Question

I noticed that it is EXTREMELY hard to align/layout things properly in Apex. They give you a limited set of regions you can place things in, these regions do NOT work well with custom CSS, and it is just a mess.

Anyone know of a good way to “keep things straight”?

Answer 1

There is only one advice, in my opinion: get cracking on your own templates, coupled with your own css. Create a new template, or start from a copy of an existing one, and take it from there, doing the layout in css.

If you really need to have a tight control over your layout, this is your best route. It will take some time, but keep things cleaner and a hell of a lot easier to maintain. Should you start to try and ‘overwrite’ the standard css with your own-provided css, you will end up in a mess. How will you figure out aferwards why you applied a certain property to something? You’ll find out – eventually, but it’ll cost you time. And this could just and only be for applying a certain width on a region for example!

It costst just too much time, and i’ve been going there too. You will keep ‘fighting’ the page and its layout, and it’ll become even funnier when you start the merry crossbrowser game. In the end, it’ll be hacking and counterhacking, and snooping around in the standard css-files, just to find out what is doing what, and how you best influence it. This should flag a ‘no-go’ already.

If you find yourself in need of tight control of your layout, and none of the presets do it for you, then do it yourself. It’s really your best option, and apex is flexible enough to let you customise the page from the ground up. Again, this’ll cost time too, but it’s a much better investment to make.