Determining which styles to edit

It is common to want to change the color of a field on a host screen. The challenge is to know which style is being applied to that particular host field. In order to determine this, you can view the source of the Web page when the host field is displayed, and by examining the source, you can determine which style is being applied.

Suppose you want to change the text that it is being used for the User and Password text on the Sign On screen of a ZIETrans project. To view the source of the Web page, run the ZIETrans project in an actual Web browser until you can see the field in question. Do not use the Web browser built into Eclipse. You can run the ZIETrans project on the test server in Eclipse, but you must access the project using an actual browser, for example, Internet Explorer.

When the field in question is visible, if, for example, you are using Internet Explorer, click View on the browser's menu bar and then click Source from the drop-down menu.

Search in the text file for the text that is in the field or near to the field that you want to modify, in this case, User. Just before the text in the source, you will find a CLASS= statement. That statement provides the CLASS or style that is being applied to the text. You can then go into the template or style sheet and edit the style to get the effect you want.

Note: Instead of viewing the source, if available with your browser, you can use new developer tools, for example Internet Explorer Developer Tools, to inspect particular page elements.

The style change will be applied throughout the ZIETrans application where this style is used. If you create a default application, where the default template is applied to every host screen, this style will be used on every screen. If you want to have a style applied to just one host screen, then you must create a template that gets applied to that specific host screen.