Lightning Conductor Web Part Custom XSL Style
Creating a Custom XSL Style for the Lightning Conductor Web Part is optional and not usually required. With the Content Query Web Part which is available Out-of-the-Box with MOSS you need to write XML and XSL to create a reasonable looking style which includes any columns other than the Title column. That is not the case with our Lightning Conductor Web Part. The LCWP provides you with three views. The SPGridView allows you to configure which columns (including custom columns) by simply clicking checkboxes. However, we understand that some Web Developers require a richer view of aggregated data by creating their own styles. Therefore, we have provided two sample style sheets. You can also create and upload your own style sheets. This web part doesn’t even require MOSS for this purpose. You can still aggregate data using the Lightning Conductor Web Part if you have Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. (You will need to create a Document Library Called Style Library if you do not have the Publishing Feature enabled).
You can create your XSL file in any text editor such as NotePad or by using Visual Studio or similar. Once it is created, upload it to the Style Library using the Web Part property tool pane shown below. You can then select this style to change the way the data is formatted. The below image shows a sample XSL file and highlighted in the tool pane is the section where you would upload and apply a custom XSL file.
(click to open a larger image)
The below image shows the result of the Style Sheet being applied
Sample XSL styles
Following Customer requirements, we have created three more XSL files to help get you started! The XSL files are primarily for Picture Libraries and Documents Libraries. The Document Library XSL files provide you with alternate colors and font examples, another displays Document Icons and finally we have created an XSL file that will display thumbnail images from a picture library.
You can download these XSL files from the following URL:
www.lightningtools.com/downloads/lcwpxsl.zip