News OmniPortlet Appearance

Question

Hello,
I have been trying to change the appearance of a XML-News-OmniPortlet in a JSF page. I have followed the examples outlined in Oracle WebCenter Framework Tutorial using JDeveloper 10.1.3.2. The portlet is rendering a news service for me just fine in a browser, but now I want to control the portlet size, font size, etc. Neither the InlineStyle nor the ContentInlineStyle properties for the adfp:portlet seem to effect the content of the portlet in IE7 or FF2. Also, the height and width properties for the adfp:portlet seem to ineffective as well. When looking in JDeveloper design view, the JSF page looks like I want it to. However, when rendered to the browser the style elements are ignored.
I have also tried modifying the xsl, provided by Oracle, to include a span tag with the inline CSS I want, but keep getting an error from the portlet saying it can't get the data.
Should I be using a skin to control the news rendered in the portlet? Is there some trick?
I have done some additional digging into the generated code for the portlet and found some strange things, but I want to make sure I am doing this right.
Thanks in advance,
Steve

Answer 1

Peter,
Thanks for the reply.
Let me describe the portlet. I am taking and defining an OmniPortlet in a JSF page. Run the page, clicked define, select type of data as XML, give the news service URL (RSS 2.0), give the url to the XSL, nothing on filters, enter title, disable header and footer text, select the News "Layout Style", leave Caching alone. On the Layout step, I have tried all three "News Styles" (Plain, Logo, Scrolling) going with Plain. "Column Layout" I have working and linking as it allows and I expect. And no Events.
I found Scrolling to be a nice space saver, but font size is preventing me from using it. The height/width controls there work, but the portlet border doesn't shrink to fit those sizes. I think that answers your question. Yes?
Under the hood:
Ok, as I mentioned before I am trying to use the adfp:portlet's Height, Width, ContentInlineStyle and InlineStyle properties to control things. The OmniPortlet renders the border inside a table and then includes the portlet content within a <td> cell and then within an <iFrame>. The ContentInlineStyle is rendered to the <td> style attribute. The height, width, and InlineStyle are rendered to the <iFrame> style attribute. Seems a bit backward to me, but lets continue.
When you look at the <iFrame> style attribute, it reads like this:
style="font-size:6.0pt;;width: 150;;height: 200;;position:relative;" (copied from the rendered source)
I am not sure what the exact interpretation of the CSS will be based on that, but I do know that if I remove height and width and edit the InlineStyle to remove the ";" then only one ";" is generated. However, the content still doesn't inherit the font-size from the <iFrame>. This is likely because of the class definitions defined in the content, but that is just a guess.
I am going to look into the HTML Layout instead of News Layout and skins tomorrow.
Thanks for the help,
Steve