Just wanted to give a shout out to Pirate Eric for his jQuery slider solution. I have used several solutions both open source and paid. I like this one the best so far.
Created flexible slider that does not need someone to baby sit. Thanks for the effort Eric! It was a huge assist.
If you are looking for a review of the sessions at SharePoint Saturday Austin then I'm afraid I can't help you. I was scheduled to speak at 3 PM CST and spent my time preparing for my presentation.
I can tell you I had a great time and met a handful of really great people and saw some old friends.
If you ever get a chance to catch one of these events in Austin, make sure and do it. Jim Bob Howard is a gentleman and a professional that can arrange a second to none event. Thanks again Jim Bob for all the hard work and allowing me to be a part of that amazing line up of speakers.Very excited to be added to the speakers list at SharePoint Saturday Austin this weekend! I'm a last minute addition to cover for another speaker who could not attend. One man gathers what another man spills!
My presentations is titled "SharePoint & UX... Why Bother?" discussing User Experience and its Importance to SharePoint. I hope to see you there at the session or at least If you manage to notice that I am there, please stop by and say "Hi".
Stay Weird!
When I design a SharePoint site these days I tend to forget, on purpose, that I am working in that framework. I like to focus on the problems I am trying to solve and not the tool we use to solve them. Clients seem to appreciate that.
It is when I am developing the design in Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer that I am reminded that I am indeed using SharePoint.
In this case it's about the markup. I know, I know that it's better in 2010, but the web parts are nothing nice. There are so many things that drive me crazy about styling SharePoint I can't possibly comment on them all. I will pick on that I keep facing. It's that the web parts all have a background-color set. Why why why.
I am going to make an attempt at creating a background-color reset. The web parts themselves are the determining factor as to what styles are used. Each time I use a web part and I clear out the background-color, I'm going to add it to a list here on my site. Please feel free to add via email or comments to the list.
/** make webparts transparent **/
.ms-WPHeader,
.ms-vh-icon,
.ms-wpContentDivSpace,
.ms-vh-div,
.s4-ctx,
.ms-vb,
.ms-bottompaging,
.ms-bottompagingline1,
.ms-bottompagingline2,
.ms-bottompagingline3 {background-color:transparent !important;}
div..ms-vb.itx {background-color:transparent !important; background-image:none !important;}
Why do this? From a design standpoint it's crucial to control the view of the data. From a development standpoint I'm trying to speed things up. Playing whack-a-mole with SharePoint markup and css is the biggest time killer I can think of. There is a great reset of typography at Kyle Schaeffer's site along these lines.
Give it a try. Join the effort. Defeat the mole.
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What a year 2011 was for me and my family. Not that anyone would know. I took the year off from blogging. Nothing bad mind you. New job, wife's surgery... It was one of those transformational years that something had to give to maintain balance.
Things have settled and I've got tons of things to share. I've designed no less than ten SharePoint 2010 experiences in 2011 and I'm not slowing down.
I hope everyone enjoys their holidays and is ready to soak up some SharePoint UX love.