Most of us have come across Starter.master or Starter Master Pages in CodePlex created by Randy Drisgill.
“Starter Master Pages for SharePoint are a clean, commented starting point for creating your own SharePoint 2010 branding”
— Thanks to Randy Drisgrill for such an informative contribution.
Inspired from Starter.master, evolved StarterCorev4.css which gives you detailed description about the Corev4.css file that comes within SharePoint 14 hive.
Corev4.css – Corev4.css is the core style sheet that is shipped within the 14 hive (%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14) of SharePoint, which is referred by default in all SharePoint OOTB( Out of the Box) controls.
StarterCorev4.css file when attached to your Master page, will enhance your Master page css reading capabilities and is NOT intended to override any class files for SharePoint for development. Clicking on any of the css class links in the Master page will lead you to the class definition in the css file. Follow the below steps to include StarterCorev4.css
1. Open and Edit your custom master page in SharePoint Designer.
2. Download StarterCorev4.css from CodePlex – http://startercorev4.codeplex.com
3. Either upload the css file into your Site Style library or keep it in a local file location for reference.
3. Attach the downloaded StarterCorev4.css into the head section of your master page as shown below.
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4. Notice that a tag has been added to the head section with the path of the css file.
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5. Now Clicking on any of the css class defined in your master page, which usually refers to Corev4.css would redirect to the class files in StarterCorev4.css (Use Ctrl + Click for redirection). For eg:- I have clicked on the id “s4-ribboncont” defined for the ribbon, which leads me to an explanation as below.
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After all your development activities and css changes for the master page and before moving the custom master page for deployment or testing, you should remove the reference link added on the head section of your master page for StarterCorev4.css. This would revert the usage of StarterCorev4.css file to the default corev4.css file in the 14 hive.
NOTE : You should never modify your Corev4.css file in the 14 hive which comes by default with SharePoint. Follow the best practices in over riding the default SharePoint css references.
Watch out the codeplex page for updates and improvements to the StarterCorev4.css project. Your feedback and comments are much appreciated.