WebSphere Portal Theme Development with a focus on REST services Webcast   

You are invited to attend a webcast on the topic of WebSphere Portal Theme Development with a focus on REST services.

IBM Support is hosting a Tech Exchange webcast and call on the topic of WebSphere Portal Theme Development with a focus on REST services. This presentation will take place on Wednesday, September 4, 2008 at 10:00 AM US EDT (2:00:00 PM GMT). Open Mic calls are Question & Answer focused sessions with a panel of subject matter experts covering your questions without going thru a slide presentation. Webcasts are slide presentations by a single presenter followed by Questions & Answers related to the material covered, as time permits.

To submit a question in advance, please post a new reply to this topic.

Below are the webcast URL and call-in numbers:

Date: September 4, 2008

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM (2:00 PM GMT)
Webcast URL: http://www.webdialogs.com/join - enter conference ID 5260580

Audio by phone:
North America, Toll free: 888-337-8199
North America, Toll: 719-325-2153
Confirmation Code: 5242536

International Toll Free Numbers:
Argentina 0800 666 2982
Australia 1 800 138 721
Austria 0800 291 390
Belgium 0 800 77 128
Brazil 0800 891 4391
Bulgaria 00 800 1100 178
Chile 123 0020 9673
China, Northern 10 800 714 1159
China, Southern 10 800 140 1141
Colombia 01 800 518 0760
Costa Rica 0800 015 0597
Czech Republic 800 900 705
Denmark 80 884 789
Finland 0 800 1 119654
France 0 800 902 956
Germany 0 800 181 4316
Greece 00 800 161 2205 5311
Hong Kong 800 90 8037
Hungary 06 800 153 08
India 8001007334
Indonesia 001 803 017 5311
Ireland 1 800 760 533
Israel 1 80 924 6026
Italy 800 873588
Japan 00531 16 0802
Korea-South 003 0813 1913
Luxembourg 800 2 7520
Malaysia 1 800 813 524
Mexico 001 800 499 7556
Monaco 800 93 401
Netherlands 0 800 023 2842
New Zealand 0 800 450 885
Norway 800 104 71
Panama 08 600 205 3173
Peru 0 800 53 354
Philippines 1 800 1110 0845
Portugal 800 819 688
Russia 810 800 2679 1012
Singapore 800 101 1954
Slovenia 0 800 80158
Spain 900 967 691
Sweden 02 079 3083
Switzerland 0 800 563 064
Thailand 001 800 156 205 5311
Trinidad and Tobago 1 800 205 5311
United Kingdom 0800 028 9769
Uruguay 0004 019 0176
Venezuela 0 800 100 5265

1. Will you be covering Web2.0 theme development in this webcast? Specifically customizing the web2.0 that ships with WPS6.1
2. Which version of RAD IDE supports developing themes using REST services? Will this be covered in the webcast?

We will be posting the slides along with the recording of the webcast next week.

Answers to some questions asked during the web cast
3. Can jQuery be used in themes? Is there a conflict with dojo or IBM's js library?
A 3. Should not be, but it has not been tested, as Dojo was written to work with other frameworks, clashing should not be an issue if written correctly.

4. In Portal 6.1 are theme/skin supported using css/div only or still utilizes table,tr, td to do the layout ?
6. the issue with divs today is the alignment and styling. If you want to apply different style, you need to create different skins with hardcoded classnames and apply to that column. We will have that issue in this right ?
A 4. This has always been suppoted but is not the default out of the box, The theme provided with portal are just examples. You have complete control over the rendered markup.

A 6. If you want a portlet to have different styles than the other portlets you still need to have separate skins, this has not changed

7. Can PortalWeb2 themes coexist with non PortalWeb2 themes? If navaigate for PortalWeb2 thems is in a js file wouldn't there be duplicate effort to maintain your portal pages/navigation to support non PortalWeb2 themes?
A 7. Yes they can coexist, and more so have to for fallback, So when developing your theme you should do a SSA theme first then work on doing the CSA theme so that if CSA cant used it can fall back gracefully to SSA

8. Does the new theme works well with HTML markup since most of our portletls has HTML content ?
A 8. Our new and existing themes are written to be html compliant. With the CSA themes currently that is all the markup that is supported.

9. Can you test at runtime if a page is required to have a left (or even top) navgigation in order to dynamically change other things on the page like css classes to change the laout of the page if there is/is not navigation?
A 9. I think this would be a good use of Theme Policies, see the infocenter and Themes and skins whitepaper on this.

10. How are entitlements enforced. What happens is a tab is suppossed to be surpress for a specific portal group?
A 10. This works as it did before, the user will only get pages in their navigation that they have access for.

11. Is drag & Drop and all existing theme features supported in CSA theme?
A 11. Drag and drop and palettes and other items work, Theme Extensions are NOT supported in a CSA theme. Also web 2.0 currently does not read the column widths as set in the layout tools

Current List of PKs that should be installed before doing any web 2.0 work on themes
PK70361 PK70387 PK70433 PK70437 PK70566 PK70847 PK71016


IBM Certified System Administrator -- WebSphere Portal V6.0, V5.1, V5.0
IBM Certified Solution Developer -- WebSphere Portal V5.1, v6.0

The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of IBM