SharePoint 2010 Themes

I’ll briefly talk about using SharePoint 2010 themes interactively, from the Site Settings commands and in PowerPoint 2010, but the focus will be on the ThmxTheme class, central point for using SharePoint 2010 themes by program. Theme colors and fonts are represented by the ThemeColor and ThemeFont types. ThemeColor class uses the System.Drawing.Color GDI type. The ThemeType enumeration specifies if the theme is a managed theme in the Global Gallery (GalleryTheme), an external SharePoint theme (UnmanagedTheme), or a non-SharePoint theme (DetachedTheme). ThmxTheme.File returns the SPFile object with information about the thmx file.

Using Themes Interactively

Go to Site Actions/Site Settings/Galleries/Themes for a list of all managed themes you can use for the current site or any subsite. Themes may be uploaded or downloaded, or edited in PowerPoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 themes are all stored as .THMX binary files (Microsoft Office XML theme file) in SharePoint’s hive, in the TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\Lists\themes directory.

To edit a theme in PowerPoint 2010 (click here for a nice looking in-depth presentation), open the .thmx file, go to Design/Colors/Create New Theme Colors and change the 12 colors customized for the theme:

• Text/Background – Dark 1
• Text/Background – Light 1
• Text/Background – Dark 2
• Text/Background – Light 2
• Accent 1
• Accent 2
• Accent 3
• Accent 4
• Accent 5
• Accent 6
• Hyperlink
• Followed Hyperlink

To change the currently selected SharePoint theme, go to Site Actions/Site Settings/Look and Feel/Site theme, select another theme from the list of available themes, customize eventually the colors of this theme, preview the theme, and click Apply (just to the current site or also to all subsites that inherit the theme).

Using Themes Programmatically

Themes are represented in SharePoint’s object model by the ThmxTheme class, from the Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities namespace:

To use and change themes as object instances, call the ThmxTheme.Open(…) static methods to open theme for edit from different locations (SPFile, Stream, SPSite, Package). Change Name and an AccessibleDescription properties, colors and fonts. Themes are disposable objects. Call the Save() method to update the changes and Close() or Dispose() when releasing the instance.

The following code sequence gets current team for a top-level website, make some changes and saves back the theme:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://localhost/"))
   using (SPWeb web = site.RootWeb)
      using (ThmxTheme theme = ThmxTheme.Open(site, ThmxTheme.GetThemeUrlForWeb(web))) {
         theme.Name = "My Theme";
         theme.AccessibleDescription = "Theme Description";
         theme.Save();
      }

Theme colors and fonts are represented by the ThemeColor and ThemeFont types. ThemeColor class uses the System.Drawing.Color GDI type. The ThemeType enumeration specifies if the theme is a managed theme in the Global Gallery (GalleryTheme), an external SharePoint theme (UnmanagedTheme), or a non-SharePoint theme (DetachedTheme). ThmxTheme.File returns the SPFile object with information about the thmx file.

Managed themes are stored in the Themes Gallery of a site collection. To find all managed themes from the Themes Gallery of a site collection, call the static method ThmxTheme.GetManagedThemes(SPSite). Most other static theme methods use a SPWeb parameter, for themes associated to a website. ThmxTheme.SetThemeUrlForWeb(SPWeb, …) methods are the way you can programmatically change the current theme for a SPWeb website. ThmxTheme.GetThemeUrlForWeb(SPWeb) returns the server-relative URL for the ThmxTheme object whose theme is applied to the given SharePoint Web site. ThmxTheme.RemoveThemeFromWeb(SPWeb, …) sets the theme on the web to none.

The following code sequence iterates through the themes from the Global Gallery of the site collection to find a managed theme named “Special Theme” and sets it at current website theme:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://localhost/"))
   using (SPWeb web = site.RootWeb)
      foreach (ThmxTheme theme in ThmxTheme.GetManagedThemes(site))
         if (theme.Name == "Special Theme")
            ThmxTheme.SetThemeUrlForWeb(web, theme.ServerRelativeUrl);

Call ThmxTheme.ApplyTo(…) to apply current theme to the website or to the given CSS file.
ThmxTheme.GenerateThemedStyles(…) methods ensure the theme has been applied to all themable styles and that corresponding themed styles are updated.
ThmxTheme.EnforceThemedStylesForWeb(SPWeb) method reapplies the currently applied theme on the web site.
ThmxTheme.GetThemedCssUrl[ForEncodedUrl](…) methods return the URL where the themed CSS can be retrieved.
See also the ThmxTheme.ServerRelativeUrl property.