SharePoint has a lot of page elements, and it’s hard to brand it all without missing things. Lists of Page elements like Heather Solomon’s CSS Reference Chart and her “Oh crap, I missed that” list help, but I still found a few that weren’t mentioned. So, I guess this is my “Thank God my testing found I’d missed that” list:
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Advanced Search Page – nice grey. |
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Creation Information Panel – when you hover over an item on the ‘Create’ page, you’ll see this. |
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People Search Options – shown dynamically when you click the link. |
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Gantt views – as used in projects |
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Repeating Meeting Left Nav |
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WSS Search results page – just ‘cos you’re using it doesn’t mean it isn’t there – or that it won’t be seen… |
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The Date Picker – and all the problems inherent in that… |
Andy Burns' Blog 
Andy,
do you know of any good templates for making a clean and consistent page layout in a SharePoint intranet environment? I can create a good IA structure and use web parts like CQWP to display this information, but I’m having serious problems with branding. I’m just not a look and feel developer. Any suggestions on what I can do to have a clean and consistent interface throughout the site? In addition, any suggestions on where to start? I think we have a good master page layout that handles our top navigation and left nav, but the content within the actual pages just looks bad…
Phew… toughie.
The short answer – no, I don’t. But I do try to recommend to clients that they:
1) Consider doing away with the out-of-box page layouts. Some of them are just plain strange. The only one that doesn’t seem to be isn’t a publishing Page Layout – but is the Team Site default.aspx page, with a wide main column and a narrow right column.
2) Sit down with a piece of page and decide how they want their page to look. Seriously, think newspapers and the like – one or two columns, 50:50, 66:33 or 75:25 % widths, Images fitting amongst text, etc.. Use Description columns to provide a synopsis, etc.. Page Layouts should be designed properly like this for each Page content type used in Publishing.
But to be honest, what ‘Clean an consistent’ is is an personal aesthetic choice. To be honest, if I’m trying for a slightly cleaner look in one easy step, I just apply the ‘Simple’ theme.
And if you’ve built your own master page, you’ve got to be careful that your styling problems aren’t a result of your new master page (SharePoint’s design does assume the use of certain styles/page elements) or the styles for your new design. It can be time consuming making sure that you’re overridden all the styles you need to to rebrand a site.
But without actually seeing what you’re talking about, it’s hard to offer useful advice.