Components

The skin supports automatic generation of table of contents (ToC) for any page based on the headings appearing in the page. Clicking on the ToC item jumps to the corresponding heading in the page.

The ToC style can be chosen with <toc> element:

<custom>
  <msb4Skin>
    ...
    <toc>top|sidebar</theme>
    ...
  </msb4Skin>
</custom>

top - top ToC bar (subnav)
sidebar - sidebar ToC tree
any other value or no <toc> element (default) - do not create ToC

Both styles are exclusive: either the top or the sidebar can be used in a single page. The different styles and their further options are explained below.

Top ToC

Top ToC displays the table of contents as a horizontal menu just below the site header. Top items provide drop-down menus for subsections. Such menu is used throughout the whole site here.

The ToC snaps to the top of the screen to allow easy navigation in long pages.

<toc>top</toc>

Change when the ToC snaps to the top

The moment when the ToC snaps to the top of the screen depends on the theme you are using as well as whether other components (e.g. the banner or the breadcrumbs) are shown. You can adjust the snapping point by indicating the amount of pixels from the top to activate it. Use the offsetTop attribute on the <toc> element to indicate that:

<toc offsetTop="200">top</toc>

number - snap when this amount of pixels is scrolled (e.g. 225 for the Cerulean theme with banner, slogan and breadcrumbs).
no offsetTop attribute (default) - The default offset of 250 is used.

Furthermore, for different themes you may need to adjust the position where the ToC is fixed to avoid overlap or gaps from the top navigation bar. To do this, add the CSS for .navbar.affix to your site.css file, e.g. 50px for the Cerulean theme:

@media (min-width: 980px) {
  .navbar.affix {
    top: 50px;
  }
}

Limit the number of top ToC items

Top ToC can be limited to a certain number of items in configuration. All menu entries exceeding that number are grouped under the last dropdown menu. Exclude the option if unlimited.

<tocTopMax>6</tocTopMax>

number - limit to this number of items
-1 or no <tocTopMax> element (default) - unlimited

Flatten first 2 levels of ToC

Top ToC for pages that have only a single top heading (e.g. h1) also includes the 2nd level headings as top menu items. This is to avoid having a single item in the whole menu. Otherwise only the top level headings are included. This option can be overridden to force always or disable altogether.

<tocTopFlatten>true|false</tocTopFlatten>

true - force flattening 2 ToC levels
false - never flatten, always just use 1st level ToC items
no <tocTopFlatten> element (default) - flatten if single top heading

Sidebar ToC

The ToC can be displayed as a tree in the sidebar. This style does not snap to the page when scrolling, but scrolls with the whole page. See it in action in the sample page.

<toc>sidebar</toc>

Standard Maven site allows customising the website banner. Msb4 skin adds further components to the site header: brand and slogan.

The banner (big Msb4 Maven Skin text on this website) is defined using standard <bannerLeft> or <bannerRight> elements in site.xml site descriptor instead of using <custom><msb4Skin>:

<project ...>
...
  <bannerLeft>
    <!-- Msb4 Maven Skin, but with "Msb4" highlighted -->
    <name><![CDATA[
      <span class="color-highlight">Msb4</span> Maven Skin
      ]]>
    </name>
    <href>http://tunguski.github.io/msb4-maven-skin</href>
  </bannerLeft>
  ...
</project>

Note that <name> element can have CDATA element as its contents, allowing custom HTML content in the banner.

Brand

The brand text (or image) appearing in the left of the top navigation bar can be customised using <brand> element. You can set both the contents and the link.

<brand>
  <name>text</name>
  <href>link</href>
</brand>

name element sets the text of the top-left brand
href element sets the link to open when the brand text is clicked

Note that the <name> element can be used to embed custom HTML content. To do that, use CDATA element as the contents of <name> (writing HTML without CDATA will not work):

<brand>
  <name>
    <![CDATA[
    <span class="color-highlight">Msb4</span> Maven Skin
    ]]>
  </name>
  ..
</brand>

The above example is taken from this website, in order to have the Msb4 part in different colour. Images could also be added there in a similar manner.

Slogan

The skin allows setting a website slogan in the banner. It would appear underneath the website title, either on the left or the right side.

This website features a slogan “Apache Maven skin to reflow the standard Maven site with a modern feel”.

<slogan position="bannerRight|bannerLeft">The best website in the world</slogan>

The position attribute indicates where to place the slogan:

bannerLeft (default) - aligned to the left (as in this website)
bannerRight - aligned to the right

Menus

Menus in Msb4 skin can be placed both at the top navigation bar and at the bottom navigation columns. The menus themselves are defined as normally in Maven site, using <project><body><menu> XML items. The skin allows customizing where which menu items are placed in the website.

Both top and bottom navigation allows specifying regular expressions that filter the menus to be displayed in the particular place. The regular expressions can match both the name of the menu item and its ref value, e.g. to match <menu ref="modules" inherit="bottom" />.

Top navigation

Top navigation is right-aligned at the top of the screen. It sticks to the screen when scrolling. The menu items can be filtered using regular expression to indicate which of the menu items are displayed there:

<topNav>RegEx<topNav>

RegEx - applies the regular expression to menu names and ref attributes. If the regular expression matches, adds the menu to the top navigation.
no <topNav> element (default) - list all menus

Links

All links from defined in <body><links> element of site.xml site descriptor are placed in the top navigation bar. This allows having top-level links in navigation (menus are always drop-down).

Bottom navigation

The bottom navigation is placed in the footer, to the left of website description. It can feature a number of columns with menu items. The columns are indicated using the bottomNav element. If configuration is not available, lists all menus in a single column.

<bottomNav maxSpan="8">
  <column>RegEx</column>
  <column>RegEx</column>
  <column>RegEx</column>
</bottomNav>

The maxSpan attribute defines the total width that bottom navigation columns can take (out of 12). By default, the maxSpan = 9. The columns are then placed equally within this span.

Each column in the configuration defines a regular expression for menu items that will be listed in said column. For example, to include only Home and Download items, use Home|Download for the regular expression.

Page title

Generate or set short title

Short title is used in site breadcrumbs and other places. In some cases it is created by Maven site (e.g. when set in APT), etc. In other cases, however, it is missing - a glaring omission from Markdown pages.

Msb4 skin provides a couple options to circumvent this, either generate or set the short title explicitly using <shortTitle> element:

<shortTitle>generate|*</shortTitle>

generate - a short title will always be generated from the headings in the page. If <h1> heading is available, it is used. Otherwise first <h2> heading is used.
Some short title - use this explicitly indicated short title
false - disable any short title generation altogether
no <shortTitle> element (default) - short title will be generated (as above) if one is not available

Custom page title

By default, the page title is generated from the project name and its short title. The skin allows setting own page title, e.g. to allow for titles such as “My Page | My Super Website”, etc.

<titleTemplate>template</titleTemplate>

Some template - use Java format String here, where %1$s is the project name and %2$s is the short title of the page.

This allows omitting any of these names, or just specifying custom uniform title for pages without any of the variables.
no <titleTemplate> element (default) - default title template %1$s - %2$s is used

Bottom description

The bottom navigation provides space for site description, logo or other content. It is placed on the right of the bottom navigation area. Site description takes up space remaining after the bottom navigation (controlled via maxSpan attribute, site description occupies 12 - maxSpan then). The bottom description is set using <bottomDescription> element:

<bottomDescription quote="true|false">description</bottomDescription>

The quote attribute wraps the text into a <blockquote> element:

true (default) - Text is wrapped into a <blockquote> element
false - Text is printed as-is

The description can be plain text or a CDATA element and thus wrap the text with HTML formatting.

Alternatively, <bottomDescription> can contain HTML elements directly, which will be embedded in the bottom description area.

Note that the bottom description must be enabled if Maven site date or version are set to position navigation-bottom.

Breadcrumbs are defined using standard Maven site element <body><breadcrumbs> in site.xml. Msb4 skin provides a <breadcrumbs> flag to enable/disable them:

<breadcrumbs>true|false</breadcrumbs>

true (default) - Breadcrumb trail is displayed below the banner
false - Do not display breadcrumbs

Note that the breadcrumbs bar must be enabled if Maven site date or version are set to position left or right.

Date and version

Msb4 skin supports displaying Maven site publish date and version. They are defined using standard Maven site elements <publishDate> and <version>.

Msb4 skin supports the following values for position of these components:

left - Left in breadcrumbs bar (requires <breadcrumbs> flag to be enabled)
right - Right in breadcrumbs bar (requires <breadcrumbs> flag to be enabled)
navigation-bottom - Bottom right in the bottom navigation (requires <bottomDescription> to be enabled)
bottom (default) - Subfooter (the last part of the page, as in this website)
none - Date or version are disabled

Note that navigation-top position is not supported by Msb4 skin.

Override publish date

The website publish date can be indicated explicitly in the configuration by using <publishDate> element:

<publishDate>2013-01-08</publishDate>

Msb4 Maven Skin

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