Sharepoint navigation customization

Question

Hi,

I've just started to use Sharepoint 2007, MOSS is installed but for the extranet I'm working on the publishing isn't switched on.

What I need to do is customise the global navigation so that it displays all top level & subsite links, custom links and format it nicely with css for the brand.

Sounds easy but it isn't for some reason! I've been reading numerous blogs and things about it but can't seem to find anything other than writing lots of code (which I don't mind) to hook into the API or use a customer provider which sounds extreme for something so simple.

I was wondering what are the options for this and any good links to articles appreciated so I can finally get this simeple task done. I see the MOSS navigation has extra options for global navigation but I presume as this isn't enabled I couldn't use the same code/control in the master page?

Thanks

Dan

Answer 1

Short answer due to lack of time: Custom SharePoint theme to alter the look and feel of out of the box components such as the navigation. Limited by the the html output of the navigation.

Written a blog post about the general theme strategy here: http://blog.zebsadiq.com/post/SharePoint-2007-Themes-Strategy-for-customising-SharePoint-look-and-feel.aspx

When I was a SharePoint cowboy, I wrote a control adapter to manipulate the out of the box navigation html input. This may be an answer for you.

Since then working on a number of SharePoint projects, I've noticed we always end up writing out own Navigation code and hook it to a custom masterpage, though last time I looked, there weren't any good tutorials out there. :( but it is quite easy. (Sorry for the lack of in dept explaination here)