Building the SharePoint User Experience (Expert's Voice in Sharepoint) (Paperback)

~ Bjørn Christoffer Thorsmæhlum Furuknap (Author)
Key Phrases: team site, form type, assembly name, User Experience Lab, Visual Studio, Site Settings (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The SharePoint user experience is critical in application architecture and user acceptance. Using tools available to all developers, you will learn how to rebuild a SharePoint site, taking it all the way from the default out–of–the–box experience to your very own customized user experience.

Along the way you will receive a solid understanding of the SharePoint architecture that will enable you to take full advantage of the capabilities of SharePoint as a platform. This will allow you to tailor the SharePoint user experience to increase the value of solutions and to work more effectively with projects. And that, of course, leads to successful SharePoint solutions in your business that your users are happy to accept and use.

What you’ll learn

• Learn the tools needed to create effective and highly tailored user interfaces and experiences.
• Dissect an out–of–the–box site to learn how every user experience element is built.
• Master the core functions of sites, lists, content types, and fields.
• Build a site from scratch using tools available to everyone.
• Speed up development time by using little known tips and tricks.
• See how new skills can be applied to everyday tasks with simple exercises.

Who is this book for?

This book is for SharePoint developers who want to learn how to work with designers and other developers to create custom and tailored user experiences, including custom forms, content types, lists, fields, pages, and navigation that will better match your project’s requirements. This is not a book for graphic designers—you’ll find no Photoshop tips here!

About the Author

Bjørn Furuknap is a senior solutions architect, focusing primarily on SharePoint and related collaboration technologies. He has worked in IT since 1993, both as an IT professional and a developer. He is a former teacher at a college–level programming school, speaker, and author of published articles. He holds an MCSE as well as several other titles, including all current SharePoint certifications. Visit http://furuknap.blogspot.com/ for more information, articles, reviews and code samples.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (April 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430218967
• ISBN-13: 978-1430218968
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #310,005 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Deep Dive into SharePoint Development, like few others I've found, April 29, 2009

By	Trevor Andrew "MS Architect and Developer" (Oak Park, VIC Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been developing with SharePoint for around 2 years now, initially mainly in the worfklow area, and now more recently in more content-focussed SharePoint development. One of the things I had noticed about so many SharePoint books is that they seemed, to put it bluntly, derivative. Many seemed to reproduce re-hashes of a single original MSDN based example, and stuck to a very narrow set of stepping stones when covering a particular facet of SharePoint.

Most recently I've been doing Custom Field Type development, and had come across a few sticky issues that I wanted guidance on. Once again, the majority of the articles and book entries on this topic were quite similar, and generally derived directly from the Microsoft SDK. In short they seemed to give little further insight.

After reviewing the sample chapters of this book and its table of contents, it looked like a book that was a bit different to the others I described above. And after reading it thoroughly, my first impressions and expectations have been confirmed, and in many cases exceeded. It steps off the beaten track and answers those "Yes, but what about ..." type questions that seem to be left unanswered in the majority of books. This one takes that next step, and enhances your deep understanding of the topic. His coverage of Custom Field Types and Content Types is particularly good.

In summary, I've found the book to be one of the best genuine deep-dives into SharePoint development I've found, and highly recommend it (I should emphasize despite the title, it is primarily a *developers* book, not a *designers* book). The author states on his blog relating to the book, that his aim was to "Create the best SharePoint book ever". Certainly a lofty aspiration, and I'll be interested in others opinions. I think he's gone pretty close!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Philosophy of SharePoint, June 8, 2009

By	Tiffany Songvilay "Tiffany" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This author is always described as 'unique' by his peers and I often say that he is not just a developer but a philosopher. If you enjoy thinking deeply about how your work as a developer ultimately impacts the end user, then Bjorn is the guy you want to learn from.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from a Furuknap Groupie, June 2, 2009

By	SnowFire (California) - See all my reviews

This book, maybe call it art, that Bjorn has written is for me one of the more unique books on Sharepoint development or maybe even programming in general. The guy has a very different outlook on life that you can see right from the get go in the acknowledgments section--in my opinion it's a good thing. One big win for me in this book is the introduction to and descriptive use of helpful tools like Sharepoint Manager 2007(SPM) and WSPBuilder. I actually first found out about these tools because I attended one of the Sharepoint seminars in San Francisco that Bjorn was speaking at. Bjorn had a few different sessions and during each he was really pressed for time. It was difficult for him to get out all the detail he wanted within the available time. None the less I walked away realizing that he was a man of great character who was committed to getting granular and not glossing over details for the sake of a time limitation. That is one of the key reasons I wanted to buy his book. I knew that the amount of detail he would put in would probably be better than many of the other Sharepoint books out there that seem to just repeat the same stuff, leaving you searching forever for the missing link. That said though, this is a rapidly moving topic and since 2007 when I was first trying to wrap my brain around Sharepoint there have been so many more "how to" articles published on the web in blogs etc. that it is getting ever easier. So even reading through Bjorn's book there are parts where I find myself looking for certain answers to questions that arise. No one book can hold all the answers but I think one book should be able to hold most of the detail over a specific part of the subject. If you are a sharepoint programmer then think of buying this book as extending your relationship with a guy who has really spent his time trying to understand wss and cares a great deal about imparting that knowledge; And remember that it doesn't end with this book he has various articles that he publishes online which really help you walk through some complex real world sharepoint solutions. Some of the drawbacks that another guy posted about the chapter titles is very true but I think if you are going to use a book for reference the best thing to do is buy the ebook up front and then you can bookmark it up however you like or do text searching.