I broached the topic of SharePoint 2010 for the first time in my end user-centric SharePoint Blank blog this week. Given how much time I've spent reading and thinking about SharePoint 2010 these past few months, I don't know why it took me as long as it did to address the next SharePoint release in SharePoint Blank, but the genie's out of the bottle there now, and I'm inspired to follow up my post there with a mini-series over here in the SharePoint 2010 blog.
In my SharePoint Blank post, I referenced Tom Rizzo's Overview and Sneak Peek video from the official SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek site, and shared what is, to me, the single most exciting new SharePoint 2010 feature I've yet seen: the in-line "Web edit" functionality which is tied to the contextual ribbon within SharePoint 2010. That functionality may be my favorite, but Tom Rizzo shared a whole bunch of cool new end user-facing features in his demo video, and I captured what I think are representative screenshots of pretty much all of those features. I'd like to begin sharing them here, for those who might not have the desire (or the patience) to watch the full 30-minute-plus video, and who just want the quick hits.
The first item of note is the new look and feel of SharePoint itself in 2010. Here's what the home page of a Team Site looks like:
I don't know about you, but I love the new look and feel ... I find it to be open, inviting, and warm. Let's be honest - current and previous iterations of SharePoint didn't exactly exude warmth in their default experiences, did they? By my lights, this is a particularly welcome improvement.
Don't miss the new tabbed UI experience (seen at the top of the page in the image), with tabs for Site Actions, Browse (which is the active tab in this screenshot), Edit, and Share & Track (if I'm reading that last word correctly).
Clicking the Edit tab will open up the Ribbon, which should be familiar to Office 2007 users:
If you love the Ribbon, great news! It's now in SharePoint as of the 2010 release. If you hate the Ribbon, great news! Not only is it customizable and contextual, but it's removable in SharePoint. Yes, if you really don't like the Ribbon, Tom Rizzo explains in his demo that you can opt to revert to the 2007-style UI in 2010.
Stay tuned for a look at more of the recently revealed feature enhancements for end users coming in SharePoint 2010.
More on new SharePoint 2010 enhancements for end users:
Posted
Aug 21 2009, 12:22 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. Today, John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Managing Editor at Bamboo and, while he learned much about SharePoint in his first two years, he gleefully celebrates the release of SharePoint 2010 and the reset button that the new platform represents for SharePoint Blank.