Application Bundling and Deployment - Beginning Oracle Application Express 4.2 - page 336

Cascading Style Sheets provide a way to manage and control the look and feel of a
web page without having to change its structure. Used properly, a CSS file separates
the definition of a web page's visual attributes such as color, margins, and fonts from
the structure of the HTML document. APEX includes numerous themes that contain
templates that reference their own CSS. If you decide to create your own theme or tem-
plates, you may want to implement your own look and feel using CSS.
The Cascading Style Sheets area of the shared components is where you upload the
CSS files you wish to use with your application. Any file uploaded to the CSS area is
available to any application in the workspace.
Application Express images are divided into two classifications: workspace images
and application images. Workspace images are available to all applications in the work-
space into which they're uploaded. Application images are available only to the applic-
ation to which they're assigned when uploaded.
Images that are uploaded as shared components will likely be ones that you referen-
ce throughout your application. They may represent portions of your theme, such as
images for tabs or buttons; or they may represent icons that you use to show status or
that, when clicked, allow end users to edit rows of data.
One key differentiation to make is that the images uploaded to this area should not
be directly related to the application's data. Things such as product images, images of
employees, and the like should be stored in the application's “parse as” schema along-
side the data to which the image is related.
Static files are used for pretty much anything else. For instance, you may have a
user's guide associated with your application and want to make it available for users to
download. You could upload that to the Static Files area and reference it via a URL in
your application. Another use might be for JavaScript files that you want to bundle
with your application. You can reference uploaded JavaScripts either from the page
templates in a theme or directly from the definition of a page.
Even though the APEX-based files are considered shared components, and the im-
ages may even be tied to a specific application, they aren't included in the application
export. You need to export these items separately from the application. The good news
is that the APEX Export Wizard you use to export these files is the same one you use to
export an application. Simply click the Files tab in the Export Wizard (as shown in Fig-
ure 10-7 ) , and you're presented with a dialog that lets you export each of the three file
types.