Dashboard Skins and the System Skins Overview

Skins define the look and feel of the dashboard user interface.They provide a predefined set of choices you can use when configuring charts, to ensure a coherent look and feel.

You can use skins in the following ways:

  • You can just use system defaults and do no skin configuration. All look-and-feel options in charts and state model components are disabled.
  • You can add a system skin, which brings the system skin into your project as project resource. You can then select elements of the system skin in your chart components.
  • After you add the system skin, you can also add your own custom skins. You associate a custom skin with a view definition. However this feature is only partly supported in this release. See Custom Skins.
    Note: You cannot use any skin options in charts until you create a System Skin.

A skin has the following elements:

Skin-Level Properties

Skin level properties are colors that apply to the dashboard page and its components as a whole,. such as background and foreground colors.

Chart Color Sets

Chart color sets define sets of colors that can be used when defining chart components. Different charts can use different chart color sets. Each chart color set references one or more series color sets.

Series Color Sets

One chart can use more than one series and each series can have its own series color set. A series color set is a pair of colors: a base color and a highlight color. The base color is used for a graphic element. The highlight is the color that gives the element a 3-dimensional look.

Text Color Sets

Text color sets identify and define the colors to use for the different kinds of text in charts. Font size and style (italic, bold, regular) are set in chart definitions.

Tip: Point to a color in the properties to see the color’s Hex value definition.