So lets’ begin. Figure One is the Colour and Fonts tab, with system colours
unticked.
Figure
1: Colours & Fonts
Text/Background Colors:
Light 1
This is the colour that will be
- your main body background, as well as
- your
web part background.
It also controls
- your Left Navigation border colour,
- the
Site Action Menu background and
- the pop up window background.
It will also be
- your Site Action and
- Welcome Text Colour.
So to emphasize the colours I made it a bright pink.
Figure
2: Light 1 changed to bright pink
Light 2
This colour controls
- your Browse Tab and
- your Hover background.
It also is
the colour of
- the Title Container background,
- the Left Navigation Background,
- Top Navigation background,
- Header 2 background and
- the Web Part Add background.
I made this a bright orange.
Figure
3: Light 2 made a bright orange.
This is how our theme is looking so far so you can see the colour
changes.
Figure
3.1: The theme in the Site Theme selection page
Figure
3.2 : The theme activated. Note the text in the ribbon.
Figure
3.3: The home page of a team site. Note the Browse tab background
colour.
Figure
3.4: The Site pages page. With my mouse hovered over a list item.
Dark 1
Dark 1 controls
- the text colour for Page Title,
- Hovering (main links),
- the
main body text,
- Site Action Menu text,
- Left Navigation text and
- the Site
Settings Page Headers Text.
It is a good idea to make this a stand out colour
compared to Dark 1 (Dark Grey on Black, or Light Grey on White), least you have
your users up in arms. I have cleared the Dark colours for this example and made
Light 1 the bright pink.
Figure
4: Light 1 in bright pink
Dark 2
Dark 2 controls the colour for
- the Left Navigation Header text and
- the text
for the Recycle Bin and
- View All Site Content.
It is also important because it
will be the colour of
- your “I like it” and
- Tags text, as well as
- the bread crumb
(current location).
It is the colour of
- your border for the Site Action Drop
down menu, and
- the text colour for List Descriptions.
Again, try making it a
stand out colour compared to your Light choices. Your text colours are very
important. Content drives the site, and if you can’t see it, you have missed the
boat on theme’ing. I made Dark 2 a green, as the orange colour was not really
visible.
Figure
5: Dark 2 as a green
This is how our theme is looking with the Dark changes, so you can see the
colour changes.
Figure
5.1: The theme in the Site Theme selection page
Figure
5.2 : The theme activated. Note the white on white text as we didn’t change the
Dark colours for this theme. Also note the right hand Site information, the
Ribbon and the Left hand navigation (Quick Launch)
Figure
5.3: The home page of a team site. Note the Body text colours and the List
description text. The Header “Getting Started” is a Heading 2
style.
Figure
5.4: The Site pages page. Note the colours for the various text
elements
Accent Colours
The accent section is a bit trickier than the Text and Background colour
section, and you must be very careful with your colour choices.
Accent 1Accent 1 handles the colour for
the Quick Launch
Hover Text and
your Top Link Selected Tab.
Accent 2This is the text colour for
class .ms-error and
your Heading 2 styles
Accent 3This is the colour of
the “Caption” text.
Accent 4This is the colour for
the border under the Web
Part Selector
Accent 5This is the colour for
your Heading 4
styles.
Accent 6This is the background colour for
text
highlights.
In most cases you won’t see much of the accent colours, but when you do and
they are “clashing colours” it will be a bit of an eye sore.
I chose these colours for emphasis not colour coordination.
Figure
6: Accent colours
I have tried to include as many examples of this theme in action as I
could.
Figure
6.1: The theme in the Site Theme selection page
Figure
6.2 : The theme activated. Note the white on white text as we didn’t change the
Dark colours for this theme. Also see the background colour of ‘Home’ which is
Accent 1 with the standard gradient.
Figure
6.3: The home page of a team site. The Header “Welcome to your site” is a
Heading 1 style. And when you mouse over the list, the line becomes red. The
mouse over of the Site Actions menu is the same colour as the background for
“Home”
Figure
6.4: The Site pages page. Note the colours for the various mouse over
elements.
Figure
6.5: I added this to show the ribbon colours, you can see the green (Accent 3),
and the background of the selected ‘Calendar’ link on the left hand side is blue
(Accent 5). The mouse overs also change to Accent 1 (red) on hover.
Hyperlink Colors
HyperLink
This colour controls
- the Toolbar Text and
- the Body Hyperlink text.
- It is the
colour used in the a:link class.
Followed Hyperlink
This colour is used in the
- Body Hyperlink for when a link has been visited
(the class is .ms-WPBody a:visited)
Figure
7: the hyperlink colours in pink and green
And this is what it looks like. (you can’t really see much, but look at the
boxes)
Figure
7.1: The theme in the Site Theme selection page
Figure
7.2: The theme activated. If you look under Site information you will see that
the link is green because it has been visited, and the others are
pink.
Figure
7.3: I have added Bing and EUSP as links. You can see Bing is pink as it is
unvisited, and EUSP is green as it has been visited.
Theme Fonts
You will use this to control the main font choices for your site. This can be
overridden when you edit the different bodies of text by using the standard
ribbon Format Font editing tool. Since SharePoint only uses the two fonts, you
don’t need to worry with the Option sections, and the Complex Script and East
Asian font selections are not used (as far as I know, I could be wrong – I did
try testing this, but was not successful in getting them to show).
Major FontThe Major Font choice is
- the font used for
Headings.
Minor Font
Minor Font choice is used as
For this example I chose two non standard fonts. Always make sure that the
fonts you chose are available across platforms.
Figure
8: The font choice made
Figure
9: You can see my selected fonts in the drop down boxes.
Figure
10: this is the preview mode in the Site Theme page to demonstrate the font
changes.