<asp:GridView SkinID="Grid2" runat="server" BorderWidth="1px" BorderColor="Tan" GridLines="Both">
<AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="PapayaWhip" />
<RowStyle Font-Size="8pt" ForeColor="black" />
<HeaderStyle Font-Size="8pt" Font-Bold="True" BackColor="#F7D7BE" />
<SelectedRowStyle ForeColor="GhostWhite" BackColor="#cc9999" />
<FooterStyle BackColor="#F7D7BE" />
<PagerStyle HorizontalAlign="Center" BackColor="#F7D7BE" Font-Size="8pt" />
</asp:GridView>

<asp:GridView SkinID="Grid3" runat="server" BorderWidth="1px" BorderColor="#9999CC" GridLines="Both">
<AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="AliceBlue" />
<RowStyle Font-Size="8pt" ForeColor="black" />
<HeaderStyle Font-Size="8pt" Font-Bold="True" BackColor="#D0DDF7" />
<SelectedRowStyle ForeColor="GhostWhite" BackColor="DarkSlateBlue" />
<FooterStyle BackColor="#D0DDF7" />
<PagerStyle HorizontalAlign="Center" ForeColor="DarkSlateBlue" BackColor="#D0DDF7" Font-Size="8pt" />
</asp:GridView>

In top of the page

<%@ Page Language="VB" ...................................................... title="test" Theme="NameYourTheme" %>

These both (should) work, but they are a little bit tricky.

For the Image control ImageURL:
 The trick is that the URL needs to be relative to the Theme folder, not relative to the page. We wanted this feature to work no matter where the page is, so you have to do it this way. In the skin file, I have this: <asp:imagebutton skinid="Whidbey" runat="server" imageurl="Images/Whidbey.JPG" />. The Images folder is inside the Theme folder, and if you do it this way it will work. You should also be able to use App-Relative paths (~/...) and see the image render the way you expect. If you're doing something different which also works when you run the page but doesn't work on the Design Surface, let me know.

Themes on a Master Page:
You can?t define Themes directly on a Master Page. The problem is that they can be referenced by pages with different Themes, so you wouldn?t really know what the Master Page will look like. If you open a Web Form which references the Master Page and defines a StyleSheetTheme, you will see skins rendering on controls from the Master Page. You can set the Skin property for controls on the Master Page and see them rendered appropriately on the Content Page in Design View. We elected not to have the Theme and StyleSheetTheme attributes from the Master directive, and not to offer IntelliSense and Validation for SkinIDs. This is to keep it clear that individual pages define the Theme. We?re adding designer support for setting the Theme for a site in Web.Config (post Beta2), but I don?t think we?ll have Master Page support for this scenario either ? something we?ll consider for next version. Again, if I misunderstood the situation you have, let me know.

Hope this helps.
-Scott

support skin,

but the IDE can't support it.

<%@ Page StylesheetTheme="test"......

However this does not work(in design view) for Theme=, or by setting in web.config, or by setting from code.

Strangely if I create a new website based on the 'Personal Website Starter Kit' template it all works as I would expect, event to new content pages added. I may try cutting it down to a usable template and saving it as a template and see if that works.

Surely this has to be a bug. Is there anyone that this does not happen to???

Yes, the design surface will only render themes set via the StyleSheetTheme attribute, though it should pick up themes set in Web.Config also as long as you use the StyleSheetTheme equivalent there as well (<pages styleSheetTheme="..." />).

The philosophy of Themes, which is a little strange, is that StyleSheetTheme is to be used as you are building a site to control the look and feel, and Theme is to be used by someone consuming the site after the initial development, as a final mechanism to override anything the final consumer would like to change. This also explains the order of precedence in themes - StyleSheetTheme is overridden by attributes set directly on the control, which is overridden by attributes set in the Theme.

Unfortunately, we can't pick up on Themes set in code because that would require us to execute it at design time, and for a variety of reasons (risk of hangs and exceptions from your code, inability to replicate the runtime state you expect at design time, security issues) we can't do it.

The good news is that StyleSheetTheme and Theme are really exactly the same, precedence aside. They both use Skin files with exactly the same sort of contents.

Hope this helps,
-Scott