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Sunday 9 October 2011

What's New in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 includes several key enhancements and additions. The ribbon, part of the redesigned user interface, helps you get your work done faster by placing commands on task-based tabs that are easy to navigate. Work across multiple Internet browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and 8.0, Firefox 3.0, and Safari 3.0. Finding and working with features such as SharePoint sites, lists, wikis, blogs, and permissions is now easier and more streamlined. New social networking features help you more easily locate the people and information you are most interested in. With new enterprise content management features, improvements to Search, and improved collaboration tools, you can work in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 more efficiently and intuitively.

With enhanced functionality in Excel Services and PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010, you can manage your business data more efficiently, and monitor and analyze business performance against goals more easily.

In this article

New user interface

Use the new ribbon to perform tasks quickly and in the context of your work

If you work with 2007 Microsoft Office system client applications such as Microsoft Office Word 2007 or Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, you are already familiar with the ribbon. Like the ribbon in these Office programs, the new ribbon in SharePoint Server 2010 is designed to help you quickly find the commands that you need to complete your tasks. Commands are organized in logical groups, displayed together under tabs. Each tab relates to a type of activity, such as working with a document in a document library or adding and formatting text on a page. You can use the ribbon in SharePoint Server 2010 to:

Access the commands and tools you need all in one place.
Perform actions on pages, documents and lists using only the commands you need, and in the context of what you are doing and for the task you want to accomplish.

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Collaboration

Use the new co-authoring feature to work simultaneously with colleagues on Word documents or PowerPoint slide presentations

More than one person can edit a Word document or slides in a SharePoint library at the same time. For example, to review a document you can send a link to the document in a SharePoint library, and all of the reviewers can provide their feedback in the document simultaneously.
No more attachments—you can, for example, store all of your recent documents in your My Site and work on them at the same time with other colleagues.

Schedule meetings and keep track of your schedule more easily with improved calendars
Managing and tracking your appointments, meetings, and other events is easier because you can:

Display multiple SharePoint and Exchange calendars on a single page.

Easily add events to a calendar by clicking a date and entering details for the event without leaving the calendar.
Drag and drop items within a calendar.
Use the new Group calendar to schedule meetings with colleagues and schedule resources such as audio visual equipment and meeting rooms.

Share information with others more efficiently with improved wiki and team sites

Working with wiki pages is more streamlined because now you can:

Insert and format content directly on the page with the new Rich Text Editor.
Browse for images or photos on your local computer or network and insert them into your site without leaving the page you are on.

Manage multiple items in your SharePoint lists more efficiently

Now you can select multiple items in a list and click a button to perform the same action on all the items at the same time. For example, you can check in or check out several documents at the same time.
Create and manage your blogs more easily with improved authoring tools and new navigation
With improvements to the blog authoring experience you can:

Use the new Rich Text Editor to more easily and intuitively author your blog posts.

Browse for images or photos on your local computer or network and insert them into your blog posts without leaving the page.
Browse blog entries by month as well as by categories. You can see the number of posts for each month or category in real time. A new Archive link provides access to a view of all months since the blog’s inception and, within each month, posts are listed by category.

View and work with SharePoint information from your mobile device
With SharePoint Web pages optimized for viewing on small devices, you can now view and work with documents, blogs, wikis, back-end business data and sites from your mobile phone. Listed below are some of the new mobile features in SharePoint Server 2010.

Use the lightweight interface and navigation for accessing SharePoint document libraries, lists, wikis, blogs, Web Part Pages, and back-end business data.
Use the mobile search experience for finding people, contact information, SharePoint content, and finding data in custom databases.
Subscribe to text message (SMS) alerts for changes to documents in SharePoint or to any SharePoint document library or list.
View Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents in mobile browsers.
Integration with gateways such as UAG, ISA for cross firewall access.
Provide a mobile development platform to build custom SharePoint mobile solutions beyond the out-of-the-box mobile experience.

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Social computing

With the new features in SharePoint Server 2010 you can locate content and stay informed about people and areas of interest that matter most to you.
Find and help others find interesting information
New features include newsfeeds, social tagging, and ratings so that you can more easily keep track of your colleagues’ activities, as well as share relevant content.
Use My Sites to promote interaction through expertise sharing

Improvements to My Sites help you use your My Sites and profiles to share knowledge in your specialty area with your colleagues. Adding interests and responsibilities to profiles makes it easier for colleagues to find each other through newsfeeds, ask and answer questions, and to connect in other ways.
Follow people and interests that matter to you

You can use activity feeds on My Sites to follow your colleagues’ activities, stay informed of developments in areas you are interested in, and connect with others who are looking for help in areas you are interested in. You can also receive recommendations for new colleagues or keywords to follow, so that you can expand your professional network and knowledge.

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Enterprise content management for documents, records, digital assets and Web content

The new enterprise content management features in SharePoint Server 2010 enable you to manage documents, records, digital assets, and published Web pages more efficiently.
With the new Managed Metadata features, you can manage taxonomies and metadata across your SharePoint sites

The new Managed Metadata service in SharePoint Server 2010 provides a set of features that enable organizations to manage taxonomies and metadata consistently across enterprise. With the new Managed Metadata service you can:

Publish and share content types across site collections and Web applications.
Use the Term Store to manage terms and taxonomies.

A taxonomy is a hierarchical organization of terms. Users can apply these terms to content on your site if you add the new managed metadata column to lists, libraries, or content types. Taxonomies and terms can be centrally managed within your organization, or you can integrate managed metadata with social tagging and enable users to suggest terms when they tag content.
Manage a single deliverable or work product that includes multiple documents with Document Sets
SharePoint Server 2010 introduces document sets, which are a new content type (content type: A reusable group of settings for a category of content. Use content types to manage the metadata, templates, and behaviors of items and documents consistently. Content types are defined at the site level and used on lists and libraries.) that enable you to create and manage work products that span multiple documents. Document sets are configured like other content types. They can be set up to include a set of default documents that people then customize when they create a new instance of a document set. Document set features such as shared metadata, workflows, and versioning enable groups to manage the development of a work product or content set efficiently. A common example of a document set is a "pitch book" used by a Sales and Marketing team to group different document types together for a product promotion.
Use the improved Document Center site template to more easily manage your documents in one location
The updated Document Center site template enables new document management features for a SharePoint site, including the new metadata-based navigation feature. With this feature you can browse content in a large list or library by using metadata rather than by folder location. Unique document IDs make content easy to find regardless of its location.
New flexible policy and records management features allow you to choose whether to manage records in place or in a central repository
SharePoint Server now supports the management and discovery of content in place, without the need for a locked down repository for official records. Some of the new records management features include:

In-place records management that enables you to store records in place next to in-progress content.

Retention policies that now include complex schedules, such as multi-staged schedules and more than seven included record management actions, such as “Send to a records archive” and “Declare as an in-place record.”
For larger archives, the Records Center site has been improved by the addition of a hierarchical file plan, submission methods driven by metadata, and the ability to band together multiple site collections that can be managed as one large repository.

Improved Web Content Management features make it easier to create and manage your site
New and improved Web Content Management features make it easier to publish Web pages and manage sites. In addition, SharePoint Server 2010 now includes support for streaming video.

The Web content authoring experience has been improved and simplified with the addition of the ribbon, which consolidates page commands and makes commands more task-based.
Improvements to export behavior as well as logging and reporting make content deployments easier.
Out-of-the-box Web Analytics features provide support for Traffic, Search, and Inventory analytics reports.
New support for rich media includes a new Asset Library, with rich views and pickers; support for videos as a SharePoint content type; a streaming video infrastructure, and a skinable Silverlight media player.
Large page libraries simplify the management of Web sites with many pages.
Creating and managing different versions, or "variations" of publishing sites or pages is an operation that is now submitted to a queue and occurs in the background so users can continue working in SharePoint while the operation completes. A View Changes command has been added that allows you to compare an older version of a Web page with a more recent one. Changes are highlighted in a special report to enable side-by-side editing in the Rich Text Editor.

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Search

New Search features in SharePoint Server 2010 make it easier for you to locate more relevant information and find colleagues quickly and efficiently. Improvements include a new results layout that refines information into categories, and includes better descriptions and metadata. In addition, people who are in your social circle will appear toward the top of your search results.
Get better answers, faster
Enterprise search features include ways to find information and people, and ways to navigate search results. New features include:

Refinement: helps to inform you about results and allows you to narrow result by specific types such as site, author, or date.
Pre-populated query suggestions, related search links, and acronym expansion.

Search box displays words similar to those te user is typing

Ability to query for documents by using Boolean syntax (AND, OR, and NOT), and prefix wildcards (*).
Ability to search SharePoint content from a computer running Windows 7.
Improved “Did you mean?” to support more languages and terms within your enterprise.

Search is a “social” experience
By using search with the social computing and collaboration features in SharePoint Server 2010 you can:

Search for a person by expertise to find someone who has the skills that match your needs.
Use the phonetic name lookup to find similar sounding names (is it John or Jon?).
Refine search results by using categories such as department or job title.

Other search improvements
The search model uses the properties (or metadata) that you or your computer provides on documents. Search now combs the content for key phrases that might locate missing or inaccurate properties, which helps improve relevance.
Site searches are automatically scoped to the current site and its subsites rather than all sites.

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Offline access to site content

Use the new Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 to work with SharePoint sites, libraries, and lists offline and synchronize your changes when you reconnect to your corporate network
Microsoft SharePoint Workspace now enables you to work with a SharePoint site on your desktop while connected to or disconnected from your corporate network. Major benefits of this offline and online integration include:

You can quickly view, add, edit and delete SharePoint library documents or list items while you are offline.
Two-way synchronization between your computer and the network—that is, updates to data on your computer or on the network—are automatic while you are connected to the network.
Content is automatically synchronized when you take your computer offline and then go back online.
You can use the new External List feature to work more efficiently with back-end business data—such as SQL Server databases and SAP—while you are offline.

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Site management and customization

Several new features related to permissions management, site design and an international user interface optimize how you can use, design and access SharePoint sites and content.
View and adjust permission levels, including item-level permissions, for a particular user or group using the new permissions management tool

New permissions management is available from every site collection, site, list or list item, so that you can easily add or remove users or groups, change permission levels, break inheritance, and manage anonymous access. In addition, you can view and adjust all permission levels granted to a particular user or group.
Change colors and fonts for a site using newly supported theme files

Use the new Themes Gallery to select from several themes included with SharePoint Server 2010. You can also generate your own theme files from Microsoft PowerPoint and add them to the gallery for selection.
Make your site internationally accessible by changing the language of your site
With the appropriate language packs installed, you can view settings pages, Help, and application content such as list titles and column names in your preferred language.

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Business intelligence

SharePoint Server offers more robust business intelligence capabilities through enhanced functionality in Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services, and Business Connectivity Services (BCS), a SharePoint-based framework that provides standardized interfaces to existing business data and processes.
Work with enhanced Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities using Excel Services
Excel Services enhances the Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010, providing:

Improved features for visual data analysis, such as enhanced conditional formatting, sparklines, and intuitive data exploration by using filters.
Tightly integrated client functionality with the PowerPivot for SharePoint, a new “self-service BI” feature from SQL Server Analysis Services.
The ability to analyze millions of records quickly and easily.

If you also install and configure the Office Web Apps, Excel Web App offers even more. These new features include:

New formatting and editing capabilities that enable you to edit and format spreadsheets directly in the Web browser just as you would in Excel. You can now apply color, style and size formatting to lines, borders, and numbers, and use the same background color features that you know from Excel.
Browser-based creation of new workbooks, and tables in workbooks.

Add rich charts to your SharePoint sites by using the new Chart Web Part
The new Chart Web Part, based on Dundas data visualization techniques, enables you to add rich charts to your SharePoint sites by using Web-based configuration to connect charts to data from a variety of sources, such as SharePoint lists, external lists, Business Data Services, Excel Services, and other Web Parts.

Monitor and analyze business performance using PerformancePoint Services
PerformancePoint Services makes it easier to monitor and analyze performance against goals and make better business decisions.

Create and use interactive dashboards with scorecards, reports (including Reporting Services and Excel Services Reports), and filters.
Create and use scorecards that bring together data from multiple data sources (including Analysis Services, SQL Server, SharePoint lists and Excel Services) to track and monitor your data.
Use powerful analytic reports to identify driving forces and root causes, and apply filters to personalize your reports.
Integrate your business intelligence applications and information with other powerful SharePoint features, such as collaboration and content management.

Manage and secure your PerformancePoint content with better SharePoint Integration
PerformancePoint Services enables you to manage and secure your PerformancePoint content in SharePoint Server 2010. PerformancePoint Services takes advantage of SharePoint Server scalability, collaboration, backup and restore, and disaster recovery capabilities. Dashboards and dashboard items are stored, managed, and secured within SharePoint lists and libraries, providing you with a single security and repository framework.
Access more detailed business information with improved scorecards
Enhanced scorecards make it easy for you to drill down and quickly access more detailed information. PerformancePoint scorecards also offer more flexible layout options, dynamic hierarchies, and calculated Key Performance Indicator (KPI) features. Using this enhanced functionality, you can now create custom metrics that use multiple data sources. You can also sort, filter, and view variances between actual and target values to help you identify concerns or risks.
Create analytic reports to better understand underlying business forces behind the results
Enhanced analytic reports support value filtering, new chart types, and server-based conditional formatting. The unique visualization Decomposition Tree, a new report type available in PerformancePoint Services, enables you to quickly and visually break down higher-level values so you can understand the driving forces behind them.

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Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) enables SharePoint integration with external data, including line of business applications. BCS builds on top of the Business Data Catalog (BDC) technology delivered in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Use BCS to:

More easily define external content types—previously referred to as “entities”—by using SharePoint Designer’s visual interface, without using an XML editor.
Connect to a wider range of data sources—relational databases, SAP, Web services, and custom applications—and interact with them in richer ways, including full create, read, update, and delete support.
Use rich client extensions to build a SharePoint application and extend it to Office client applications such as SharePoint Workspace, Outlook and Word, so you can work with your external data offline.
View external back-end business data across server and client applications with no customization, including seamless business data integration with SharePoint lists.

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SharePoint customization using InfoPath and SharePoint Designer

Stronger integration between InfoPath, Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 enable you to more easily customize SharePoint lists, views, and workflows.
Customize SharePoint’s list forms

InfoPath can now be used to fully customize SharePoint’s list forms. You can change the look of the form, switch to multi-column layouts, break the form into sections, validate the information entered, pre-populate fields, and cause sections of the form to show and hide automatically. From any list, click the Customize Form command on the ribbon to launch InfoPath. After customizing the form, publish the form back to the SharePoint site to replace the default form.
Customize SharePoint’s list views
All standard views of list items in SharePoint Server 2010 now use the customizable XSLT list view Web Part, making list view customization in SharePoint faster and easier. From SharePoint Designer 2010, you can quickly apply custom styles to SharePoint’s list views and conditionally format rows based on their content.
Customize SharePoint workflows

SharePoint Designer 2010 can now be used to fully customize the "big three" workflows in SharePoint—the Approval, Collect Feedback, and Collect Signature workflows. Workflow capability has been expanded with new actions such as the rich pre-built approval actions. Reusable workflows can be designed once, and then reused across multiple lists, document libraries, or content types. The SharePoint Designer 2010 user experience has been completely redesigned using the ribbon, creating an experience that’s simpler and more familiar to people who use Office.

Friday 16 September 2011

SP 2010: View/Update Profile Status on Any Page

SharePoint Branding & Design

If you want to allow your users to view/update their personal Status on any page in SharePoint 2010 follow these simple steps.

1.) As with my previous post you need to add the following to the top of your custom master page right before the doctype:
<%@ Register Tagprefix="SPSWC" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

2.) In your custom master page search for “s4-trc-container-menu” and add in the following before the “Welcome” control:
<SPSWC:ProfilePropertyLoader runat="server" />
<SPSWC:StatusNotesControl runat="server"/>
<SPSWC:ProfilePropertyImage PropertyName="PictureUrl" ShowPlaceholder="true" id="PictureUrlImage" runat="server"/>

**Note that if you do not have the <SPSWC:ProfilePropertyLoader runat="server" /> control specified your users will not be able to update their status…

3.) Add the CSS from this file: Download HERE. Into your own custom CSS file.

Your Result should look something like this:

So when I said anywhere, Its only where this custom master page is used… The other thing to note is that it adds significant amount of space to the ribbon area… So if you are cool with that then I hope this works for ya!

Posted by Erik Swenson at 4:18 PM 1 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Master Page, My Site Host Profile, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010

Display user profile picture next to welcome name

Here is a simple way to add in the logged in users profile picture right before or after the users name in the SharePoint 2010 ribbon.

1.) Add the following to the top of your custom master page right before the doctype:
<%@ Register Tagprefix="SPSWC" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

2.) Add in the following control right before the welcome text:
<SPSWC:ProfilePropertyImage PropertyName="PictureUrl" style="float: left; height: 20px;" ShowPlaceholder="true" id="PictureUrlImage" runat="server"/>

A nice feature that you can customize is if you don’t want to show a placeholder image if a users has not uploaded a custom picture you can simply change ShowPlaceholder="true" to “false”. and it will only show a picture if someone has specified a custom one in their profile.

Before:

After:

If you want to have the image on the right simply move the control after the welcome and muiselctor controls, also remove the float:left in the picture style:
<wssuc:Welcome id="IdWelcome" runat="server" EnableViewState="false"></wssuc:Welcome>

<wssuc:MUISelector ID="IdMuiSelector" runat="server"/>

<SPSWC:ProfilePropertyImage PropertyName="PictureUrl" style="height: 20px;" ShowPlaceholder="true" id="PictureUrlImage" runat="server"/>

The 20px height is that golden number because any larger and the image will get cropped off on the bottom in IE7 and in IE8 you will start to see some separation and cropping of the ribbon when viewing the other ribbon tabs.

30px height:

20px Height:

The inline CSS above on the control is just to keep this blog post simple, Its recommended to move that inline style into your custom CSS file.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 1:43 PM 2 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Master Page, My Site Host Profile, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

SharePoint 2010: Basics on how to apply branding

So, I have gotten a lot of great feedback within the comments of my blog. I have heard from quite a few people that they either just been tasked with branding SharePoint and don’t know where to start. Or they have a basic idea about SharePoint, CSS and HTML but don’t know where or how to reference the custom CSS. This is a long post so hold on to your hat!

Within this post I am going to focus this topic on SharePoint 2010 but the approach could be used either for 2007 or 2010.

Step 1: The first thing that you have to consider is how the SharePoint site that you are branding is configured?

Is it SharePoint 2007 or 2010?
Is it WSS or Full SharePoint Server?
Will Publishing be enabled?
What site templates will be branded?

Publishing
Team Collaboration
Meeting Workspaces
Search Center
My Sites
Administration Pages “_layouts/”
Other?

Step 2: Be prepared and gather all design support files from your visual designer

Support Images optimized for web
Style Guide

Hex colors for all design elements

Text body colors
Text link colors
Text link hover colors
Text header colors
Background colors

Heights and widths of design elements

Ribbon
Header
Logo
Navigation Container
Navigation Links
Left Side Navigation
Content Area

Step 3: Choose your implementation approach

Store all CSS and Images on the server

This approach allows you to store all of your CSS and images in a custom folder on the server within the 14 hive, 12 hive for 2007.
SharePoint 2010 - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\customfolder
SharePoint 2007 - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\customfolder
This approach allows you to have a single source for all of your CSS and images. Note that it is recommended to create a solution package with all of your files and deploy it especially if you have more than one web front end server. This will push all of the files to the correct location on each web front end so you do not have to do it manually.

The other option is to Store all CSS and Images within SharePoint Style Library (Publishing Infrastructure and Site Publishing Feature need to be enabled)

This approach allows you to have version control over your CSS and images. However these files will need to be added to each site collection the branding will be applied to so if you have a lot of site collections there will not be a single source for your files. AKA if you update one it will not update the branding globally.

Step 4a: If you choose to go with storing all of your CSS and images on the server, below are the steps to get you started.
I will walk you through the manual process of adding in the files, a solution would be created to add these files in normally. Please note that this should be done in a development environment first.

log into your web front end as a administrator
Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES
create a new folder within the styles library that is either your company name or project name or what ever makes sense
upload all of your optimized images into this folder
right click > new > text document
rename it custom.css
Open up the document in notepad and add in the following just to make sure you have it linked up correctly

body #s4-leftpanel{display: none !important;} body .s4-ca{background-color: #CCC; margin-left: 0px !important;} body #s4-mainarea{width: 940px; margin: auto; float: none; clear:both;}

Save the custom CSS file

Step 4b: If you choose to go with storing all of your CSS and images within SharePoint, below are the steps to get you started.

first you need to make sure that you have the publishing infrastructure and publishing feature activated within your site.
To verify click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Collection Administration > Site collection features

Then to verify the site feature click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Actions > Manage site features

by activating the publishing feature it creates a style library at the root of the site collection where you will be able to store and reference your custom CSS and images.
navigate to the new style library:
http://sitename/Style%20Library/Forms/AllItems.aspx
you will normally see four folders

en-us
Images
Media Player
XSL Style Sheets

create a new folder at this root location that is either your company name or project name or what ever makes sense
upload all of your optimized images into this folder
on your local machine create a new text document in notepad
save it as “custom.css”, make sure you save as type “All Files” and Encoding “UTF-8”

Open up the document in notepad and add in the following just to make sure you have it linked up correctly

body #s4-leftpanel{display: none !important;} body .s4-ca{background-color: #CCC; margin-left: 0px !important;} body #s4-mainarea{width: 940px; margin: auto; float: none; clear:both;}

Save the custom CSS file

Step 5a: Apply your server side custom CSS to your site.
You now have a few choices on how you want to apply your custom CSS to your site/page. If you want more details about other approaches see my blog post here: http://erikswenson.blogspot.com/2010/01/sharepoint-2010-css-references-in.html

Approach 1: (Hardest) Creating a custom master page and referencing your custom CSS in the header.

For non-publishing Click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Galleries > Master pages
For publishing Click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Galleries > Master pages and page layouts
hover over v4.master and click on Send To > Download a Copy
Save this copy of v4.master onto your local machine
Rename it customv4.master
Open up the master page in notepad.
** Do not try to open it locally with SharePoint designer, it will add in a bunch of weird references and your master page might get errors.**
at the end of the head tag add the following code
<SharePoint:CssRegistration name="custom/custom.css" After="corev4.css" runat="server"/>
Save the master page and upload it into the master page gallery.
Make sure that you publish it as a major version and approve it as needed.
to apply your custom master page when publishing has been enabled click on site actions > site settings > look and feel > master page
If Publishing is not enabled you will have to use SharePoint designer to set this custom master page, there will not be an option to do this through the UI.

Change the Site Master page and the System Master page to your customv4.master and then click on ok
Now You will finally see that you branding has been applied.

Approach 2: (Medium) With publishing enabled, specify your custom CSS as a Alternate CSS.

Click on site actions > site settings > look and feel > master page
Scroll down to the Alternate CSS URL section and click on “Specify a CSS file to be used by this publishing site and all sites that inherit from it:”
add in the following path:
_layouts/1033/styles/custom/custom.css
then click on ok
your site should now have the custom branding applied to this site and if you choose to any existing sub sites.
** note that when new sites are created the branding will not get applied to the new sites. The “Reset all sub sites to inherit this alternate CSS URL” only applies to existing sites and not sites that get created in the future. **

Approach 3: (Easy) Add a content editor web part to the page and reference your custom CSS.

Add the content editor web part to the page
Click to add in content and then in the markup section within the ribbon click on HTML > Edit HTML Source
paste in the following:
<link href="/_layouts/1033/styles/custom/custom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
Save/Publish the page. Just this page will now have the custom branding applied.

Step 5b: Apply your Style library custom CSS to your site.
You have the same options as above but with different URL paths.

Approach 1: (Hardest) Creating a custom master page and referencing your custom CSS in the header.

Use same method above to create your custom master page but use the following reference at the end of the HEAD section.
<SharePoint:CssRegistration name="<% $SPUrl:~sitecollection/Style Library/custom/custom.css %>" After="corev4.css" runat="server"/>

Approach 2: (Medium) With publishing enabled, specify your custom CSS as a Alternate CSS.

Click on site actions > site settings > look and feel > master page
Scroll down to the Alternate CSS URL section and click on “Specify a CSS file to be used by this publishing site and all sites that inherit from it:”
add in the following path:
/Style Library/custom/custom.css
then click on ok
your site should now have the custom branding applied to this site and if you choose to any existing sub sites.
** note that when new sites are created the branding will not get applied to the new sites. The “Reset all sub sites to inherit this alternate CSS URL” only applies to existing sites and not sites that get created in the future. **

Approach 3: (Easy) Add a content editor web part to the page and reference your custom CSS.

Add the content editor web part to the page
Click to add in content and then in the markup section within the ribbon click on HTML > Edit HTML Source
paste in the following:
<link href="/Style Library/custom/custom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
Save/Publish the page. Just this page will now have the custom branding applied.

I hope this helps any new front end developers out there trying to get their feet wet with SharePoint 2010 branding.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 1:44 PM 12 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Features, Master Page, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010

Thursday, February 24, 2011

SharePoint 2010: Large Search Box & Scopes

My previous post did not include a style for the search scope drop down. Use the following to CSS to update the search scope from:

To:

Download updated files HERE

How to implement:

Upload the custom master page into the master page gallery
Navigate to the following location on your server: “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES”
Create a folder called “LGSEARCH” and place the “lgsearch.css” and the two image files into this directory.
Apply the “lgsearch.master” to your site.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 9:51 PM 1 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

SharePoint 2010: Navigation Drop Down Styles

If you would like to stylize your navigation drop downs in SharePoint 2010 here are the 4 main key classes to update your CSS.

If you are looking for SharePoint 2007 styles see my previous blog post here.

The OOTB Navigation Drop Down CSS: “COREV4.CSS”
.s4-tn ul.dynamic{
/* [ReplaceColor(themeColor:"Light2")] */ background-color:white;
/* [ReplaceColor(themeColor:"Dark2-Lighter")] */ border:1px solid #D9D9D9;
}
.s4-tn li.dynamic > .menu-item{
display:block;
padding:3px 10px;
white-space:nowrap;
font-weight:normal;
}
a:link{
/* [ReplaceColor(themeColor:"Hyperlink")] */ color:#0072BC;
text-decoration:none;
}
.s4-tn li.dynamic > a:hover{
font-weight:normal;
/* [ReplaceColor(themeColor:"Light2-Lighter")] */ background-color:#D9D9D9;
}

Example (Not good design, but you get the point)

/* Drop Down: Container Style */
.s4-tn ul.dynamic{
background-color:white;
border:3px dashed #000;
} /* Drop Down: Item Padding Style */
.s4-tn li.dynamic > .menu-item{
padding:10px 20px 10px 20px;
} /* Drop Down: Hyperlink Styles */
.s4-tn li.dynamic > a{
font-size: 9pt;
font-weight:normal;
color:#000;
} /* Drop Down: Hyperlink Hover Style */
.s4-tn li.dynamic > a:hover{
font-weight:bold;
background-color:#0C0;
color:#FFF;
}

What it will look like:

Simply take the above 4 main CSS classes and add/edit/delete the properties to make your drop down style truly unique.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 11:42 AM 4 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Drop Down Menus, SharePoint 2010

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

SharePoint 2010: Large Search Box

The OOTB search box in my opinion is hidden and misplaced. In most cases it gets in the way with the top navigation especially when you have a lot of items in it.

The solution to this problem is to move the search box up to the left of the social tags and make it bigger with CSS and Images.

Here is what the search box will look like: This design consists of two images one for the search box (searchbox.gif) and the other for the button (searchbutton.gif).

Moving the Search Control:
In your custom master page simply move the s4-searcharea div up into a new <td></td> before the social tags.

The final code should look like this: Notice that I kept the div and the “s4-rp” class. This has the “float:right” attribute for the help icon.

Putting it all together:
I have placed all of the support files to create this large search box style into the following .zip file that you can download and apply to your development site.

Source Files: Download HERE

How to implement:

Upload the custom master page into the master page gallery
Navigate to the following location on your server: “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES”
Create a folder called “LGSEARCH” and place the “lgsearch.css” and the two image files into this directory.
Apply the “lgsearch.master” to your site.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 10:23 AM 4 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Design, SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Change SharePoint 2010 Site Logo Via CSS

I thought that I created this post before, but I guess it was either the SharePoint 2007 Logo, or the SharePoint 2010 Search Button. So here it is.

Very much like the two examples above, if you simply want to change the site logo via CSS globally, or for a single site. Without having to go to the Site Actions > Site Settings > Title and description > adding in a URL to site logo. Then simply do the following:

Copy your image anywhere users can access it
Paste in the following CSS into your custom CSS file

.s4-titlelogo{
background-image: url(/_layouts/images/centraladmin_security_48x48.png);
background-position:left center;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
.s4-titlelogo > a > img{
visibility: hidden; width: 48px;
height: 48px;
}

Update the background image URL path above in red to where you uploaded the image
Change the width and height above in Blue to match the image dimensions.

Before:

After:

Posted by Erik Swenson at 5:27 PM 3 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Hide SP2010 “My Site” link in top navigation

To hide the “My Site” link in the SharePoint 2010 top navigation you can easily do this via CSS.

Simply add the following to your custom CSS.

.ms-globalnavicon{
display: none;
}

Now when you click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Top Link Bar. You can customize those links all you want and not have to worry about the “My Links” getting in the way. Its redundant/repetitive to the My Newsfeed link anyways. So I am not really sure why it was in there for the first place…

Posted by Erik Swenson at 12:05 PM 5 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Design, My Site Host Profile, SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Hide custom code within SP 2010 modal windows

If you have ever added custom elements to your master page above or below the standard DIV tags you will notice that they start appearing in the SharePoint 2010 Modal windows when you don’t want them to.

The simple fix is to use the class “s4-notdlg” on your custom element to hide it when viewing the modal pop up windows.

To give you a better idea of what I am talking about I added in a simple DIV tag right above the s4-ribbon row DIV: The inline CSS below is just to make it stand out.

<div class="my-customdiv">Here is my custom header</div>
<style>
.my-customdiv{
    background-color: #009;
    border-bottom: 4px #FFF solid;
    text-align: center;
    color: #FFF;
    font-size: 10pt;
    font-weight: bold;
    padding: 10px;
    height: 30px;
}
</style>

Here is what the site looks like with the custom header applied:

If I create a new list item or upload a document, the Modal Window shows my custom div above the input form. Not good…

To fix this you simply have to add the “s4-notdlg” CSS to the custom DIV tag to hide it from the modal window.

Example:
<div class="s4-notdlg my-customdiv">Here is my custom header</div>

Now the modal window will not show my custom DIV:

Posted by Erik Swenson at 1:26 PM 10 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Master Page, Modal Pop-Up, SharePoint 2010

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Convert Folder Breadcrumb to Traditional Style

Update 11/4/2010: I found that by using the default SiteMapProviders="SPContentMapProvider" in the original post it was throwing errors when creating a publishing page.
So I have updated my approach below to utilize how breadcrumbs were done in MOSS 2007.

Basically you should simply replace the existing PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb placeholder with the following:

I have updated the post below to reflect the above changes.

I have received a lot of feedback about the OOTB breadcrumb control for SharePoint 2010 not being useful and hard to find. People would ask me: Where did the standard breadcrumb go? I know it was there in SharePoint 2007… Well to find it in 2010 you have to look hard (Which in my opinion is not a good thing). To find it. look in the ribbon for that little folder icon with the green arrow that is next to the site actions…
If you click on it, it will display a pop up menu with a hierarchy from the top of that site collection.

So to get the 2007 breadcrumb look and feel back you have to do some simple configurations.

First open up your custom master page and search for: “PlaceHolderGlobalNavigation”

Within this control there is another place holder called “PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb”

Simply delete the “PlaceHolderGlobalNavigation” Code and add in the following simplified code right above the “s4-mainarea” DIV.

<div class="custom-breadcrumb">
    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb" runat="server">
        <asp:SiteMapPath SiteMapProvider="SPContentMapProvider" id="ContentMap" runat="server"/>
    </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
</div>

The result should look like this: A bunch of Span and <a> tags.

Now it is time to add in CSS to make it look more like a traditional breadcrumb. Add in the following CSS to your global CSS file or master page:

The breadcrumb should now look something like this:

You can download the sample master page HERE with the updated code above to get you started.

Enjoy!

Sorry for the changes, but I am sure you will enjoy this better without the errors!

Posted by Erik Swenson at 1:41 PM 9 comments

Labels: Branding, Breadcrumb, CSS, Master Page, SharePoint 2010

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Hide First Tab in SharePoint 2010 Navigation

I created a blog post on this for SharePoint 2007 HERE: But SharePoint 2010 is a bit more complex. Since it uses UL’s and Li’s for it’s navigation it is a bit harder to hide just one element.

You will notice that the Home tab actually is the first node and then has a child UL which represents the rest of the navigation Items. So the approach is to hide the first <li> <a> (display: none) and then simply just use (display:block ) to show the hidden <ul> <li> <a> tags.

Here is the CSS you could use to hide just the first node (home) tab in a SharePoint 2010 application:

.s4-tn li.static > a{
display: none !important;
}
.s4-tn li.static > ul a{
display: block !important;
}

Enjoy!

Posted by Erik Swenson at 12:12 PM 5 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

How To: Hide Left Side Navigation on Home Page

I was recently asked: "How can I hide the side nav bar on the main homepage layout ?? I want to be able to use the side NAV with in the team site etc etc, but I don't want it on the front page.. "

There are a couple of ways to do this in SharePoint 2010. If you are using a non-publishing site you can add a Content Editor Web Part to the page and add the following to the HTML Source.

<Style>
body #s4-leftpanel
{
display: none;
}
.s4-ca
{
margin-left: 0px;
}
</style>

Basically the CSS above hides the left navigation Div, and then sets the content area to not have a left margin.

Once you are done, simply modify the web part and hide it on the page.

If you are using a publishing site for your homepage simply add the same styles specified above to a custom page layout. That way if you have a need for other pages that do not need the left side navigation you can re-use the page layout.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 6:13 PM 6 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Design, Page Layout, SharePoint 2010

Friday, August 6, 2010

SharePoint 2010 Centered Fixed Width Design

I created a blog post about 2 years ago on how to create a centered fixed width design for SharePoint 2007. Well now with a little help from a few other posts (The SharePoint Muse, Elumenotion, Styled Point) we can create a SharePoint 2010 fixed with centered design.

Now this does come with some drawbacks. By default the ribbon is intended to stay static and always be visible to the contributors on the top of the page. However due to the complexity of fixing a site’s width. The ribbon will need to scroll with the body of the page to avoid a vertical scroll in the middle of your page once it is centered…

The trick to get this to work is to do the following:

Open up your master Page and remove scroll="no" from the body.

If you do not do this there will be no scroll bars on long pop up modal windows

In the Master Page search for “s4-workspace” remove this whole DIV tag and its close Div tag at the bottom of the master page.

This ID is tied to a JavaScript file that forces a full width on the page.

Now Open up your CSS file and add the following:

1. body{
overflow:auto !important;
} form
{
width:980px;
margin: auto;
}

Your Site Should look something like this:

If you wanted to add some background color and borders to enhance the centered design replace it with this:

body{
overflow:auto !important;
background-color: #21374c;
}
.s4-widecontentarea{
background-color: #FFF;
}
form
{
width:980px;
margin: auto;
}

The following is how it might look:

The last draw back to fixing the width of a SharePoint 2010 site is that the content is within a floating <DIV> tag and if the content gets very wide by either a fixed with image or a list with many columns displayed it will spill off the page. I have no fix for this at the moment but it is something to consider.

Posted by Erik Swenson at 3:14 PM 15 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Design, Fixed Width, Master Page, SharePoint 2010

Enable Small Social Buttons in SharePoint 2010

To convert the large social buttons to smaller ones you simply have to modify the following:

Within your custom Master Page search for: “GlobalSiteLink3”

Simply Add “-mini” to the control ID

Original Large Control:
<SharePoint:DelegateControl ControlId="GlobalSiteLink3" Scope="Farm" runat="server"/>

New Small Control ID:
<SharePoint:DelegateControl ControlId="GlobalSiteLink3-mini" Scope="Farm" runat="server"/> If you want to make the small buttons horizontal versus vertical simply add the following to your custom CSS:

.ms-mini-socialNotif-Container{
white-space: nowrap;
}

Enjoy!

Posted by Erik Swenson at 12:34 PM 1 comments

Labels: Branding, CSS, Design, Master Page, SharePoint 2010

Friday, June 11, 2010

Issues with moving search into top ribbon bar

I was recently on a project where there was a requirement to have many items in the main navigation. There was not an option to consolidate these into smaller groups. The idea was to move the search box up into the top ribbon bar.

This would allow for more horizontal space for the navigation items. However in my attempt to move the search I found a little gotcha. I selected the search control in SharePoint Designer and moved it right above the welcome navigation control code.

Wrapped the control in a div tag and temporarily added an inline style of float left.

I saved the master page and then checked out what it looked like. The search was moved up correctly but it was not until I used IE8 dev toolbar to check for compatibility in IE7.

As you can see below in IE7 the search, and welcome link/drop down is no where to be seen and the ribbon tabs got all squished.

After doing some testing in IE7 mode an inline style gets applied to the ms-cui-TabRowRight with “Display: none”

I am not 100% why this is, but if I try to put the search anywhere else in the ribbon it just does not show… So I guess this is more of a warning to the designers out there. If you are thinking about putting the search in the top ribbon bar in your design comps know that there might be some issues with browser compatibility.

So what I ended up doing is moving the search to the left of the Social Notification tags. Wrapped it in a <td> tag and called it a day. The client was happy with the results since they were still able to have their navigation items and the search moved to a different location.

Please comment on this post if you have seen this issue before or have found a fix. Thanks!