Using Class Suffixes

This tutorial was written for Joomla 1.5, however the differences to Joomla 1.6 are minor.

This tutorial will show you how to use Page, Module, and Menu Class Suffixes in Joomla! to fine-tune the

appearance of your site. For the tutorial, we will assume you have the Joomla! 1.5.9 Sample site

available.

Contents

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1 Background

2 When Would You Use a Class Suffix?

3 Page Class Suffix

o 3.1 How It Works Without a Page Class Suffix

o 3.2 Page Class Suffix (No Space)

o 3.3 Page Class Suffix (With a Leading Space)

o 3.4 Add CSS Styling to New Class

4 Module Class Suffix

o 4.1 Be careful not to break existing CSS styling

5 Menu Class Suffix and Menu Tag ID

o 5.1 Menu Class Suffix

o 5.2 Menu Tag ID parameter

6 Conclusion

Background

Joomla! creates HTML pages that use Cascading Style Sheets to control the appearance of the page.

This includes things like fonts, colors, margins, and background. The CSS files are part of your template.

When Joomla! creates a page, it creates different CSS classes that are then referenced in the CSS file to

specify which style will apply to which parts of the HTML page. These class names are pre-programmed

into Joomla!. But Joomla! allows you to modify or add CSS classes by way of the Class Suffix

parameters. This lets you fine-tune the appearance of specific pages with no programming and very little

work. The best way to understand this is to see specific examples.

When Would You Use a Class Suffix?

Say, for example, that your website contains a number of Section Blog layouts, each for a different

Section. If you are happy to have all of these pages styled the same way, then you wouldn't need to use a

Page Class Suffix. However, say you want each of these sections styled differently than the others. For

example, maybe you want a different background color or image for each different section.

Or say that you want the heading on your front page to look different than the heading on other pages.

In both of these cases, if you modify the styling in your "template.css" file for the standard CSS classes, it

will affect all Menu Items that use these CSS classes. For example, if you change the style for the CSS

class "componentheading", it will affect all of the Menu Items that use this class.

However, if you add a unique Page Class Suffix to a Menu Item, then Joomla! will create new CSS

classes for each individual Menu Item so you can style each one differently.

Page Class Suffix

Before you start, make sure you have the Joomla! sample website available. Also, make sure the default

template is set to "rhuk_milkyway" (in the Extensions → Template Manager).

How It Works Without a Page Class Suffix

Before we add a Page Class Suffix, let's see how this pages works without one. In the front end, navigate

to Example Pages → Section Blog. In your browser, select the option to view the page source code. For

example, in Firefox, press Ctrl+U. In Internet Explorer, select View → Source. In Safari, select View →

View Source.

Using the "Find" command, find the first occurrence of the word "componentheading". It should look like

the following:

<div class="componentheading">

Browse down the file and find the following tags:

<table class="blog" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <table class="contentpaneopen"><td class="contentheading" width="100%"><table class="contentpaneopen">

Note: The following screenshots were made using the free Firefox add-in

called Firebug. Firebug allows you to quickly see the relationship between

the HTML elements in your source and the text and graphics shown on the

page. It is a very handy tool, and you can get it here. For more information,

please watch the free video tutorial on using Firebug with Joomla.

The screenshot below shows you the "componentheading" class. It is the page title

area above the blog article.

This screenshot shows you the entire "blog" class. This is the outer table into which

all of the articles will fit.

The next screenshot shows you the "contentpaneopen" class for an article heading.

This includes the article title and the PDF, Print, and Email icons to the right.

This screenshot shows you the "contentpaneopen" class for the body of the article.

This includes the author and date information as well as the actual article text.

So this gives us a good understanding of how Joomla! allows us to style the

elements on a Section Blog layout. Joomla! writes out these classes as part of the

HTML. And the template contains CSS that provides the styling information for

these various elements and classes.

Page Class Suffix (No Space)

Now that we see how this works without a Page Class Suffix, let's try it with one. In

the back end, navigate to Menus → Example Pages and click on "Section Blog".

This should display the "Menu Item: [Edit]" screen for the Section Blog Layout. Click

Parameters (System) to show the System Parameters. In the "Page Class Suffix"

field enter the value "_myBlogSuffix" and click the Save button.

Now, go back to the front end and again navigate to Example Pages → Section

Blog. Notice right away that we lost the styling for the page and article titles. Let's

look closer to see why.

Using the browser "Find" command, find the first occurrence of "_myBlogSuffix". It

is in a "div" tag and looks like this:

<div class="componentheading_myBlogSuffix">

If you look through the source, you should also see the following

classes: blog_myBlogSuffix, contentpaneopen_myBlogSuffix,

and contentheading_myBlogSuffix.

By adding the Page Class Suffix, we changed all of these class names. That means

that special styling in the CSS file that refers to the "base" class names (like

componentheading, blog, and so on) will not be applied, since those classes no

longer exist on the page.

Now, you can fix this problem by editing your templates CSS file to add the same

styling for the new classes (for example, "componentheading_myBlogSuffix"). But

there is a much easier way to do this -- simply by adding a leading space to the

parameter.

Page Class Suffix (With a Leading Space)

Again in the back end, go back to Menus → Example Pages → Section Blog. We're

going to change the value of the Page Class Suffix. This time we're going to enter in

a leading space and call it <space> + "myBlogClass", as shown below.

Now, go back to the front end and re-display the Example Pages → Section Blog.

Notice that our styling is back! Let's look at the HTML source to see what is going

on. Open the source and find the first occurrence of "myBlogClass". It should like

this:

<div class="componentheading myBlogClass">

Because we put a leading space in the Page Class Suffix, we created a second

class instead of changing the name of the first class (which is allowed and

supported by all modern browsers). So we didn't break any of the existing CSS

styling for this page. (One warning: we need to make sure the new class name is

different than any of the other class names used on the page. Otherwise, we might

get styling we don't want.)

Add CSS Styling to New Class

At this point, we've created a new CSS class in the HTML to allow for some new

styling. Now we need to use this new class to actually change the look of our page.

The first thing we need to do is find the applicable CSS file. In this case, it

is <joomla_root>/templates/rhuk_milkyway/css/template.css.

Let's say we want to add a background color, but only to this specific Section Blog.

(Remember, if we wanted to just change all of the Section Blog pages in our site,

we could just change the CSS styling for the base classes, such as

"componentheading" or "blog".) We need to do is figure out which area

("componentheading", "blog", or "contentpaneopen") we want to style. Say we just

wanted to style the "componentheading" area.

First, let's use the CSS selector "div.myBlogClass" and add the following code to

the end of our CSS file:

/* Custom Styling */

div.myBlogClass {

background-color: #FFE4E1; /* mistyrose */

}

The result is that the page heading now has the background color, as shown below.

Now this works fine in our example, because the other classes are defined for

"table" tags and not "div" tags. But it is normally better to be more specific in our

style selector by styling only those elements that have both the desired base class

and the new class. For example, let's replace the code above with the following

code:

/* Custom Styling */

.blog.myBlogClass {

background-color: #FAFAD2; /* lightgoldenrod */

}

This specifies that the new style will only be applied to elements that have both the

"blog" and the "myBlogClass" styles. This gives us the background color over the

entire "blog" area, as shown below.

The great thing about creating a new class (with the leading space trick) is that we

don't need to copy all of the existing styling for the base classes. We can just focus

on the new styling that we want.

Now in this example, we focused on the Section Blog layout. The class names for

different components might be different, but the process will be the same. The table

below shows some common Joomla! layouts and a list of class names that can

have Page Class Suffixes added.

Layout CSS Class Names Used

Article Layoutcomponentheading, contentpaneopen, contentheading, contentpagetitle

Category Blog, Frontpage Blog, Section Blog

componentheading, contentpagetitle, blog, contentpaneopen, contentheading, readon, blog_more

Category List, Section List componentheading, contentpane, contentdescription

Contact Categorycomponentheading, contentpane, contentdescription, sectiontablefooter, sectiontableheader, category

Contact Layout componentheading, contentpaneopen, contentheading

So, to sum up what we have learned about using the Page Class Suffix parameter:

1. Use a leading space to create a new CSS class. This way you don't have

to worry about re-doing or breaking existing CSS styles.

2. Look in the HTML source code to find the locations of the base and new

classes.

3. If desired, use Firebug to see which HTML elements correspond to which

areas on the page.

4. Add custom styling to the end of the "template.css" file, specifying both the

name of the desired base class and the custom class in the

form .baseclass.customclass as in the example above.

Module Class Suffix

The Module Class Suffix parameter works in the same way as the Page Class

Suffix. Let's go through an example using the Latest News module.

In the administrative back end, navigate to Extensions → Module Manager and find

the "Latest News" module. Click on it to open it for editing, and enter <space> +

"customLatestClass" in the Module Class Suffix parameter field, as shown below:

Now, navigate to the home page in the front end and view the page source code.

The screenshot below was made using the Firebug add-in tool. It shows the home

page and the HTML and styling for the customised Latest News module.

In the upper part of the screen, outlined in light blue, is the "div" element for the

module. Below, in the HTML window, we see the HTML as follows:

<div class="moduletable customLatestClass">

and then

<ul class="latestnews customLatestClass">

The "moduletable" and "latestnews" classes are created automatically. The new

class, "customLatestNews" was created because we started the Module Class

Suffix parameter with a leading space.

Now, let's use our new class to add some custom styling. Again, go to the end of

the templates/rhuk_milkyway/css/template.css file and add the following code:

div.customLatestClass {

background-color: #FFFFD2;

}

div.customLatestClass h3, ul.customLatestClass,

ul.customLatestClass a {

color: #8B4513;

}

Save the file and re-display the home page. It should look like the screenshot

below:

The CSS selector div.customLatestClass sets the background color for the

entire area. The three selectors div.customLatestClass h3,

ul.customLatestClass, ul.customLatestClass a select the font color for

the "h3" heading, the bullets ("ul" tag), and the "a" tag, respectively. Note that, if we

only wanted to style the "ul" element, we wouldn't need a Module Class Suffix

unless we had more than one "Latest News" module. Instead, we could just have

defined the CSS using the standard "latestnews" class.

Be careful not to break existing CSS styling

In menus, we need to be careful not to break existing CSS styling.

Let's look at how this works. In the administrative back end, navigate to Extensions

→ Module Manager and open the Main Menu for editing. Click on the Advanced

Parameters. Notice that the Module Class Suffix is set to "_menu", without a leading

space.

Now, go to the Home page in the front end and view the source code (or use

Firebug). The screenshot below shows the HTML for the Main Menu.

Notice that the class is called "module_menu" because of the Module Class Suffix.

Also, notice that there is special styling in the "template.css" and "blue.css" files for

the "module_menu" class. For example, there is a background image that provides

part of the blue border around the menu.

We can confirm this by returning to the back end and changing the Module Class

Suffix to blank. Return to the Home page and refresh. Now the Main Menu will show

without the special "module_menu" styling, as shown below:

This shows an important point. Existing modules, especially menus, may already

have CSS styling that depends on Module Class Suffixes. So we need to be careful

when making changes.

What if we still wanted to add some special styling just to the Main Menu? One way

is to get tricky and add a second CSS class to the existing suffix. To see this, return

to the Module Manager in the back end and open the Main Menu for editing. This

time, in the Module Class suffix, enter _menu, a space, and then myMenuClass, as

shown below:

Now, add the following code to the end of the

templates/rhuk_milkyway/css/template.css file:

div.myNewClass {

font-size: 1.2em;

}

Go back to the Home page and notice that now the font in the Main Menu is larger,

as shown below.

If we open Firebug, we can see what the HTML and CSS looks like, as shown

below:

By putting a space between the "_menu" and "myNewClass", we added the new

class into the HTML. Then, by selecting the new class in the CSS file, we changed

the font size.

Menu Class Suffix and Menu Tag ID

All core modules allow you to enter a Module Class Suffix, as discussed above.

Menu modules have two additional parameters: Menu Class Suffix and Menu Tag

ID. Let's look at what these parameters do.

Menu Class Suffix

The Menu Class Suffix inserts an extra suffix in the class for the unordered list that

builds up the menu. If unedited, the class is "menu". If adding "_myMenuClass"

under Advanced Parameters → Menu Class Suffix, the new tag will be

"menu_myMenuClass".

(This behaviour is only for the Menu Style "List". If choosing "Legacy - Vertical" or

"Legacy - Horizontal", the class suffix will be added to the links in the table; this

suffix will then be "mainlevel_myMenuClass". When choosing the Legacy Flat List,

the suffix will be added to the links (as on the two other Legacy lists), but it will also

be added to the ul tag, but as an id rather than a class; the id will be

"mainlevel_myMenuClass".)

Menu Tag ID parameter

Now, lets look at the Menu Tag ID parameter. Navigate to the back end, open the

Main Menu module for editing, and enter "myTagID" in the Menu Tag ID parameter.

Add the following code to the end of the templates/rhuk_milkyway/css/template.css

file:

#myTagID {

list-style-type: square;

}

Now, re-display the Home page to see the change. The bullets for the Main Menu

should now appear as squares, as shown below:

Finally, we can look at the HTML and CSS in Firebug, as shown below.

Joomla! has added the attribute id="myTagID" to the "ul" tag for the Main Menu.

This allowed us to change the style for this ID. Note that, since this is an "id"

attribute, we use the CSS selector #myTagID(with a "#" instead of a ".").

Conclusion

The Class Suffix and Menu Tag ID parameters allow you to fine-tune the CSS

styling of your web site. By using a leading space in the suffix name, we can create

a new class. This is normally the preferred method, since, as long as the new class

name does not conflict with an existing class, no existing styling will be broken.