Have you heard the news? There's a whole new release of SharePoint shipping next year and it's called, appropriately enough, SharePoint 2010. At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans last month, there were a series of exclusive first look opportunities provided to attendees and, in conjunction with that event, the official SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek website launched. Not entirely coincidentally, we at Bamboo Nation have also launched our own Mapping the Road to SharePoint 2010 site which I herewith heartily commend to your attention if you've an interest in the goings on surrounding the forthcoming release.
Among the offerings at the official Sneak Peek site are a series of videos, each of which includes a demo, and it turns out that one of them, billed as a SharePoint 2010 overview, is aimed almost entirely at end users. There's been a lot of excitement building over SharePoint 2010 in the industry and, with a viewing of this sneak peek, I'd be surprised if any end user doesn't place SharePoint 2010 at the top of their workplace wish list. You can check out the full demo that's included in the video for the full details now, or you can check our own Mapping the Road to SharePoint 2010 site soon (since I'll be posting additional sneak peek details over there in the coming days and weeks), but I'd like to share one screenshot I captured from the video which showcases what I'm pretty sure is going to be my single favorite feature enhancement in SharePoint 2010:
Take a few seconds to digest what you're looking at in that image.
Back? OK, so if, in addition to the generalized new look and feel of SharePoint, you interpreted what you were seeing as being in-line editing of a live SharePoint page, you are hereby awarded a SharePoint Blank no-prize, 'cause that's exactly what you're seeing. You just click on the area of text you wish to edit, and the contextual ribbon (oh, yes, the "ribbon" UI has come to SharePoint, and it's customizable, contextual and even removable if you'd prefer to stick with the 2007 UI) will provide you with a handy menu of relevant rich text editing options ... font style, size, color, etc. Similarly powerful in-line editing options are also available for image editing. And don't miss the inclusion of a feature which I've wished for on many occasions in the past in my SharePoint environment: an Undo button!
Arpan Shah from the SharePoint team at Microsoft will be delivering the keynote at next week's Best Practices Conference here in Washington, D.C., and since I'll be attending (and covering) the show, you can bet I'll be looking forward to seeing what cool new SharePoint 2010 features Arpan may choose to unveil in the presentation, as his keynote is titled SharePoint: Past, Present and Future.
More on new SharePoint 2010 enhancements for end users:
Posted
Aug 19 2009, 04:45 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.