Home
IBM Domino Designer XPages User Guide
This guide focuses on the aspects of creating applications using XPages technology.
Designing XPages applications
IBM® Domino® Designer provides the means to populate an XPage with controls and other artifacts, and to associate an XPage with data stores.
Adding images, styles, and themes
You can enhance your design with images, styles, and themes.
Designing with themes in XPages
A theme is used to define the look and feel of an application.
Creating a theme resource
Create new themes and add them to applications.
Using inheritance
Themes can inherit properties from a parent theme.

IBM Domino Designer XPages User Guide
This guide focuses on the aspects of creating applications using XPages technology.
- Product overview
  IBM® Domino® Designer supports applications development for the IBM Domino platform using XPages, forms, views, and other elements such as controls.
- Tutorials
  This section contains tutorials and information about tutorials.
- Administering applications
  IBM® Domino® Designer provides features for administering and managing your work and related files while developing your application projects.
- Designing XPages applications
  IBM® Domino® Designer provides the means to populate an XPage with controls and other artifacts, and to associate an XPage with data stores.
  - Previewing and running XPages
    XPages run in Domino® server and Notes® client environments. From Domino Designer, you can preview XPages in both environments.
  - Adding controls
    Controls are visual elements such as edit boxes, buttons, images, and text that allow users to manipulate data on an XPage.
  - Adding controls from the XPages Extension Library
    The XPages Extension Library provides additional controls ready to use. The controls include an application layout object, an improved dialog, pickers, in place forms, Dojo components, dynamic content, and much more. The controls support enhancements to the Domino(r)® templates.
  - Binding and submitting data
    The data store for XPages is Domino®. You can access the data store through Domino forms and views.
  - Adding images, styles, and themes
    You can enhance your design with images, styles, and themes.
    - Designing with images in XPages
      XPages use the image resources within your application for image control and other image settings. As such, working with images in XPages is actually working with image resources. Also, when you want to designate an area for an image but do not have a copy of the image yet, you can create a image placeholder and add the image later. In most locations, an image property of an XPage control can be computed so that the image can be determined at runtime. You can import images from your local machine, add them to XPages and custom controls, and copy them in one application and paste them into another application. You can delete and rename images in applications. Finally, you can also choose a PNG, GIF, JPEG, or BMP file to use as a high quality application icon image for your applications or you can use the classic "16 color" images.
    - Adding styles in XPages
      If you want to override the default styles provided with the target platform, you can create new styles or import existing styles from your local file system. You can add style sheets to applications and then add them to the XPages within the applications. You can also create custom formatting, export it to a style sheet as a class, and then reuse it across multiple XPages and controls.
    - Designing with themes in XPages
      A theme is used to define the look and feel of an application.
      - Creating a theme resource
        Create new themes and add them to applications.
        Theme file format
        Themes are defined in XML files using specific tags.
        Naming theme control entries
        Control entries are identified by themeIds. At runtime, the correct style attributes are determined by matching control names.
        Setting theme properties
        By using a theme you can assign values to any JSF control properties when the XPage is created.
        Using value binding
        Themes can assign the value of JSF expressions to properties when the XPage is created.
        Targeting a technology
        Properties of a theme can be targeted to apply specifically to pages created by XPages or Domino® Web Engine technology.
        Using inheritance
        Themes can inherit properties from a parent theme.
        Accessing resources
        By using a theme, you can access resources which are automatically inserted into XPages when viewed.
        Defining global properties
        Use themes to define global or application properties.
      - Editing a theme resource
        Edit an existing theme in the Database Resources.
  - Responsive web design support in XPages
    The XPages Extension Library supports Bootstrap, a Responsive Web Design (RWD) framework. This support comes in the form of an XPages Responsive Bootstrap plugin that you can use in your XPages applications.
  - Using Domino® Designer with XPages in Bluemix™
    IBM® Domino® Designer is designed to work with IBM Bluemix™, the cloud-based application development environment.
- Designing composite applications
  You can create composite applications from XPages.
- Programming
  XPages uses JavaScript™ for programming while the forms-based design elements use the formula language, LotusScript®, Java™, and JavaScript.

Using inheritance

Themes can inherit properties from a parent theme.

Using theme inheritance

A theme can inherit from another theme by specifying the parent theme in the extends attribute of the root tag:

<theme extends='MyOtherTheme'>

In that case, the new theme will inherit all the properties from its parent. In the previous code example, the new theme inherits all of the properties of the parent theme, MyOtherTheme.

The property definitions in the new "child" theme are merged with those of the "parent" theme. Any existing properties from the parent theme are preserved and therefore take precedence over the ones defined in the child theme unless explicitly cited as overridden. Parent properties are overridden by specifying the override attribute:

<control override='true'>