CleverWorkarounds After much frustration, it seems DEFAULT is the way to go…

October 27, 2007

SharePoint Branding Part 5 – Feature Improvements and Bugs

Filed under: Branding,CSS,Features,master pages,SharePoint,Troubleshooting — Tags: , , , , , — admin @ 3:14 am

So, here we are at the fifth article in my series on SharePoint branding. By now, we have left all the master page stuff way behind, and we have created a custom feature to install our branding to a server.

To recap for those of you hitting this page first, I suggest you go back and read this series in order.

  • Part 1 dealt with the publishing feature, and some general masterpage/CSS concepts and some quirks (core.css and application.master) that have to be worked around.
  • Part 2 delved into the methods to work around the application.master and core.css issue
  • Part 3 delved further into the methods to work around the application.master and core.css issue and the option that solved a specific problem for me
  • Part 4 then changed tack and introduced how to package up your clever branding

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October 11, 2007

SharePoint Branding – How CSS works with master pages – Part 2

Filed under: Branding,CSS,Features,master pages,SharePoint — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 5:33 am

Jeez if I had realised how long it would take to write these damn articles, I probably wouldn’t have started! In my first article of this topic, I discussed the theory behind master pages, the publishing feature, and what I think is the main issue with SharePoint branding – APPLICATION.MASTER and CORE.CSS. In this article I will now list a branding scenario that I had to deal with, and the various options you can use to deal with the challenges of APPLICATION.MASTER and CORE.CSS

The Scenario

Like many organizations, my client had an existing corporate branding standard that was used in a non SharePoint environment and naturally enough, they wanted their SharePoint site to look like this branding.

This was for a fully featured intranet/extranet that utilized most of the MOSS2007 features such as

  • Document collaboration
  • Infopath Forms Services
  • Workflow
  • Enterprise Search
  • Excel services
  • Business Data Catalog
  • Custom web parts
  • Event Handlers

It was *not* a public site at all.

Initial investigation soon concluded that we would need a custom master page. DEFAULT.MASTER didn’t quite have the design flexibility that was required. In fact the branding requirements were actually closer to some of the built in master pages such as BLUEGLASS.MASTER, since this was for intranet purposes, particularly collaborative document management, those master pages are unsuitable. (I will explain why soon).

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