Professional Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2007

7.3. Use SharePoint Designer to Explore and Customize Themes

As described earlier in this chapter, applying a Theme to a SharePoint site is a simple process. Any site user who has the designer or higher permissions can apply a Theme to a site by navigating to Site Settings Site Theme (under the Look and Feel section). To customize the Theme further after it has been applied to a site, however, you need to understand what is happening under the hood.

7.3.1. Exploring a Theme Once It's Applied to a Site

To start exploring a Theme, open a SharePoint site using SharePoint Designer. (In SharePoint Designer, select File Open Site, type the site address into the Open Site dialog box, and click Open.)

The site opens up in SharePoint Designer to show all the files and folders that make up the site. The Folder List task pane shows a tree view of all top-level folders and files. A SharePoint site to which a Theme has been applied shows a _themes folder in the folder tree. When that folder is expanded, the name of the applied Theme appears as a subfolder. That name comes directly from the title attribute in the Theme's .inf file. Once this subfolder is expanded, all the files that make up the Theme are presented, as shown in Figure 7-5.

Figure 7-5. Figure 7-5

When a designer selects and ...