I'd like to introduce Andrew to you all and welcome him to our team. Andrew has joined us in a creative role, driving our design and content offerings. Hopefully you should see the start of Andrews posts here soon.

Welcome!

We have started to do a lot of work with JQuery to simplify the development process. For those that have not come across JQuery before, it is  " a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript ". The ability to select multiple items on a page with a single line of script is great. For deployment, the library is simply a single  .js file that needs to be put onto the server and referenced on a page.

Aside from the core JQuery library, there are hundreds of plugins (additional script files) such as JQuery UI.

As a starting point, look at Jan Tielens article.

One of the exciting things for me about using this technology is the ability to use on hosted, or shared SharePoint servers (where as a developer you cannot add .dll files, features or solutions). To implement jQuery on a page in this scenario, we could upoad the library (jquery-1.3.2.js) into a document library, add a Content Editor Webpart onto a page then edit the webpart to reference the file and start using it. Imagine, with a Content Editor Web Part and a few script libraries, we could implement a tabbed style webpart, loading data from our lists :)

I'm planning on putting a short series of JQuery articles and links here over the coming weeks

When planning a Sharepoint implementation, I often use Visio to diagram a site hierarchy. In the past, I've used standard shapes, but wante something a bit more representative of the sites / lists / libraries.

Maxime has produced a basic stencil set, but this didnt include everything I wanted (plus I really wanted to use the WSS 3 style icons!  ) and TamTam has one for page design

I've attached my stencil for the community. This is the first pass, and is very much work in progress!

The shapes are taken from the Sharepoint icons, as shown below. Each shape has the option of attaching data (URL, Template, Title) and I hope to be able to extend this in future (what about linking to Kivati to graphically build a portal?)

If there are any comment, please send them in so we can improve

MOSSSiteStructureStencils.zip (193.73 kb)

A common requirement when undertaking interface design for Sharepoint is to make the interface accessible (accessible meaning that users with visual or other impairment).

In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act implicitly states that an intranet should be accessible to all employees, so even your private intranet should be capable of coping with user impairments.

The Sharepoint Team issued a statement a while back (pre release) about the accesibilty capabilites of Sharepoint

Customising the Sharepoint interface to make this work can be a real uphill task. The interface uses a lot of nested tables making relative font sizing difficult as noted by Diantha. The Sharepoint accessibility kit can be your friend here though.

An example of the kits usage is show below - a resizing tool to change absolute to relative sizing

But beware, this does not 'magically' fix your accessibility problems and you still need to consider the interface requirements early on.

The kit also includes a set of more accessible style sheets that can be applied

Another great resource for Sharepoint design, including accessibility is Heather Solomon