Theme Media Assets

For additional information, see Themes.

For instructions on how to include frameworks, see Theme Structure.

Highlighted some image media assets that are used as part of a theme.

Media assets can be thought of as asset with which the theme would not look or function correctly and is used by the designer to include content that must be loaded up through a theme's javascript or stylesheet files. These assets do not have any relationship to Assets in the asset library and are handled outside of that process. Each media asset relies on the theme and browsers ability to interpret the file to be used. Additionally these media files could also include text documents or csv files used by a javascript library to display some meaningful static content. In the most extreme case the media assets could also store custom flash (swf), java applet (jar) or other web app formats that may not work on all browsers or rely on extended functionality.

The following examples display two ways of achieving the same default background design using normal stylesheets and themes.

Example 1: Background via Asset Library

1. Upload background.jpg to the Asset library.
2. Reference the background.jpg file in a custom unroole stylesheet
3. Activate the stylesheet on the channel for the background to take effect.

Example 2: Background via Theme

1. Include background.jpg in the media assets folder of a theme.
2. Reference the background.jpg file in a css file as part of the theme ex: "body { background-image: url(../media_assets/background.jpg) }"
3. Load the theme into the channel to set the default background.

The benefit of adding the media assets to themes over the asset library is that it makes the theme portable and does not rely on the specific assets available on an account or specific setup. Designers should take care to only include the media assets necessary to the theme and not those that are often to change or should be included to the asset library such as PDF's or documents.