Problem: a SharePoint skin with a dark background color. All the ActiveX controls (multiple file upload, Datasheet view) inherit the background color.
Solution: to keep the background you want, but not affect the ActiveX controls, include this fix:
body
{
background-color: white;
}
form#aspnetForm
{
background-color:#YOUR_DARK_COLOR#;
height:100%;
}
I found this extremely useful tip here.
SharePoint is a very large application/system/portal and it takes a very long time to learn all its features, strong and weak points and even just to learn how to work with it. We may very easily get lost in it and even though we read books and articles about it, we will soon forget all the interesting things we’ve learned if we don’t actually use them in the real world.
Taking all this into consideration, it may sometimes be easier for us to think about custom-made functionality when we have to implement something, rather than to think about how we can achieve what we want with what SharePoint has to offer.
The article also says that, when a new functionality in a portal is discussed, it pays off to think about how you can achieve it with a custom-made solution, but also how SharePoint existing features would achieve it and to compare the 2 solutions, having in mind the fact that SharePoint existing functionality brings many advantages, as security, speed and unity.
These ideas also apply to Master Pages, as they are also a customization of a SharePoint existing feature.
Have you ever received the request to eliminate some functionality from a masterpage - such as the dropdown list of the Search control, or the My Site link ? You definitely have, especially if the design you had to implement was not created by you, but by a designer with no knowledge of SharePoint. And have you ever did that in order to implement the design as provided, to later see the Search functionality replaced with a custom control? I am sure you have done that or at least witnessed it at a point.
As SharePoint Master Page designers and developers, we are the first ones that can draw the attention on this issue - we are the ones that can prevent the occurrence of the above mentioned mistakes and watch over the implementation of best practices. We must draw attention to the fact that SharePoint functionality is there for a reason and not only to that. SharePoint users must not be confused by the design customization - being used to the default SharePoint interface, they must not find the new design hard to use and tricky. All the SharePoint controls must remain in the custom design. If they are moved around on the page, their layout must be consistent between all the pages and sites and also, easy to spot.
The design is the first thing a user sees on a page and its 2 goals (equal in importance) are to skin the page and make the usage easy and painless.
In conclusion, best practices start on day 1 of the project and every single element of customization must oblige to them, even at the cost of not following the Master Page design by the letter.
We all know all of this. Face to face with the project, we must not freak out and start writing code
) they work very nicely together.1. Create a document library in the site you just opened. I named mine XAPS.
2. Navigate to this library and upload the Silverlight control.
3. On the site Home page (for example) add a new Content Editor Web Part.
4. Open the Edit panel and select Source Editor.
5. In the content text box enter the following:
<object width=”100%” height=”200″
data=”data:application/x-silverlight-2″
type=”application/x-silverlight-2″ >
<param name=”source” value=”/xaps/SilverlightControl1.xap”/>
</object>
6. Click Save and then OK and the Web Part should load the following:
A very good place to start with Silverlight and SharePoint is CodePlex’s Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint.
If you work with a masterpage, you will probably set in code values for DefaultMasterPageURL and CustomMasterPageURL.
There is one more property of a SharePoint site called AlternateCssUrl. You would use this property if you don’t want to create a MasterPage or a Theme, but just apply a skin on the SharePoint default look - by specifying a value for this property, you make SharePoint include your style sheet in its pages.
Although it would look like the AlernateCssUrl property has a very limited use, you could not be more mistaken. There are pages in SharePoint that do not implement any masterpage - not the default.master, not the application.master. One example is the Picture Slideshow page.
This is the case where the AlternateCssUrl property comes in handy - by initializing this property value with your custom css style sheet, you can rest assured that all the SharePoint pages in a site will be skinned.
It is a known fact that SharePoint can skin its system pages.
When designing a system masterpage for SharePoint, there are 2 ways that you can follow: take the generic application.master and customize it, or start from the existing masterpage of the site, supposing you are working on a skinned site.
I usually start from the main masterpage of the site and take into account the fact that the system masterpage needs a few tweaks.
The 3 main differences between the regular site pages and system pages in SharePoint are:
1. The Search control is missing on the system pages.
2. The Breadcrumb is different on the system pages.
3. The left navigation placeholder is empty.
Letting the Breadcrumb tweak for you to discover :), I will make you now aware of the fact that the Search control is not needed on the system pages master.
When you don’t want use certain controls (ContentPlaceHolders) on a SharePoint masterpage, you generally choose to hide them, not delete them, by placing them in a hidden panel. SharePoint will still find them and so not retrieve an error, but they will not show up in the page design, giving the site the look of your choice.
Following this pattern, I first hid the Search control on the system page in a panel. Everything worked fine until I tried to Check In/ Check Out a file and i got this error:
“Unable to validate data. at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.GetDecodedData(Byte[] buf, Byte[] modifier, Int32 start, Int32 length, Int32& dataLength) at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) “
This error did not appear when the site was skinned with the SharePoint Default theme. So the problem laid in the customized application.master file. The only difference between the application.master and my system.master pages was that in my master I had the Search control place holder hidden (but present).
After deleting it, everything worked fine. Except… WIki Sites - History of a page retrieved an error: “Search PlaceHolder not found”.
So the answer to the question in the title is - Delete the Search control, leave the PlaceHolder:
< asp:ContentPlaceHolder id=”PlaceHolderSearchArea” runat=”server” >
< / asp:ContentPlaceHolder >
Customizing a site generally means skinning all its pages. So that the user doesn’t get confused as of why some pages look different than others, or at least to give the system pages almost the same look and feel as the rest of the pages.
Automating the masterpage install is easy -you create a feature and write code in the
But what if you want to do this programmatically? With a feature, like you would do when you deploy a masterpage.
Well, simple enough, this is possible. As long as the theme exists in the THEMES directory, SharePoint can retrieve it. The only reason you modify the spthemes.xml is for SharePoint to display the theme in the Themes list. So if you place the theme in the Themes directory (just by copying it there in a bat file for example) you can use code to apply it:
web.ApplyTheme(“MyTHEME”);
Since we are here, the way to revert a SharePoint site to the default theme isn’t web.ApplyTheme(“Default”), but web.ApplyTheme(“none”).
And there you go - you can programmatically apply a theme to a site. And the way to make the theme “visible” to the user is to have it as a feature instead of having it in the Themes list.
This sounds like a soap opera commercial
Not any more though. The
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Location: Iasi, RO
Interests: SharePoint, SharepPoint Designer, InfoPath, ASP .NET, web design and customization, travelling, photography
Blogs: Moss UI Girl
Open description: I am a SharePoint/.NET Consultant with a passion for travelling and photography. When I am not shooting the Eiffel Tower or a portugese beach, I code for web applications and SharePoint and, if I'm lucky, design a masterpage.
