Customizing Your Web Pages

The eBusiness Manager module uses HTML tables for Web page layout. There are three sections to the basic layout: header, body, and footer. The header contains the company name or logo defined in eBusiness Manager Options and the main menu links defined in Web Menu Maintenance. The body contains the Web page content. The footer contains the menu bar links defined in Web Menu Maintenance and e-mail link to the Webmaster. The group of menu items displayed in the header and footer is based on whether the user is a .order or .store customer.

Cascading style sheets are used to define the fonts and colors on eBusiness Manager Web pages. The style sheet selected in eBusiness Manager Options dynamically determines the look of all Web pages for the company. When you select a style sheet in eBusiness Manager Options, you can click the Preview button to view a sample of how the classes will be displayed on your Web pages.

For more information about customizing eBusiness Manager Web pages, refer to the following sections:

Customizing Cascading Style Sheets

You can use any text editor or style sheet editing software package to customize the style sheet used for your Web pages, and your changes will be applied to all pages. You can also define your own style sheet. For more information, see Style Sheets Provided with eBusiness Manager.

Note Because all styles sheet files reside at the same IIS location, style sheet file names must be unique system-wide. It is recommended that when customizing a style sheet, to first copy and rename one of the style sheets provided with eBusiness Manager.

Classes are used in the style sheets to identify common groups within the body. There are two basic types of body sections: forms and tables. Forms are primarily used for data entry. Tables are used primarily for inquiries, browsing, and lists. The class used to display a page element is identified in parentheses on each sample style sheet. In addition, there are classes unique to the products and services templates. For more information, see Style Sheet Groups.

Each style class and/or element definition is enclosed with a beginning brace ( { ) and an ending brace ( } ). When deleting an attribute from a style element definition, make sure to leave the remaining definition within the braces. Style classes are preceded by a period (.).

Example - Style class

.TitleRow

You can also use the Web Safe Color Picker to modify the background and font color attributes in your style sheets. For more information, see Using the Web Safe Color Picker.

Customizing the Logon, Request User ID and Password, and Message Pages

When a page is displayed before the user ID is validated, the company code assigned to the user is unavailable, and therefore the style sheet selected for the company is not used. The default.css style sheet is used to display these Web pages. If you want the Log On (login.htm), Request User ID and Password (uid_request.htm), and message (message.htm) templates to use a style sheet other than default.css, you can select a style sheet and rename the style sheet, default.css.

Another option is to edit the style sheet definition on the login.htm, uid_request.htm, and message.htm templates by replacing href="default.css" or href="~~style$~~" in the <link rel="stylesheet" … > line with the style sheet you would like to use to display these pages.

Defining Page Attributes in Web Template Options

Some page attributes can be modified in Web Template Options, including links and buttons, main menu styles, bullets and tables, and product display. For more information, see Web Menu Maintenance.

Adding or Modifying Web Help Pages

You can add new static Web pages to your Web site using the Base_Template.htm included in the IW folder on the Web engine server. This template contains the HTML markup for the header and footer sections, and is linked to the style sheet selected in eBusiness Manager Options. For more information, see Add or Modify Help Pages.

Using Tokens to Customize Web Pages

The eBusiness Manager Web pages contain tokens that are dynamically resolved by the Web engine. A token is a placeholder that is replaced with its related value when the page is loaded.

You can identify a token on the Web pages by the preceding and trailing ~~. For example:

~~StringColumnName$~~ or ~~NumericColumnName~~

The $ symbol is always appended to a string column name, but not to a numeric column name.

For more information about using tokens to customize your Web pages, see Using Tokens.

Adding User-Defined Fields (UDFs) to Form Submissions

You can add UDFs to forms and include them in the submission and update process. When the UDF is mapped to a source table in the Customizer module, the UDF defaults to the value from the source table. When the UDF is mapped to the corresponding destination table, the UDF information submitted from the Internet is retained.

For example, if you create a UDF for an item and then map the UDF to IT_ShoppingCartItemsSelected table, the UDF is automatically set to the value contained on the item record when the item is added to a shopping cart. If you map the UDF to the IT_ShoppingCartDetail and SO_SalesOrderDetail tables, the SO_InvoiceDetail and AR_InvoiceHistoryDetail tables will then retain the UDF value throughout the life of the submission. For more information, see Map User-Defined Fields (UDFs).

For more information about adding UDFs to form submissions, see Adding User-Defined Fields (UDFs) to Forms.

Note User-defined tables (UDTs) are not supported on eBusiness Manager Web pages.

Using Special Customization Features

On the Additems.htm template, you can add or remove the number of rows that contain items numbers to be submitted. The item code and quantity controls on each row contain a RowX prefix, where X is the row number identifying the item submitted. In the form there is a hidden control named Rows that must be set to the number of rows you want to include in the submission.

The following non-frame Products and Services templates include two options for displaying page number links.

Products_nt2_multi.htm
Products_nt2_single.htm
Products_nt2_multi2.htm
Products_nt2_single2.htm

You can display one link for each page in the category selected, or display one link for multiple pages. Use the default ~~IW_Products.m4p;GENERATE_PAGE_NAVIGATION?p~~ token to display separate links for each page in the category or search result.

Example - Separate page links

Furniture: page 2 of 20

go to pagePrevious Page1234567891011121314151617181920Next Page

To display pages in groups, change the token above to ~~IW_Products.m4p;GENERATE_PAGEGRP_NAVIGATION?p~~

Example - grouped page links

Furniture: page 2 of 20

go to page1234567891011-20