA.
- web2 dir
- The common JavaScript framework for CSA is stored in a common location
for use by all Web 2.0 themes and portlets. The path is [wps.war root]/web2. Reference:
[link to javascript documentation]
Parent topic: What's new
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Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1