Theme Properties

Right-click on a Theme in the Survey Tree toolbox and select Properties, or if the theme is already open click the Show/Hide Properties button, to open the Properties page for that Theme - .

Figure 1 - Example of a Theme’s Properties page

• Document Type – choose a standard for the document type. Note that when a new theme is created in a survey layout, the default document type will be set to HTML5.
• External Stylesheet Url – if you already have style sheets set up outside of Authoring, you do not have to re-define your styles inside Survey Layouts. You can enter the URL of the .css file that holds the definitions, and refer to the style names directly in your survey (go to Using an External Style Sheet for more information). You can add multiple URLs to the field; use a comma (,) as the separator.
• External Javascript Url – you can refer to an external Javascript file inside your survey. Enter the URL of the .js file you wish to use. You can add multiple URLs to the field; use a comma (,) as the separator.
• Title Text – enter a text that you want to display in the title bar of the survey browser. The field also supports the ^SNAME^ primitive should you wish to show the survey name in the title bar.
• Body Style Name – the style to be set for the BODY-tag in the document.
• Body Attributes – define the body attributes for the theme. Body attributes include link, vlink, alink, leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth, and marginheight.
• Page Area Columns – a theme can automatically display questions on a page in two or more columns. For example, if you have a survey page with eight questions, if you specify 2 here, Authoring will display the first four questions in column one, then the remaining questions in column two. This can be used in combination with the “Vertical Column Population” property.
• Vertical Column Population – use together with Page Area Columns. When you have several columns of questions on a page you can decide whether questions are to be populated horizontally or vertically. If selected, the questions will be displayed in vertical order.
• Default 'Powered By Confirmit' Style – all surveys will have the text “Powered By Confirmit” displayed on each survey page. You specify the look and feel of this text by choosing a style for the text here. Under the Layout tab in Themes you also decide where on the page to place the text.
• Suppress hidden THEAD tags - THEAD tags are hidden tags that are normally rendered for accessibility compliance. However the tags are not supported in all browsers (e.g. mobile browsers) and can therefore cause problems in some cases. Check this box if you wish to remove the THEAD tags from the HTML output. This property applies to non-grid questions (i.e. open, single and multi).
• Accessibility enabled theme - check this box if Accessibility features are to be enabled for this theme (go to About Accessibility for more information). The notation (ACC.) then appears beside the theme name in the Survey Tree toolbox. Note that checking/unchecking this box has the same effect as right-clicking on the theme name in the Survey Tree toolbox and selecting Toggle Accessibility Mode(go to Activating the Accessibility Functionality for more information).
• Use newest available version of IE rendering - Internet Explorer versions later than 7 render pages very differently from Internet 6 and 7. Therefore Authoring runs all surveys in a compatibility mode which makes newer versions of Internet Explorer behave like Internet Explorer 7. This is to avoid the extra complexity related to creating html and css that behave the same in all versions of Internet Explorer. However it is possible to turn this compatibility mode off. This means that Internet Explorer will always run in the best available mode, based on Doctype and Internet Explorer version. Use this property in combination with the HTML5 doctype option to run Internet Explorer 8 and 9 (and later) in the most modern rendering mode available in these browsers. The article on the Microsoft URL below explains the subject in more detail:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx

Skinning

Use the Skinning tab - to specify which Question Skin you wish Authoring to use for each of the different question types (info, open, single, multi, grid, 3D-grid). You can override the default Skin when you want a specific question to have a special look, by going to the Properties page for the specific question.

Example of the Skinning tab

Meta Tags

Use the Meta Tags tab - to include additional information in Meta Tags on the HTML page. This information will not be visible on the survey page.

1. Click the Add button to create a new row in the tab.
2. Click the down-arrow beside the Name field to open a list of standard tags or type another tag name into the field.
3. Add the content of the tag into the Content field.
4. Click Save to save the changes.

Example of the Meta Tag tab

• Http-Equiv - provides an HTTP header for the information in the Content attribute. The Http-Equiv attribute can be used to simulate an HTTP response header, and its value depends on the value of the Content attribute. If the Name attribute is set, the Http-Equiv attribute should not be set.

Custom CSS

The Custom CSS tab allows you to enter any required Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to the theme. This will then be rendered inline in the survey, and will be visible in the preview. These can be used in Authoring, Panel Portals and Reportal

Surveys support project-specific changes to custom CSS, and this property is preserved on duplication and export of layouts and surveys.