This is part 2 of 3 posts on my experience of spending a day of my life customizing the look of a Sharepoint 2.0 workspace. My first post was little more than a rant at how darn difficult it is to do anything truly different from the lame out-of-the-box themes. If you want to read the company line on customizing Sharepoint, here's one of three detailed MSDN articles on it. Get ready to load Frontpage, however, cause while you might not have used it in 6-1/2 years, you'll need it to follow the MSDN article instructions.
I don't know, the whole thing is a bloody mine field. One set of shared .ASPX pages per server; one logo.gif for everybody; you're working in the c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web serve extensions\60\template folder; you touchie the base package and live in fear of what the next Sharepoint service pack is going to overwrite? I mean, how much fun do you think you're able to have here?
My approach was to use an existing Sharepoint theme and make the necessary changes. I got errors following the procedure trying to create a new theme and didn't want to dick with it longer than necessary. Then I used Firefox to show me the IDs and Classes found throughout the page, which I was then able to manipulate in THEME.CSS. Leave it to those nutty anybody-but-Microsoft guys to build a browser with support for extensions like the Web Developer extension so I can see what's happening on a Sharepoint web page. Easiest way to get it is to use the Tools-->Extensions menu in Firefox and install it from there.
