Although the information on this page is still valid and the technique can still be used, on this page you find another method, which is easier.

Using Java-script to change the stylesheet

Although OpenClinica is very flexible in what you can do with it, it is not so flexible in how you can display it. In fact there is not so much you can do with the layout: everything is determined by the stylesheets.
Of course there's nothing wrong with changing the stylesheet. For example, if you want to have a bit more space for the "LEFT_ITEM_TEXT" and have it aligned to the left, you can edit the stylesheet styles.css. But some of us have to run their studies in an environment with lots of other studies and then changing a stylesheet is not an option.

But you can put a bit of java-scripting in your CRF and modify the stylesheet this way.
Let's take a look at the script first

<script  type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"> 
var cssRules;
for (var S = 0; S < document.styleSheets.length; S++){
	if (document.styleSheets[S]['rules']){
		cssRules = 'rules';
	}
	if (document.styleSheets[S]['cssRules']){
		cssRules = 'cssRules';
	}
	for (var R = 0; R < document.styleSheets[S][cssRules].length; R++){
		if (document.styleSheets[S][cssRules][R].selectorText == ".aka_text_block"){
			document.styleSheets[S][cssRules][R].style["width"] = "20em";
			document.styleSheets[S][cssRules][R].style["textAlign"] = "left";
		}
	}
}
</script>

			

What this script does is that it loops through the stylesheets of the document. In these stylesheets it loops through the classes, but in order to do this, it must first find out how the browser refers to these, as rules or as cssRules. Now the script loops until it finds aka_text_block and then it changes the properties width and textAlign.

Now we must put the script in our XL-sheet. A convenient place is the cell "INSTRUCTIONS" of the section part. If your CRF has more than one section, you must put the script in every section!

fig. 1: putting the java-script in your XL-sheet

The result is shown in fig. 2

fig. 2: the result of the java-script in your CRF