Talked to Spence about this.

He say quote "same story mate" unquote.

Theres some nuances here regarding SharePoint designer. It is possible to set SharePoint Designer settings either globally (from CA) or from each Site Collection.

Here you can set if you allow SPD to be used in a given web application, whether you allow SC admins to detach (yet a new term for unghost/customize pages) pages from the original site definition using SPD. You can also specify if you allow customizing master pages/page layouts using SPD and finally if you allow site administrators to manage the URL structure of their web site using SPD.

But beside the above settings to protect your production web site from SPD, it seems that nothing much has changed..

I am pleased this contentious "feature" remains the same. At least we know what we are getting ourselves into in this area. I will stick to developing the masterpage and/or styles in SPD, and then packing them up nto a WSP solution that is deployable. If the behavior is largely the same this approach should still work and we have plenty of code written arond Featureactivating that will help machanize themes and mp's across multiple sub-sites too, so that's a plus.

I don't live for it, but I will take a simple win when I can get one. :-D

Whether its truely been removed, half removed or not used. If you want to brand your site in a managable way that can be editted quickly and added just as quick then I would even THINK of using that way.

I understand that the 'feature' of ghosting is to saying server load (?) But really what are you going to save from looking <100kb file? Not a lot of time.

Its a nightmare!

From a designer who specialises in designing and branding SharePoint I would either reference via the custom styles area in setting or add the tag into the masterpage. Alternatively you can create a feature that intercepts the 'ghosting' feature when enabled in the settings and adds a code with the link to stylesheets - I can talk more if people want to hear about this method.

But the jist of branding your site which I think is the easiest, simpliest and easiest to manage is :

1. Create new stylesheet in SPD
2. Add to masterpage at the top within
3. Add you CSS to your overriding your CSS core files etc
4. Change styles accordingly.

Easy.

While the ghosting behaviour remains the same, SharePoint Designer is much better at making changes in a "ghosted manner."

In addition, changes to wiki content does not customize (un-ghost) the page.