JEE App and Different Skins

Question

Hi

I am working on a project where there is a requirement to have a different look and feel for 1 set of users and a different look and feel for a separate set of users. These users will be split up based on country or some other type of code to be defined.

I plan to implement a filter that will check which skin this user should have and then forward that user onto the correct page.

My question is, is it possible to define different skins like this? The main content of the pages will be the same except for the menu's colors etc. Are there any frameworks or libraries out there that we can use for this?

We are using the struts framework and this is running on Websphere 6.1.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Thanks Damien

Answer 1

Your requirements are not totally clear but if they are simple, maybe using different CSS could suffice. For more complex things, have a look at Tiles or SiteMesh, they both can be used to implement skinning.

Resources

• SiteMesh Tutorial with Examples
• Decorating the Web with SiteMesh
• Struts-2: Decorating With SiteMesh
• Tiles Plugin

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• Servlet page decoration: Do people use Tiles, Sitemesh, or something else?