SharePoint 2013 - Display The Detail From A List Item In A Branded Page, NOT The Default SharePoint Details Page

I am a COMPLETE beginner when it comes to SharePoint! So, forgive my lack of knowledge. I'm sure the answer to this question is probably in a million different places on the intern

Solution 1:

For your use case, the REST API would probably be simplest & still meet your needs. You can fire a simple GET request for the item details then display it however you wish in accordance with your custom UI. Be it loading a custom form page you build or even generating markup based on the GET response and displaying it within, say, a modal DIV or details pane.

The REST call parameters would look like this:

url: http://YourSiteUrl/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘YourListTitle')/items(Item ID)
method: GET
headers:
    Authorization: "Bearer " + accessToken
    accept: "application/json;odata=verbose" or "application/atom+xml"

Note the accept header so that you can specify whether you want a JSON-based or XML-based output.

MSDN reference on using the REST API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn292552%28v=office.15%29.aspx