Types of skins and their priorities

 provides the following types of skins. Each skin type has a priority level by which it is applied, with 1 being the highest:

1. View Name + Form Name
2. View Name Only
3. View Label + Form Name
4. View Label Only
5. Form
6. Tag
7. Application
8. Server

Applying skin priorities

Higher priority skin types take precedence over lower priority types. The skin type View Name takes precedence over the type View Label; which takes precedence over Skin Selector, and so on. For example, if you have a View Name skin with a blue background and a Form level skin with a green background, the blue background is displayed because the View Name skin has the higher priority.

If you have multiple skins with the same priority level and the same properties in an application, the skin that was created most recently takes precedence. For example, suppose that View Name Skin A is created at 08:30 on 02/07/10 and View Name Skin B is created at 10:30 on 02/07/10, and both skins define a panel header color. Skin B takes precedence and overwrites Skin A.

If the two skins define different properties (for example, if Skin A defines a panel header color and Skin B defines a background color), Skin B does not overwrite Skin A.

Applying field display property priorities

Before rendering the HTML for the form, the  server uses the display properties defined for the skin to override the field display properties stored as part of the form definition. These properties have the following priority levels:

1. Field ID
2. Field Skin Selector
3. Field Type

Properties for a field skin selector take precedence over properties for a field type. Properties for a field ID take precedence over properties for a field skin selector.