There's a temptation to think about CSS as a tool for mammoth changes, widespread alterations to theme, shape, and tone. But there's also an opportunity to fine-tune elements of your digital workplace to ensure that they match the look and feel you need precisely. Small font adjustments, rounding corners or creating borders, all of these can be changed using CSS in the Appearance area of your Igloo. 

For a guide on how to get started making theme changes in your digital workplace, head over to the first article in the CSS Success series. We've covered hiding, colour changes, widget customizations, and more. Today we'll demonstrate a few simple tricks that can make your digital workplace easier to use for authors, and easier to read for members. 

Alternating colours in tables

By default, tables in your digital workplace are transparent. The cells are the same colour as the background, typically white. This can make large tables challenging to read, but you can adjust that with a little bit of CSS. A default table might look like this: 

Streamlining publishing

The content creation interface can be daunting for some members, and you can use CSS to hide elements that may be seldom used, in order to make publishing smoother for people. It's worth noting that these changes are substantial and will affect publishing across your digital workplace, so are best restricted to elements that are governed through other means. 

Archiving is a safe area to hide, and makes the page a bit shorter for authors, letting the Channel or digital workplace specific policies take care of that content. Read Tracking is another, as it can be controlled at the Channel level. New articles can simply have Read Tracking attached, with the necessary button customizations. 

Using the display: none declaration on the specific id or class of an item will make it vanish from view for authors in the digital workplace. To remove Read Tracking and Archiving from the content creation screen, apply the following: 

#archiving, .ig-read-options {
    display: none;
}

These are a few quality of life adjustments you can make for your users, based on the look and feel you want in your digital workplace, and the use case and content strategy you're interested in. A few lines of CSS can go a long way in the Appearance tab. 

If you have other questions about themes, the Igloo platform, workflows, or best practices, you can leave a comment here, or ask a question in the Community area.  

For information about the latest release and the upcoming product roadmap, attend our What's New in Igloo webinar on August 23 at 11am ET.