Customer Reviews

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

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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!

If you are not developer (or not involved in heavy development), this is not book for you. I thought there is no good SharePoint book out there (as other reviews mentioned). I couldn't find info that this book has in dozens of other books from different SharePoint/MOSS "experts". Glad I found a book that puts together lot of the core info that I had to dig from all kinds of sources.

Book itself is easy read (though you should have some introduction to SharePoint first I guess) and is valuable if read from cover to cover and later as a reference.

It is not ultimate source for the SharePoint (If there was such it would be at least 10K pages long), but will give you good understanding and reference material of core SharePoint stuff that you as a developer have to know or understand if you are serious enough about the work you do.

This book may not be best source for
- Installing/Configuring/Administering SharePoint/MOSS server
- Using SharePoint/MOSS UI and doing stuff through the UI (but may help you)
- Using SharePoint Designer (though may help)
- Explaining all different OOTB SharePoint/MOSS web parts and tweaks
- Explaining all kinds of different features in SharePoint/MOSS (though you would be surprised what tricks it can teach you)

This book is unlike any other SharePoint book I have ever read. It is not a giant bible but an easy to read information packed summary and overview of all the issues that SharePoint developers need to know if they are not happy with their MOSS sites looking like the OOB product. If you ever need to do any sort of User Interface customization in SharePoint, start with this book. The information provided here is also scattered in bits and pieces all over blogs, MSDN articles and who knows where else, so having it in one place is fantastic.

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.

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.

I have been designing SharePoint based solutions from the last six years. I actually pre-order this book as I liked author's style of writing. Bought his periodicals from [...] and found these good reading.

First, author has great ability to explain concepts in plain English. He is a developer who understands his stuff and has learned by exploring and experimenting things. Hence, has more clarity of concepts.

Second, he has shown how to use these concepts into development. This makes it much easier to understand the concepts and their applicability.


There are few minor problems that I have noticed:

(1) Book title is misleading and doesn't reflect the true nature of the book.

(2) The chapters' name are again fun to read the first time but then you wonder which chapter covers what later. This becomes annoying when you need to find a particular information as a reference.

(3) The screen shots in the book appears a bit small and sometimes require more close attention to understand.

In spite of these minor issues, overall a great book to have in your collection. I would highly recommend this book and also his periodicals.

This book does a great job of covering topics that are very close to how end users interact with SharePoint. I have been working with/developing for SharePoint since 2003. As I was reading the book I was reminded of many problems I had faced in the past and struggled to solve. This book went deep into the inner workings of SharePoint and showed me how I could build reusable, professional solutions to very common SharePoint problems. This is content that I have not come across in other SharePoint books or MSDN articles I have read. You can tell that the author has real working knowledge of SharePoint, and he passes that on to you.

Adding to my list of "Must Reads" for anyone ramping up on SharePoint development/extensibility. I have been a part of several SharePoint Developer training courses (as a student) and have not seen much of the content in this book presented once. For me, as a "Developer", you should know this as it's the basis for understanding key components of SharePoint such as Custom Actions Rendering Templates (both Out of the Box and Custom), custom Fields, and "the dragon" (CAML Views). This book also dives into some of the "undocumented" extensibility points, such as custom custom Email Enabled lists. Also a great, to the point, refresher on Feature Stapling. Understanding these things helps you make better decisions and pick up on other aspects of SharePoint much more quickly.

In addition, it's not a stale/dry tech book. It has a very conversational tone to it - as if you are chatting with Bjorn over the phone. Sometimes the humor is a little quirky, but it definitely breaks up the monotony of a tech book reading experience.

I also love the unbiased views of the supporting tools (WSPBuilder, SP Manager, CAML Query Builder, etc). Refreshing to see something that encompasses all the tools, not just the Microsoft supplied ones.

At this point (January 2011), this book is a little dated, but it very much still applies if you are supporting WSS 3.0 based installations. Much of the content still applies to 2010 as well, however, there are newer ways of handling some of extensibility (such as all views are based on XSL instead of CAML Views). I wish the book were a little more discounted given the upcoming release of the 2010 version of the book.

I stumbled upon this book while reading this article series online: [...]. This online article was written by the author and was a teaser for the type of content I could get from this book. Read the article first, if it leaves you wanting more, buy the book!

Are you a Developer or ramping up on SharePoint development/extensibility points? Read this book!