Feature Receiver to apply master pages to normal or meeting sites

As noted previously, Meeting Workspaces use a different master page to the ‘normal’ master pages in SharePoint. This is a little annoying – if I need to apply a new master page, how would I do this?

Well, you can activate a new master page in a Feature Receiver. And we can detect the type of site we’re dealing with. Why not combine the two techniques Continue reading “Feature Receiver to apply master pages to normal or meeting sites”

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Feature Receiver to apply master pages to normal or meeting sites

What's up with the awful code in Meeting Workspaces?

So I’ve been working on branding meeting workspaces and looking at some of the issues within them. I took a look at the branding I’d been building on a meeting workspace:

Yup, lots of nice rounded corners, but you can see that the meeting workspace tabs are currently unstyled. I decided I’d try to make them look just like the ones at the top, and replace that pale blue bar with the green one, like the one at the top. Continue reading “What's up with the awful code in Meeting Workspaces?”

What's up with the awful code in Meeting Workspaces?

Setting a Site Master on a Publishing site breaks Meeting Workspaces

So, yesterday I was wondering about custom master pages for Meeting Workspaces. I found that Meeting Workspaces use their own master page (mwsdefault.master), which is referred to in the CustomMasterUrl property of the SPWeb object. As I noted, that sounds a lot like SharePoint publishing sites (i.e. sites with the Publishing Features enabled, like a Publishing Portal or a Collaboration Site).

This rang a bell with one of my colleagues, so he dug out some details. The publishing features let you select a Site Master Page and a System Master PageContinue reading “Setting a Site Master on a Publishing site breaks Meeting Workspaces”

Setting a Site Master on a Publishing site breaks Meeting Workspaces

Custom Master Pages for Meeting Workspaces

Irritatingly, in SharePoint Meeting Workspaces have a different master page to most sites (mwsdefault.master and default.master respectively). The differences are actually quite minor – the Meeting has a ‘Custom Tool Pane’ control, so you can add new pages, and a tab bar:

In the code, the pages are very similar, which makes it all the more irritating that they’re not simply the same. As far as I can see, there is no need for this – at least, nothing that can’t be dealt with by content placeholders – which is what they’re using to get rid of the left navigation. Anyway, I digress – the real question is can we customise them, and provide consistent branding on them? Continue reading “Custom Master Pages for Meeting Workspaces”

Custom Master Pages for Meeting Workspaces