Report Sizing and Properties Issue

[Richard1977]

Good Morning
I have created a report which sits in a portal dashboard, I have set to outer table container to be at 100% size and sat a sectioned list within this, and set this list to the required width 900 pixels, and I have applied no other sizing options to report. Because some of the items within the report were text I set the white space option on these to no wrap.

When the report ran adjusted the size of the sections to reflect the text within each item, as my customer wanted a consistent size I removed the no wrap option and the sizing was consistent at 900 pixels as per my settings

My question is, is there a priority for how report studio applies properties settings, for example does it respect the white space options before the sizing, and if there is, is the priority list available anywhere, or does it apply items in the order they were set, so because I applied the white space before the size it takes that first?

Many thanks in advance for any assistance
Richard

[bdbits]

Cognos report properties in many cases translate directly into CSS styles, and the rules for CSS mostly drive what properties take precedence over others. So, if you teach yourself CSS, you will instinctively know what will happen. I know this is not necessarily good news.  :-\

But you can actually leverage this to your advantage, if you learn CSS. What I have sometimes done is embed stylesheets on the reports. This can be very powerful, especially if you learn the various classes Cognos uses to denote the various elements in a report. (There are CSS files on the Cognos server where the report styles are that actually have embedded comments that document many of them; sorry, no access to a server to give you the exact path at the moment). If you want to do this, you simply embed the CSS rules in an HTML item on your report. Even better, particularly if I have a number of reports with some common formatting choices, is to either save them as a normal stylesheet on a web server and reference that in the HTML item, or store them on an empty "report" and use them as layout component references in your real reports. With either of these techniques, you can change a rule(s) in one place and have it reflected on all of the reports that use them. Pretty powerful and you'll look good in front of your users, too, with your ability to quickly make so many changes.  8)

That is a lot to take in, I know, but I hope it helps at least a little.

[Richard1977]

Thank you for the response

I will look into this over the next few days as CSS styles and embedding within styles sheets is something I didn't think of using

Once again many thanks for you help
Richard