High performance skins

Content

  1. Use high performance skins
  2. Customize high performance skins
  3. Enable high performance skins
  4. Verify high performance skins

 

Use high performance skins

WebSphere Portal introduces support for high performance skins. All skins shipped with WebSphere Portal are rendered in a way that provides faster aggregation. High performance skins cannot be as extensively customized as standard skins; however, you can still modify the images and colors.

Do not confuse the high performance skins with lightweight skins. High performance skins are not generated by JSPs. Lightweight skins include JSPs that are similar to other skins shipped by WebSphere Portal, but with certain tags removed.

A standard skin is composed of JSPs for each skin component. Standard skins can be extensively customized. High performance skins are not generated by JSPs, so the markup for high-performance skins cannot be customized. High performance skins are generated by code that is compiled into WebSphere Portal and cannot be modified by portal users. If high-performance skins are used, the JSP files for the high-performance skins are ignored. The static content, such as graphics and style sheets, is still used. As a result, only the static content files can be customized. Altering the markup generated by high-performance skins is not possible.

Use high performance skins and standard skins on the same page. For example, some portlets on the page might use high performance skins and other portlets might use standard skins.

High performance skins work best when... Do not use high performance skins when...

  • Performance is a high priority.

  • Customization of the shipped skins is limited to changing style sheets and images.

  • Shipped skins are extensively customized, especially if there are changes to the layout or structure of the skin. If you convert a highly customized skin to a high-performance skin, many of the customizations are ignored and will not function as designed.

  • You want to continue using the shipped skins in some areas of the portal. Once you enable high performance skins, the behavior of the shipped skins changes.

High performance skins are only supported for the HTML markup. Other markups, including WML and CHTML, are not supported. If you create the skin using a markup other than HTML, the skin will continue to use the JSP based markup.

 

Customize high performance skins

You can modify the following elements of high performance skins:

  • Style sheets used by the skins. Style sheets are located in the associated theme directory. The default location for all themes is...

    was_root/installedApps/hostname/wps.ear/wps.war/themes.

  • Images used by the skin.

If you customize the NoSkin skin, the changes will affect administrative portlets in your portal. Administrative portlets use the NoSkin skin by default. Select a different skin for the administrative portlets if you do not want your changes to affect administrative portlets.

See Customizing the portal for more information about customizing style sheets and images.

 

Enable high performance skins

Three parameters are used to enable high performance skins:

  1. Unlayered containers:

    Containers are used to design page layout. Unlayered containers are the row and column elements.

  2. Layered containers:

    The only layered container is layeredContainer-V.jsp. This container controls the tree navigation that can be used on the side of the portal screen.

  3. High performance controls:

    A control determines the title bar and border of a single portlet. One or more controls can exist within each container. The same type of control is used for all portlets that use a particular skin.

You receive the greatest performance improvements by enabling all three parameters; however, enabling only one of these parameters still provides some benefit. For example, if you require highly customized controls that prevent you from enabling high performance controls, you can still enable high performance containers and gain some performance benefit.

Follow these steps to enable high performance skins:

  1. Make a backup copies of the entire skins and themes directories. For example...

    mkdir /backup
    cd was_root/installedApps/hostname/wps.ear/wps.war/
    tar cvf /backup/skins.tar skins
    tar cvf /backup/themes.tar themes

  2. Customize the images and style sheets for your skins (Optional).

  3. Edit ConfigService.properties. For example...

    cd wp_root/shared/app/config/services
    cp ConfigService.properties ConfigService.properties.bak
    vi ConfigService.properties

  4. If not in the file, add add the following...

    skins.highperf.containers
    skins.highperf.layeredcontainers
    skins.highperf.controls
    skins.highperf.showself

  5. Perform one or all of the following...

  6. Save your changes and close the ConfigService.properties file.

  7. Restart WebSphere Portal.

    You can revert to standard skins at any time by setting the skins.highperf.containers, skins.highperf.layeredcontainers, and skins.highperf.controls values to false. Any changes you made to style sheets and images will persist.

 

Verify high performance skins

Enable high performance skins does not change the appearance of the portal in any way. High performance skins simply render components more quickly. This can make it difficult to confirm that high performance skins are being used by a particular component.

If you added the skins.highperf.showself=true parameter to the ConfigService.properties file as described above, you can verify high performance skins by viewing the source HTML of the rendered components:

  1. View the component in a browser.

  2. Use your browser to view the source HTML code for the component. If the component uses high performance skins, an HTML comment containing the term "fast skins" appears at the beginning of the code for the component.

    For example:

    <!-- Fast skins.html.LayeredContainer-->.

 

See also

  1. Configurable Portal Services
  2. Lightweight themes and skins
  3. Tuning
  4. IBM WebSphere Portal for Multiplatforms V5.1
  5. Caching
  6. Nested groups
  7. Database performance
  8. Performance improvement
  9. Create your own skin

 

WebSphere is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

 

IBM is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.