Friday, June 4, 2010
SharePoint 2007 Interface: Could it be any more geeky?
SharePoint 2007 has that geeky blue interface if you run with it right out of the box, as most companies do. Is there really anyway to make it look not so…. SharePointy?
Sam Dolan at PinkPetrol has put together screenshots of 20 SharePoint interfaces that might give you some ideas, “Top 20 Examples of Creative Navigation within SharePoint“.
When you think about it, SharePoint’s just an interface. You can do what you want to with it. Thanks for the work, Sam. Very inspiring. I like the one with the watch.
on
Sam,
I love the examples. Thank you! What a treasure!
Marcy
Those are all great examples of using the Web Content Management features of Sharepoint. I think you do your readers a disservice by not mentioning that since if they are working on a MOSS/intranet style implementation, they’ll go crazy trying to achieve a custom look. The final design and output also has nothing to do with Sharepoint itself. That’s the work of a good HTML/CSS coder.
Also, while those sites might look good at first, the code used to generate them is horrible. If you’re a developer that appreciates clean HTML and efficient CSS don’t view the source. Sharepoint 2010 is a bit better, having replaced 20 nested tables with 50 nested divs and the occasional table.
Sharepoint does shine on the back end though. Enabling users to maintain and edit content is great and works well. I’ve also never had problems consuming outside data and reformatting it. I also can’t complain about the caching and page serving. Uptime has been solid.
I’m a couple years into using Sharepoint for website building and I have a love/hate relationship with it. User management and delegation is great, but not a week goes by when I’m cursing it and wishing I had a LAMP stack instead because something simple has been made into a convoluted mess.
Eric, thanks for your comment. Firstly my focus is purely on design, branding, look and feel. Secondly I dont think I give the readers a disservice. I think you may have missed the point of the post. What I have simply done is show the possibilities of what can and has been achieved with SharePoint.
Thanks, Sam