5.16.2

Styling

Note

Templating changed drastically in version 4.0. If you are upgrading from a 3.x version to a 4.x version you will want to read the upgrading to 4.x document as well.

Note

If you are making use of ES6 modules, CommonJS, or AMD to import Fine Uploader into your project, please see the modules feature page for information on the name changes to the stylesheets in the distributed lib directory.

This document applies to Fine Uploader UI mode only, and aims to help you customize the default UI using the built-in templating feature.

Templates

Some defaults templates are bundled with each version in the templates directory. In the future, alternate templates may be included as well. Note that you must include a template in your markup/document when using Fine Uploader UI. Everything should work just fine if you simply use the provided templates as is, without changing anything. However, you can certainly customize any of the default templates to match your web application's look and feel.

The templates are, by default, included in a <script> tag with the type attribute set to "text/template". The template does not have to be included in a <script> tag. For example, you may instead include the template in a hidden <div>. Fine Uploader simple needs to be able to locate the template element container in the document.

Note

The CSS classes included in template elements that end with '-selector' are used internally by Fine Uploader UI for the purposes of element selection only. No styles are attached to these classes. Other CSS classes that DO NOT end with '-selector' are used to style these elements. You can certainly remove the non-selector class if you want to contribute your own styles, but you should only remove the selector class if you no longer want Fine Uploader UI to track/address the associated template element.

default.html

The "default" template bundled with Fine Uploader contains, more or less, a very basic UI for Fine Uploader. There are no thumbnails/previews generated when using this template. You may use the legacy fine-uploader.css file or the new/modern fine-uploader-new.css file.

This template also renders a visible drop zone, but only with the fine-uploader-new.css file. The fine-uploader-new.css file will include a customizable "drop files" message in the background of the drop zone if the current browser supports file dropping.

simple-thumbnails.html

This template is similar to "default", except it will render previews of images and placeholders for non-previewable images (provided you make preview images accessible via the template.placeholders option). There are several instances of this template in use (both customized and non-customized) at http://fineuploader.com/demos. You may use the legacy fine-uploader.css file or the new/modern fine-uploader-new.css file.

This template also renders a visible drop zone, but only with the fine-uploader-new.css file. The fine-uploader-new.css file will include a customizable "drop files" message in the background of the drop zone if the current browser supports file dropping.

gallery.html

This is a template that represents each submitted file as a "tile". You can see a couple examples of this template in action on http://fineuploader.com/demo. The S3 example notably uses a modified version of the gallery template. You must use the fine-uploader-gallery.css file, and you also must be sure to include all ".gif" files packaged with the uploader. The gallery view uses icons to represent buttons (such as retry/pause/continue/delete/cancel) in almost all cases.

Like the fine-uploader-new.css file, the fine-uploader-gallery.css file will include a "drop files" message in the background of the visible drop zone if the current browser supports file dropping.

When using the fine-uploader-gallery.css file, you must ensure that the container element for your template contains a "qq-gallery" class. This is already included in the proper location in the gallery.html template bundled with the library.

Re-styling the progress bar

Don't like the default progress bar included with Fine Uploader's CSS file? No problem! You can easily use, for example, a Bootstrap-styled progress bar. Just include Bootstrap in your project and change this:

<div class="qq-progress-bar-container-selector">
    <div class="qq-progress-bar-selector qq-progress-bar" role="progressbar" aria-valuenow="0" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100"></div>
</div>

To this:

<div class="progress qq-progress-bar-container-selector">
    <div class="bar qq-progress-bar-selector" role="progressbar" aria-valuenow="0" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100"></div>
</div>

You can do the same for the total progress bar.

Omitting a portion of the template that does not apply to your app

You can omit any element of the template that does not apply to your uploader except for:

  • The parent div that contains the contents of the template (qq-uploader-selector element)
  • The file list container element (qq-upload-list-selector element)
  • The immediate child container of the file list container element. You can certainly change the type of tag here though.

Otherwise, any portion of the template can simply be omitted. For example, if you don't want to utilize the edit filename feature, simply omit any elements with class names that start with qq-edit-filename. If you don't want to have the delete button appear after a successful upload, omit the qq-upload-delete-selector element. If you don't want the progress bar at all, omit the qq-progress-bar elements, etc, etc.

Changing any default text

Any of the text nodes in the template can be changed to match your language or preferences. In some cases, Fine Uploader UI dynamically sets text, such as with the qq-upload-status-text-selector and qq-upload-size-selector elements. See the text option for adjusting these types of strings.

Re-arranging the order of the template elements

You may also change the order of the elements in the template. Note that you should not move file-related elements out of the qq-upload-list-selector container or it's immediate child container though.

Moving the file list to an alternate location in the DOM

If you would like to locate the file list (contents of the qq-upload-list-selector element) elsewhere in your document, you may do so via the listElement option which allows you to specify an existing container element where Fine Uploader UI will render the file list item elements.

It is trivial to re-style the delete, cancel, retry, and upload buttons. For example, you can utilize Bootstrap's button styling to re-skin the upload button by changing this:

<div class="qq-upload-button-selector qq-upload-button">
    <div>Upload a file</div>
</div>

to this:

<div class="qq-upload-button-selector btn">
    <div>Upload a file</div>
</div>

Note that you cannot use a <button> element if you plan on supporting Internet Explorer, as this will not trigger the file chooser dialog.

Including any other custom elements in your template

Suppose you want to include a link to the uploaded file next to each file item element. You can modify the template to include a styled anchor link, hidden initially, and then show the anchor and set its href attribute in your complete event handler, once you know the path of the file on your server.

To do this, the file list portion of the template can be modified to include this link as the last child:

<ul class="qq-upload-list-selector qq-upload-list" aria-live="polite" aria-relevant="additions removals">
    <li>
        ...
        <button type="button" class="view-btn hide btn">View</button>
    </li>
</ul>

Your complete event handler would look something like this:

var uploader = new qq.FineUploader({
    /* other required config options left out for brevity */

    callbacks: {
        onComplete: function(id, name, response) {
            var serverPathToFile = response.filePath,
                fileItem = this.getItemByFileId(id);

            if (response.success) {
                var viewBtn = qq(fileItem).getByClass("view-btn")[0];

                viewBtn.setAttribute("href", serverPathToFile);
                qq(viewBtn).removeClass("hide");
            }
        }
    }
});

Note

You cannot specify an Element as an option value if it only exists in a template. This is due to the fact that the options are evaluated before the template is rendered. For example, you cannot specify an extra button that is declared in a template.

classes option

A classes option allows you to change some default class names that Fine Uploader may add to template elements dynamically/on-demand. The following classes option properties exist in Fine Uploader UI mode:

Property Name

Default CSS

Description

buttonFocus

qq-upload-button-focus

Added to any upload button tracked by Fine Uploader when the button receives focus.

buttonHover

qq-upload-button-hover

Added to any upload button tracked by Fine Uploader when a mouse cursor hovers over the button.

dropActive

qq-upload-drop-area-active

Added to the drop area container when an item has entered the drop zone.

editable

qq-editable

Added to the file name element when the file name may be edited.

fail

qq-upload-fail

Added to the file item container after a completely failed upload.

hide

qq-hide

Added whenever an item should no longer be visible.

retryable

qq-upload-retryable

Added to the file item container after a failed upload attempt if the item is eligible for a retry.

retrying

qq-upload-retrying

Added to the file item container during a retry attempt.

success

qq-upload-success

Added to the file item container after a successful upload.

Dialogs

Fine Uploader UI mode -- by default -- uses the native browser implementations of alerts, confirms, and messages to show user notifications when necessary. More than likely, you are going to want to override these. To provide your own dialogs just provide your own functions for the showMessage, showConfirm, and/or showPrompt options.

Note

For a tutorial on integrating the third-party modal dialog library alertify.js with Fine Uploader's dialogs check out: Alertify your Notifications and Dialogs.

  • showMessage: function(message) {...} - You may want to change the default alert dialog implementation and messages as you see fit. This is possible by overriding the showMessage function option. The default showMessage function simply invokes alert with the message text. One instance in which this is used is when the user attempts to select an invalid file for upload. There are general message types with default text that can be overriden as well.

  • showConfirm: function(message) {...} - This function is used to display a confirm dialog. One such feature that optionally uses this is the deleteFile feature. Note that this is a promissory callback, meaning it requires a promise to be returned.The default implementation uses window.confirm, but you may override this with something a bit nicer, if you choose. The okCallback will be executed if the user clicks "ok" and the cancelCallback if the user clicks "cancel". The cancelCallback is optional, but the okCallback is required.

  • showPrompt: function(message, defaultValue) {...} - This function is used to prompt the user for a value. Note that this is a promissory callback, meaning it requires a promise to be returned. The promise documentation includes a simple example that overrides this default implementation using bootbox. The default implementation here simply uses window.prompt.

Support for the HTML 5.1 <dialog> element

Fine Uploader UI v5.2 will include support for the <dialog> element, which is part of the HTML 5.1 specification. For any browsers that support this element, you may replace all message, confirm, and prompt alerts with <dialog> elements. Fine Uploader will look in your template for the presence of a <dialog> element for each type of message and render it at the appropriate time instead of the alert dialog if it finds a match AND if the current browser has support for the <dialog> element.

Please see one of the template file examples for an example of the <dialog> elements that must be present in your template if you'd like to make use of this new native dialog in your uploader instance. Including the proper markup in your template is all that is required of you - Fine Uploader will take care of the showing, hiding, and all other logic required to determine if a <dialog> should be used. Fine Uploader will default back to an alert if the browser does not support the <dialog> element. If a <dialog> element is rendered, it will be displayed as a modal dialog.

You may also continue to override the showMessage, showConfirm, and/or showPrompt methods to display your own dialog instead.