Mass customization of the user interface is one of the benefits of a portal. Customization
makes it easier for a user to complete tasks, and also helps further identify and characterize
the user. A user can define the look and feel of a page, the type of content displayed and so forth.
The 1.3a release of Jetspeed supports an easy to use Customizer. The goal of the customizer is to
provide an easy method to create new pages, selecting portlets and defining layouts for individual
pages.
The Customizer is the second level of customization. The authentication process in Jetspeed determines
what information is presented to the user initially. This is information can, for example,
be dependent on the role of the user.
A screenshot of the Customizer interface is shown below. At the top of the screen are choices to customize the HTML or WML presentation.
The Layout drop-down allows you to choose the layout of your page. You can choose from several possibilities, including:
- Two Columns 50/50 or 25/75 or 75/25
- Three Columns 25/50/25 or 33/33/33
- Single Row
- Single Column
- Menu Pane
- Tab Pane
The numbers (i.e. 33/33/33 are percentages of the page that the column will fill).
The Menu pane organizes your portlets in a menu on the left-hand side of the page, and on the right hand side the selected portlet is shown.
The Tab pane works similarly, but puts the selections in a horizontal 'pane' menu at the topof the page, and the entire portlet is shown in the middle of the screen.
Menu and Tab panes may be nested, as you can see in the default system by logging on as 'admin/jetspeed'.
The changes in the configuration are immediately available for the user.
