Character Sheet Enhancement(CSE)(or Enhanced Character Sheets(ECS)) is an update to character sheets and how they are made, enabling many new features for HTML & CSS, and removing some existing restrictions & quirks sheet creators have had to deal with for HTML & CSS, when making sheets.

See Legacy Sheet(LCS) for info on the older system, which can still be used.

Character Sheet Development
Getting Started

General

Reference

Tools & Tips

Git/GitHub

Other

It was first released for testing on the Dev Server during February, and then released in March 2021. Last critical bugs where fixed by late April/early May, by which point it was seen as stable by the Sheet Author community.

Info

Character Sheet Enhancements!^(Forum) (Release - March 9th,2021)
iFrame-and-Sanitization-Changes
Dev Server Testing details (Jan 29th): Now on Dev Server: Character Sheet Enhancements!^(Forum) - Char sheet subforum
CSE Beta(Dev Server)^(Forum) - Pro subforum tread

Features

A summary of what updates the sheet system will have.

**HTML** updates:
- Accessibility enhancements: ARIA and semantic HTML support
- No pre-pending of sheet- to classes in CSS (apart from roll-templates)
- Enable use of #id in HTML elements
- Allowing the usage of HTML datalists – suggestion thread^(Forum)
- Allowing the usage of HTML <details> and <summary>-elements – suggestion thread^(Forum) (part of semantic HTML support)
**CSS** (sanitizer) updates, which now allows for:
- Media queries that allow responsive design(like mobile support)
- Sheet authors can now use @media print media query to style their character sheet for printing from the popout window- – suggestion thread^(Forum)
- Support for CSS Animations – suggestion thread^(Forum)
- You are no longer required to have .sheet- in front of CSS classes in your CSS-file.
Integrated macro bar for character quick attacks, including pop out windows
~~Character Sheet/Stat Block is the default for opening a PC/NPC~~ This is being reverted until we have more research regarding implementation.

Dev

New features that are in testing on Dev Server and not yet implemented:

Now on Dev Server: Image Attributes^(Forum) - Jun 28
jQuery for character sheets^(Forum) - July 21
Roll Query Improvements - nesting^(Forum) - July 21

Restrictions

CSE has fewer restrictions than Legacy Sheet, but still have a number of them.

CSE Code Restrictions

Issues

See the BCS/Bugs page for info on various bugs/issues people have encountered with making CSE-sheets, trying to convert Legacy Sheet to CSE, or sheet code bugs just in general.

How to update sheet to new

Here are some instructions of how to update a Legacy Sheet to the new CSE environment.

Using the CSE environment

To test CSE using the Sheet Sandbox, you can empty the Sheet.json Editor, or simply place { "legacy": false } there.

Note: .json-files use , to separate data pairs/rows, but there is never a , on the last row. See sheet.json for more.

To test CSE using the Sheet Editor, simply uncheck the "Legacy Sheet Sanitation" checkbox.

Existing sheets in the repository were automatically updated to include in their sheet.json the line "legacy": true, and any sheet updated to use CSE should have that changed to "legacy": false.

If you use a sheet from the sheet drop-down menu, it will automatically use the correct mode.

Removal of the "sheet-" Prepending

The most disruptive issue to moving from Legacy Sheet to CSE, is that the new CSS sanitizer does not automatically prepend sheet- to classes in the HTML code. This means that it will not recognize such classes if you are using the new CSE environment, and you did not explicitly call the class in your html with the prepend.

While this will free up sheet authors to name their classes however they wish, and make it so the class-names match both on the HTML & CSS, it will break your sheet styling if you were writing classnames without the sheet- in your html.

This lead to two strategies on how to adjust existing sheets:

Option 1: Remove `sheet-` from CSS rules

This is the preferred direction. You go through the CSS-file, search and remove sheet- from CSS rules targeting the the sheet itself, so that they naturally match your HTML classes.

Rolltemplate references in the css & html still have to follow the .sheet-rolltemplate-example and the <rolltemplate class="sheet-rolltemplate-example"> </rolltemplate> format.
If you're using the roll20-made rows & columns in your sheets, you now need to prefix sheet- to their use in the HTML(likely in the CSS also).

Example of CSS
Old Class	New Class
.sheet-character_biography	.character_biography

This direction is particularly helpful when your HTML is already using the "natural" name for your classes or if your HTML looks similar to this:

<div class="character_biography">

An Important Exception to this are classes that are styling your Roll Templates. The chat window in games are not part of the CSE environment and are not part of the update so you will still need to follow legacy rules for styling roll templates, like in Option 2.

Option 2: Mimic the legacy sanitizer

If your sheet explicitly calls for classes that include sheet- in the HTML where your HTML looks more like:

<div class="sheet-character_biography">

Then removing the legacy line likely didn't break your sheet all that badly. You can continue prefixing sheet- when you declared classes, but it becomes extra work. The overall goal here is that the classes in your HTML must match the classes in your CSS.

CSS Specificity

One issue that is currently bugging some sheets is that in addition to removing the sheet- prepend, the sanitizer no longer adds an extra .charsheet selector to CSS rules. This can make some of your CSS rules fail due to being less specific than some of Roll20's default styling, compared to the previous environment. If you find some styling to basic elements, namely the headline elements (<h1>,<h2>, <h3>, etc) and <label> elements, to be missing, try manually adding in the .charsheet class to your selector.

Example of CSS
May fail	May succeed
h1 {styling;}	.charsheet h1 {styling;}

iFrame-and-Sanitization-Changes

CSE Examples

Collection of examples, user-cases or links to info of some of the new features. Please help expand with code or links to examples/documentation.

ID

Examples of using the HTML global element #id.

An ID name cannot start with a number.

If multiple people look at the same character sheet, and one person clicks on a ID-anchor, the change is only shown to the person, and not to everyone.

Contrast this to the attribute-backed Tabs-method of splitting sheets onto multiple pages, where everyone viewing the sheet at the same time end up looking at the same page, due to an attribute keeping track of which page is being viewed.

id CSS selector

Use an id to select one unique element.

//html
<input type="text" id="character-name" name="attr_character_name" value="" placeholder="Character Name" />

//css
#character-name {
  text-align: center;
  color: red;
}

id Clickable Label text

Create "clickable" label text by using a linked label and input. Linked labels could replace various methods that use hidden checkboxes to simulate clickable text/buttons on a sheet.

//html
<input id="attackMod1" name="attr_attackMod1" type="checkbox" value="1" class="hidden">
<label for="attackMod1" class="link">Apply Modifier</label>
//css
.sheet-hidden {
    display:none;
}
label.link:hover {
  cursor: help;
  text-decoration: underline;
  color: red;
}
input[type="checkbox"]:checked + label.link {
  color: red;
}

id Sheet Anchors

Create links to jump to anchored elements of a sheet. Could be used as a "Navigational Menu/Table of Contents", or simply as clickable text that can quickly move to another section of a sheet.

//html
<h2>Sheet Anchor example</h2>
<h3 id="menu">Menu</h3>
<ul>
    <li><a href="#Attacks">Attacks</a></li>
    <li><a href="#Skills">Skills</a></li>
    <li><a href="#Spells">Spells</a></li>
</ul>
<br>
<!-- add to of content here, so that the sheet scrolls up/down to focus on the linked section -->
<br>
<h3 id="Attacks">Attacks</h3>
<p>"Lorem ipsum"</p>
<h3 id="Skills">Skills</h3>
<p>"Lorem ipsum"</p>
<h3 id="Spells">Spells</h3>
<p>"Lorem ipsum"</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="#menu">Menu</a></p>
<!-- this will move you up to the top of the sheet if it is longer than can be can be fit into view at one time -->

Popup

code snippet by Roll20 Dev exemplifying how popups can be implemented on CSE sheets.

https://codepen.io/imprakash/pen/GgNMXO

A brief explanation of the code:

An <a> link that is styled as a button is targeting the id "popup1".
The popup wrapper div with the class 'overlay' and the ID of 'popup1' is hidden with visibility: hidden.
On the CSS side, when the div with .overlay is the current target of a <a> tag, it sets the visibility to 1 (visible).
The pop-up box includes a "X to close" <a> tag styled as a basic button to relink to "#", the pound symbol is basically a non-link fragment and defaults to the behavior of targeting to the top of the current page. Which untargets Overlay and returns visibility to hidden.

<div class="box">
	<a class="button" href="#popup1">Let me Pop up</a>
</div>
<div id="popup1" class="overlay">
	<div class="popup">
		<h2>Here i am</h2>
		<a class="close" href="#">×</a>
		<div class="content">
			Thank to pop me out of that button, but now i'm done so you can close this window.
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

.box {
  width: 40%;
  margin: 0 auto;
  background: rgba(255,255,255,0.2);
  padding: 35px;
  border: 2px solid #fff;
  border-radius: 20px/50px;
  background-clip: padding-box;
  text-align: center;
}

.button {
  font-size: 1em;
  padding: 10px;
  color: #fff;
  border: 2px solid #06D85F;
  border-radius: 20px/50px;
  text-decoration: none;
  cursor: pointer;
  transition: all 0.3s ease-out;
}
.button:hover {
  background: #06D85F;
}

.overlay {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);
  transition: opacity 500ms;
  visibility: hidden;
  opacity: 0;
}
.overlay:target {
  visibility: visible;
  opacity: 1;
}

.popup {
  margin: 70px auto;
  padding: 20px;
  background: #fff;
  border-radius: 5px;
  width: 30%;
  position: relative;
  transition: all 5s ease-in-out;
}

.popup h2 {
  margin-top: 0;
  color: #333;
  font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;
}
.popup .close {
  position: absolute;
  top: 20px;
  right: 30px;
  transition: all 200ms;
  font-size: 30px;
  font-weight: bold;
  text-decoration: none;
  color: #333;
}
.popup .close:hover {
  color: #06D85F;
}
.popup .content {
  max-height: 30%;
  overflow: auto;
}

Datalist

suggestion thread^(Forum)

"Datalists are a helpful tool for sheet authors to guide players toward filling out input-fields. Datalists combines the precision of a dropdown-field with the flexibility of an input-field." -Peter B.

<input type="text" list="abilityScores" name="attr_abilityScore">
<datalist id="abilityScores">
    <option value="@{strength}">Strength</option>
    <option value="@{dexterity}">Dexterity</option>
    <option value="@{constitution}">Constitution</option>
    <option value="@{intelligence}">Intelligence</option>
    <option value="@{wisdom}">Wisdom</option>
    <option value="@{charisma}">Charisma</option>
</datalist>

If you want to switch datalists for an input, you can create several inputs and then toggle which input is visible, changing the options shown from the datalists.

<input type="text" list="classmage" name="attr_class" class="mage-skill">
<input type="text" list="classfighter" name="attr_class" class="fighter-skill">
<datalist id="classmage">
    <option value="Spellcraft">Spellcraft</option>
    <option value="Arithmancy">Arithmancy</option>
</datalist>
<datalist id="classfighter">
    <option value="Brawl">Brawl</option>
    <option value="Weapon Mastery">Weapon Mastery</option>
</datalist>

There seems to be an issue with translation of datalists as the value of the option is entered as the value of the input which links to the list. The ARC sheet https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/tree/master/ARC has a workaround with a sheet worker that replaces the value with the translated text.

  on("change:repeating_inventory:name", (eventInfo) => {
    const id = eventInfo.sourceAttribute.split("_")[2];
    const updateAttrs = {};
    const name = eventInfo.newValue.trim();
    let translation = getTranslationByKey(name)
    if (translation) {
      updateAttrs[`repeating_inventory_${id}_name`] = translation;
  
      const searchInputs = _.difference(GLOBAL__INVENTORY_INPUTS, ["name"]);
      _.each(searchInputs, (key) => {
        const attr = `repeating_inventory_${id}_${key}`;
        const i18n = `${name}_${key}`;
  
        // check if property exists in global
        if (GLOBAL__INVENTORY[name][key]) {
          updateAttrs[attr] = GLOBAL__INVENTORY[name][key];
        }
        // check if translation exists
        else if (getTranslationByKey(i18n)) {
          updateAttrs[attr] = getTranslationByKey(i18n);
        }
      });
  
      log(updateAttrs)
      setAttrs(updateAttrs, { silent: true });
    }
  });

<details>

A more simple way to create a collapsible section on a sheet than the old CSS tricks we have.

You have a <details> where everything is inside, and then the <summary>-element inside it determine what is shown when it's collapsed.

<details>
  <summary>Epcot Center</summary>
  <p>Epcot is a theme park at Walt Disney World Resort featuring exciting attractions, international pavilions, award-winning fireworks and seasonal special events.</p>
</details>

<details> MDN Web Docs
<summary> MDN Web Docs

Repeating Section - Skill Openable Menu Help^(Forum) example implementation

Roll20 applies some default styling that hides the normal open/closed arrow/triangle for <details>. Set the display CSS property of the summary tag to list-item or revert to make it show again. E.G.:

summary{
  display:list-item;
}

first observed^(Forum)

Accessibility

Accessibility enhancements: ARIA

Semantic Elements

"Semantic Elements clearly describes its meaning to both the browser and the developer."

Using HTML sections and outlines

They work identically to <div>, but describes what they represent in the code. Using some Semantic Elements can make the code more readable and more easily distinguing what closing element goes where.

Using <main> is more simple than <div class="main">.

Example:

<main>
  <header>
     <label>Character name: <input name="attr_character_name" type="text" value=""></label>
     <label>Background: <input name="attr_background" type="text" value=""></label>
  </header>
  <section>
    <h3>Attributes</h3>
    <label>Strength: <input name="attr_str" type="number" value=""></label>
    <label>Dexterity: <input name="attr_dex" type="number" value=""></label>
    <label>Mind: <input name="attr_mind" type="number" value=""></label>
  </section>
  <section>
    <label>Equipment</label>
    <textarea name="attr_equipment"><textarea>
    <label>Notes</label>
    <textarea name="attr_notes"><textarea>
  </section>
  <footer>
    <span> For any issues with the sheet, post on the Char Sheet forums:(https://app.roll20.net/forum/category/277980), or contact John Doe.</span>
  </footer>
<main>

Responsive Design

Aimed at making adjustment for mobile

Our mobile app will be launching in the near future and we want character sheets to look beautiful on it!
We now support breakpoints, ID’s, and new HTML tags, all of which should help in your responsive sheet journey.
Here are some awesome articles on this topic:
prefers-color-scheme light/dark
- works on desktop, doesn't seem to work on mobile(Oct 2021 Andreas J. )

Mobile

Main Page: BCS/Mobile

Responsive design leads way to more easily adapting/optimizing Char Sheet for eventual use with the new Mobile-app, which is in Open Beta(as of 18th March 2021).

@media only screen and (max-width: 480px) {
// css that only affects sheet on mobile. Play around with "max-width" value, might differ between phones
}

Print-Friendly

See Character Sheet Development/Print-Friendly

Edit Navbar

We now have limited access to style the "Bio", "Character Sheet", & the "A&A"-tab.

This following css will keep the navbar at the top, so no need to scroll to change tabs. (by Scott C.

ul.nav-tabs.nav{
    position:sticky;
    top:0;
    background-color:white;
    z-index:9999;
}

Replace the "character sheet" text with the game's logo(by Scott)

.characterviewer > ul.nav-tabs a[data-tab="charsheet"]{
    background:{
        image:url('https://imgsrv.roll20.net/?src=https%3A//raw.githubusercontent.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/master/Pathfinder%2520Community/Images/pf_logo.png');
        size:contain;
        position:center;
        repeat:no-repeat;
    }
    color:transparent;
}

Sheets Using CSE

List of char sheets that have been updated to at least work normally with CSE, if not adopted to use some of the new features.

CortexPrime-Hammerheads - Mobile-adaption
Mythic D6 - Mythic D6 sourcecode - datalist, details/summary • by Andreas J.
CortexPrime-Tales-of-Xadia - Mobile -adaption
Barbaric! datalist • by Andreas J.
AD&D 2E - datalists, lots of datalists • by Peter B.
Stargate • by Andreas J.
Pathfinder Community Sheet

Changelog

April 30th - the css @import bug was fixed source^(Forum)

Roll20 Wiki

Navigation

Personal tools

Toolbox

Character Sheet Enhancement

From Roll20 Wiki

Contents

Info

Features

Dev

Restrictions

Issues

How to update sheet to new

Using the CSE environment

Removal of the "sheet-" Prepending

Option 1: Remove `sheet-` from CSS rules

Option 2: Mimic the legacy sanitizer

CSS Specificity

CSE Examples

ID

id CSS selector

id Clickable Label text

id Sheet Anchors

Popup

Datalist

<details>

Accessibility

Semantic Elements

Responsive Design

Mobile

Print-Friendly

Edit Navbar

Sheets Using CSE

Changelog

See Also

Roll20 Wiki

Navigation

Personal tools

Toolbox

Character Sheet Enhancement

From Roll20 Wiki

Contents

Info

Features

Dev

Restrictions

Issues

How to update sheet to new

Using the CSE environment

Removal of the "sheet-" Prepending

Option 1: Remove sheet- from CSS rules

Option 2: Mimic the legacy sanitizer

CSS Specificity

CSE Examples

ID

id CSS selector

id Clickable Label text

id Sheet Anchors

Popup

Datalist

<details>

Accessibility

Semantic Elements

Responsive Design

Mobile

Print-Friendly

Edit Navbar

Sheets Using CSE

Changelog

See Also

Option 1: Remove `sheet-` from CSS rules