Branding
Blogging this mainly for my benefit, but if anyone else finds it useful - you're welcome :) In case you're working on a SharePoint site where the branding requires the removal of the Welcome links control then you'll loose the ability to 'Sign in as a Different User' to check the look-and-feel and functionality that different users will experience. One possible solution is to adjust you browser settings to always prompt for credentials and then restart your browser every time you need to sign in...
As part of configuring enterprise search for a company's portal, one of the requirements was changing the look and feel of the SearchCenter. In short, they wanted a very Google like UI - I.e. nothing too flashy or heavy. So, I started off creating a minimal master page and adjusting the layouts - nothing major just positioning the controls etc.. Now, to change the appearance of the webparts required modifications to the default styles located in the core.css file and thanks to Heather Solomons CSS...
OOTB the Search Core Results webpart simply emphasizes the search string you entered in the Search Box by wrapping it within the <b></b> tags. But let’s say you need to highlight the search terms in different colors; what do you do? Write a new results webpart? No! you only need to adjust the Search Core Results XLS. This is how it’s done: Open up the XLS editor and copy the contents to notepad or some other editor (if your fine with editing it in the MOSS’s default editor, go right ahead)...