A HttpModule for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to skin SharePoint by modifying the HTML output send to the browser. Works also for any ASP.NET application.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=3ed68681-ae28-4d33-8c36-403e6af7fa11

Thanks to Susan Warren for posting this on the Newsgroup!

Create a custom theme
-----------------------
All of the themes available for use on a SharePoint server are stored beneath a single folder (one subfolder per theme):

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\THEMES

To create a theme, you'll not only need to create a new folder with the images and CCS files that make up the theme, but you'll also need to preview them with SharePoint site as you work. Here are the basic steps to create a new theme called "MIST":

=First, make a working copy of the new theme.
Pick one of the folders containing a theme in the directory listed above, and make a copy of it in directory listed above. For example, copy the WATER folder to the MIST folder. Note: the folder name must be all caps.
You can modify the files you copied as a starting point for your theme.

=Second, modify the files that hook your theme to the list of available
themes.
In your theme's folder, rename the WATER.INF file to the MIST.INF. This name should match your folder name exactly.
Edit the INF file to set the title of your theme.

[info]
title=MistTheme

Finally, the list of available themes is defined in this file:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\SPTHEMES.XML
Edit this XML file and insert a new section for your custom theme, in the position in the list you want your entry to appear. Note: the list is not automatically alphabetized.

- <Templates>
<TemplateID>mist</TemplateID>
<DisplayName>MistTheme</DisplayName>
<Description>Description</Description>
<Thumbnail>../images/mistimage.png</Thumbnail>
<Preview>../images/mistimage.gif</Preview>
</Templates>

· The TemplateID must match your folder name, but should be all lower case.
· The DisplayName should match the title you set in the MIST.INF file. At least, that's the convention the canned themes follow.
· The Preview image is a 300h x 180w pixel gif, and is used by the Apply a Theme function in the Admin tool. It's unclear to me whether/when the PNG version is used.

=Third, apply the theme to your SharePoint site.
1. On the top link bar, click Site Settings.
2. In the Manage This Web section, click Apply theme to site.
3. Choose the name of your new theme, and click Apply.

=Finally, implement and test your changes
Now you can navigate to your SharePoint site to view the effects of your changes to the theme.


Editing a 'Theme' with FrontPage 2003
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You can change the rendering of all or part of a page using the feature called "Themes" in FrontPage, but the implementation appears to be different. It overrides the site theme applied by SharePoint for part or all of a page, using the webbot mechanism. In many cases these changes are not carried throughout a site.

Deploying a custom theme
--------------------------
To my knowledge no automated tool for this yet exists. To deploy a new theme to a SharePoint installation, you could manually copy the folder for the theme in the correct path and add an entry to the SPSTHEMES.XML file.

Showing Presence Information In SharePoint Web Parts - Jan Tielens' Bloggings

http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/05/04/125703.aspx

Here's how you configure it in SharePoint:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stse14.mspx

Thanks to Giles Gregg on this Share Points blog of this!

http://sharepoints.blogspot.com/2004/08/modify-shared-page.html

http://dev.collutions.com/blog/Pages/IDesignTimeHtmlProvider.aspx

Implementing the IDesignTimeHtmlProvider Interface
By Jim Duncan

Read here:

http://weblogs.asp.net/mnissen/archive/2004/07/06/174015.aspx

Thanks to Mads Haugbø Nissen for this

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnofftalk/html/office07012004.asp

By John R. Durant
Microsoft Corporation

Thanks John!

Here's a good post about this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/danielmcpherson/archive/2004/07/23/192496.aspx