Setting styles and skins in Flash forms

ColdFusion provides the following methods for controlling the style and appearance of Flash forms and their elements:

  • Skins provide a simple method for controlling the overall appearance of your form. A single skin controls the entire form.
  • Styles provide a finer-grained level of control than skins. Each style specifies a particular characteristic for a single control. Many styles are also inherited by a control's children. You can use both techniques in combination: you can specify a skin for your form and use styles to specify the appearance (such as input text font) of individual controls. For detailed information on the style names and values that you can use, see ColdFusion Flash Form Style Reference in the CFML Reference.

Controlling form appearance with Flash skins

The cfform tag takes a skin attribute, which lets you select an overall appearance for your form. The skin determines the color used for highlighted and selected elements.
You can select the following Flash skins:

  • haloBlue
  • haloGreen (the default)
  • haloOrange
  • haloSilver

About Flash form styles

The ColdFusion Flash form tags have a style attribute that lets you specify control characteristics using CSS syntax. You can specify a style attribute in the following tags:

  • cfform
  • cfformgroup
  • cfcalendar
  • cfformitem, types hrule and vrule
  • cfgrid
  • cfinput
  • cfselect
  • cftextarea
  • cftree}}The attributes for the {{cfform and cfformgroup generally apply to all the form or form group's children.Flash supports many, but not all, standard CSS styles. ColdFusion Flash forms only support applying specific CSS style specifications to individual CFML tags and their corresponding Flash controls and groups. You cannot use an external style sheet or define a document-level style sheet, as you can for HTML forms.

Flash form style specification syntax

To specify a Flash style, use the following format:

style="stylename1: value; stylename2: value; ..."

For example, the following code specifies three style values for a text input control:

<cfinput type="text" name="text2" label="Last"
style="borderSyle:inset; fontSize:12; backgroundColor:##FFEEFF">

About Flash form style value formats

Style properties can be Boolean values, strings, numbers, or arrays of these values.

Length format

You specify styles that take length or dimension values, including font sizes, in pixels.
The fontSize style property lets you use a set of keywords in addition to numbered units. You can use the following keywords when you set the fontSize style property. The exact sizes are defined by the client browser.

  • xx-small
  • x-small
  • small
  • medium
  • large
  • x-large
  • xx-large The following cfinput tag uses the style attribute with a fontSizekeyword to specify the size of the text in the input box:

    <cfinput type="text" name="text1" style="fontSize:X-large" label="Name">

     

Time format

You specify styles that take time values, such as the openDuration style that specifies how fast an accordion pleat opens, in milliseconds. The following example shows an accordion tag that takes one-half second to change between accordion pleats:

<cfformgroup type="accordion" height="260" style="openDuration: 500">

Color format

You define color values, such as those for the backgroundColor style, in the following formats:

Format

Description

hexadecimal

Hexadecimal colors are represented by a six-digit code preceded by two number sign characters (##). Two # characters are required to prevent ColdFusion from interpreting the character. The range of possible values is ##000000 to ##FFFFFF.

VGA color names

VGA color names are a set of 16 basic colors supported by all browsers that support CSS. The available color names are Aqua, Black, Blue, Fuchsia, Gray, Green, Lime, Maroon, Navy, Olive, Purple, Red, Silver, Teal, White, and Yellow. Some browsers support a larger list of color names. VGA color names are not case-sensitive.

Some styles support only the hexadecimal color format. 
Some controls accept multiple colors. For example, the tree control's depthColors style property can use a different background color for each level in the tree. To assign multiple colors, use a comma-delimited list, as the following example shows:

style="depthColors: ##EAEAEA, ##FF22CC, ##FFFFFF"

About Flash form style applicability and inheritance

Because of the way Flash control styles are implemented, some common styles are valid, but have no effect, in some tags. Therefore, in the table in Styles valid for all controls in ColdFusion Flash Form Style Reference in the CFML Reference, the listed styles do not cause errors when used in controls, but might not have any effect.
Styles can be inheritable or noninheritable. If a style is noninheritable, it only affects the tag, and does not affect any of its children. For example, to maintain a consistent background color in an hbox form group and its children tags, specify the color in all tags. If a style is inheritable, it applies to the tag and its children.

Example: applying styles to a Flash form

The following code creates a Flash form that uses a skin and styles to control its appearance. 
The code for the form is as follows. Comments in the code explain how formatting controls and styles determine the appearance.

<!--- Specify the form height and width, use the HaloBlue skin.
Note: Flash ignores a backgroundColor style set in cfform. --->
<cfform name="myform" height="390" width="440" format="Flash" skin="HaloBlue">
<!--- The input area is a panel. Styles to specify panel characteristics.
Child controls inherit the background color and font settings. --->
<cfformgroup type="Panel" label="Contact Information"
style="marginTop:20; marginBottom:20; fontSize:14; fontStyle:italic;
headerColors:##FFFF00, ##999900; backgroundColor:##FFFFEE;
headerHeight:35; cornerRadius:12">
<!--- This vbox sets the font size and style, and spacing between and
around its child controls. --->
<cfformgroup type="vbox" style="fontSize:12; fontStyle:normal;
verticalGap:18; marginLeft:10; marginRight:10">
<!--- Use a horizontal group to align the first and last name fields
and set a common label. --->
<cfformgroup type="horizontal" label="Name" >
<!--- Use text styles to highlight the entered names. --->
<cfinput type="text" required="Yes" name="firstName" label="First"
value="" width="120" style="color:##006090; fontSize:12;
fontWeight:bold" />
<cfinput type="text" required="Yes" name="lastName" label="Last"
value="" width="120" style="color:##006090; fontSize:12;
fontWeight:bold"/>
</cfformgroup>
<!--- Horizontal rules surround the e-mail address.
Styles specify the rule characteristics. --->
<cfformitem type="hrule" style="color:##999900; shadowColor:##DDDD66;
strokeWidth:4"/>
<cfformitem type="HTML" Style="marginTop:0; marginBottom:0">
<textformat indent="57"> <font size="-1">Flash fills this field in
automatically. You can replace the text.</font></textformat>
</cfformitem>
<cfinput type="text" name="email" label="email"
bind="{firstName.text}.{lastName.text}@mm.com">
<cfformitem type="hrule" style="color:##999900; shadowColor:##DDDD66;
strokeWidth:4"/>
<cfinput type="text" name="phone" validate="telephone" label="Phone">
<!--- Styles control the colors of the current, selected, and
rolled-over dates. --->
<cfinput type="datefield" name="mydate1" label="Date"
style="rollOverColor:##DDDDFF; selectionColor:##0000FF;
todayColor:##AAAAFF">
</cfformgroup> <!--- vbox --->
</cfformgroup> <!--- panel --->
<!--- A style centers the buttons at the bottom of the form. --->
<cfformgroup type="horizontal"style="horizontalAlign:center">
<cfinput type = "submit" name="submit" width="100" value = "Show Results">
<cfinput type = "reset" name="reset" width="100" value = "Reset Fields">
</cfformgroup>
</cfform>

 

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