Understanding Master Pages
SharePoint uses the master page concept to achieve a uniform look and feel across a site, and you will find yourself extensively working with master pages in SharePoint.
Master pages were introduced in ASP.NET 2.0 and allow you to create a consistent layout for the pages in your site.
A master page defines user interface elements common across the site. In addition it defines content placeholders that can be overridden by the individual pages to achieve the user interface specific to the pages. This allows you to have a consistent look and feel across the site. You can use a single master page for the entire site or use multiple master pages. You can also have nested master pages. All this gives you a lot of flexibility to achieve the desired look and feel.
SharePoint 2010 comes out of the box with a few master pages. The default master page used by SharePoint 2010 is v4.master. This will be the master page you use most. It provides the ribbon bar and all the other new visual UI changes such as the Site Actions menu on the left side.
Then there is the default.master, which is similar to the default.master in SharePoint 2007. This master page renders the look and feel of SharePoint 2007 and will be used by sites that have upgraded from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and want to use the old user interface.
The search pages and the Office web applications use minimal.master. This is a really slimmed down master page with next to nothing on it.
There are also the mwsdefault.master and the mwsdefaultv4.master, which are used by the meeting workspaces.
You can find these master pages at the <14 Hive>TEMPLATEGLOBAL directory.
Let’s now look at the structure of the SharePoint master page. If you open the v4.master you find the following:
• Various tag prefixes registered at the start. These are required for the various controls used in the page.
• Various SharePoint controls declared in the head section. These are required to include the CSS and JavaScript files required by the SharePoint site.
• You find the ScriptManager tag immediately after the forms tag. SharePoint 2010 now supports AJAX.NET out of the box.
• A SPWebPartManager is declared after the ScriptManager tag.
• Many ContentPlaceHolders. Most of the content placeholders are overridden by the individual pages. When creating your own custom master page you might add new ContentPlaceHolders or remove some. There are a few required ContentPlaceHolders that must always be present in your master page. These are listed in Table 6.1.
Table 6.1. Required Content Placeholders in a SharePoint Master Page
In addition to those listed in Table 6.1, the following content placeholders are not part of the user interface but are used for backward compatibility:
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderPageImage" runat="server"/>
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleLeftBorder" runat="server">
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderMiniConsole" runat="server"/>
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleRightMargin" runat="server"/>
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleAreaSeparator" runat="server"/>
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderNavSpacer" runat="server">
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderLeftNavBarBorder" runat="server">
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderBodyLeftBorder" runat="server">
• <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderBodyRightMargin" runat="server">
Try It Yourself: Create a Custom Master Page
1. Create a new empty SharePoint project and name it CustomMasterPage. Right-click the project, select Add a New Item, and add a module name CustomV4MasterPage. Copy the v4.master from the <14 Hive>TEMPLATEGLOBAL directory and include it in the module. Rename the v4.master to v4Custom.master. Delete the sample.txt file. The project structure should look something like Figure 6.5.
Figure 6.5. CustomMasterPage project hierarchy
2. Edit the contents of Elements.xml as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<Module Name="CustomV4MasterPage" Url="_catalogs/masterpage">
<File
Path="CustomV4MasterPagev4Custom.master"
Url="v4Custom.master"
Type="GhostableInLibrary"/>
</Module>
</Elements>
3. Open the v4Custom.master and search for the content placeholder having the id PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea. Just before the content placeholder within the H2 tags, add the text Custom Master Title >> as shown in the following code:
<h2>
Custom Master Title >>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder
id="PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea"
runat="server" />
</h2>
4. The preceding module deploys the v4Custom.master to the master page gallery. Right-click and deploy the project from Visual Studio. Browse to the SharePoint site and from the Site Actions menu click Change Master Page. (If you haven’t done the steps in the section “Custom Actions” this link won’t be present. In this case, go to Site Actions, Site Settings, and click Master Page in the Look and Feel section.
5. You should be able to see your master page in the drop-down lists for Site Master Page and System Master Page as shown in Figure 6.6. The site master page is used by the Publishing pages in the site while the system master page is used for all forms and view pages in the site.
Figure 6.6. Change the master page
6. Select v4Custom.master for both the Site Master Page and the System Master Page and click OK. Browse to the home page and you can see the Custom Master Title >> text (see Figure 6.7).
Figure 6.7. Site after setting the custom master page
7. You can also apply the master page programmatically. This generally is done through a feature receiver. Right-click the V4CustomMasterPage feature and click Add Event Receiver.
8. Uncomment the FeatureActivated event and add the following code:
public override void
FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;
web.CustomMasterUrl = "/_catalogs/masterpage/v4Custom.master";
web.MasterUrl = "/_catalogs/masterpage/v4Custom.master";
web.Update();
}
9. The CustomMasterUrl property gets or sets the site master page, and the MasterUrl property sets the system master page. Also note the following statement:
SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;
10. Here we are typecasting the SPFeatureReceiverProperties.Feature.Parent to SPWeb. This is because our feature is scoped at the web level. If it was at the site level we would have casted it to SPSite object.