Introduction
The idea of Web portals is nothing new. In fact, SharePoint is not even a totally new idea, with SharePoint Portal Server (and Windows SharePoint Services version 2) being first introduced in 2003 (or even SharePoint Team Services first released in 2001). But with the introduction of Microsoft Offices SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services version 3 (WSS), Web portal development took a huge leap forward. Many new technologies were introduced, and since they were built on the .NET 2.0 Framework, MOSS and WSS were able to capitalize on many of the new and cool features that made that framework release so amazing.
But if you look at any bookstore or online book retailer for books on SharePoint, there is a woeful lack of releases that deal specifically with design. Sure, there are several books out on MOSS and WSS, but mostly they focus on the nuts and bolts of making SharePoint work. There might be a chapter here and there that deals with things that are important to the design of your SharePoint portal, but the chapter is included in a larger scope that, frankly, doesn't overly concern itself with the way your SharePoint site looks.
The consequence to this unfortunate gap in available manuscripts is that many SharePoint sites out there look pretty much the same as any other SharePoint site. In fact, it's not uncommon for anyone familiar with SharePoint to be able to look at a site built on SharePoint technologies and be able to immediately determine that is the case. It's unfortunate that such a powerful set of tools often comes wrapped in such a vanilla package.
This book is unique in the fact that it puts the design of a SharePoint site as its primary scope. Sure, some of the technologies covered are also covered in other books. However, this should not be seen as overlap because, in the confines of this book, the design is the point, not necessarily the technology behind it. Also, since this book is focused towards design, universal concepts such as accessibility, CSS, and even outside applications such as Photoshop are discussed as they relate to SharePoint. While not specifically a designer's cookbook for SharePoint, this book does try to bring the most relevant topics regarding the design perspective of a SharePoint site to those developers interested in making their sites stand out.
If you want to learn how SharePoint works and how to use its administrative features to make your site powerful, there are plenty of books (many from Wrox) available to help you with that. However, if your focus is making your SharePoint sites look unique, we hope that this book will help you with that endeavor.
This book is for the SharePoint professional or enthusiast who has an interest in making their sites look as powerful as they are under the hood. Some of the concepts in the book will probably come easier to you if you are already familiar with SharePoint. However, an effort was made to at least provide enough detail so that the novice can understand and have enough information to get up to speed. Even so, if you are a complete novice to SharePoint, it might be a good idea to first read up a little bit on SharePoint so that you have at least a beginner's level of understanding on how SharePoint works and at least a cursory overview of its features.
This book also goes over some of the .NET 2.0 Framework features that can help designers in their effort to design their SharePoint pages. Again, while being an expert C# programmer is not required, a basic exposure to the .NET 2.0 Framework features will probably help you get through some of the chapters. For example, there are topics on master pages, themes, and control adapters that would be familiar to most .NET 2.0 (or above) programmers. The focus of these chapters is to show how to integrate these concepts within the confines of a SharePoint installation. This means that going into these topics completely unaware of the 2.0 counterparts might make it more difficult to understand the concepts in these chapters. As with the SharePoint concepts, an effort was made to provide enough detail so that even the complete novice can understand what is going on. But, again, knowing the 2.0 Framework can certainly be of benefit in these chapters.
This book covers the major design instruments one would need in creating the aesthetic appearance of a SharePoint site, using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services version 3. The concepts presented are unique to this version because they rely on an underlying framework that was not available in previous versions of the software.
Additionally, this book gets into design tools not specifically targeted to SharePoint developers. For example, Chapter 3 is solely dedicated to creating the design for your site using Photoshop CS3. Many of the concepts of this chapter would certainly be easily ported to earlier versions of Photoshop, and probably even other graphic editor programs. But nobody would argue that Photoshop, in any version, was a SharePoint tool. However, when you're talking about the Web, and specifically Web design, Photoshop is almost always relevant.
Finally, concepts on standards and guidelines are included, as they should be part of the planning for any Web site, not just SharePoint. This includes the latest versions of Web accessibility and cascading style sheet rules and definitions. While some of the rules, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, are currently under revision and will probably be updated in the future, the most current accepted versions were used for this book.
This book is structured in what might be considered the logical approach to planning the design of your SharePoint site. In the beginning, theories on Web design and concepts are discussed in a general manner. Next, the design is architected in Photoshop CS3. The next chapters then break that design into its HTML equivalents and create the CSS and master page files used to brand the overall site. In this stage, there is also a discussion about creating page layouts and themes to further carry out your design to the controls used by your site. Finally, as the book begins to wind down, more focus is placed on the actual content that will likely make up your sites, such as search, navigation, and Web parts, and how to style them to meet the design specifications you have created in the earlier chapters. As a look back, a summarized checklist of design considerations will be provided in the final chapter to give a broad overview of the concepts provided in the book and how they should go into the planning of your next site.
What You Need to Use This Book
The main criterion you need to be successful using this book is the desire to design SharePoint sites that look like anything but out-of-the-box SharePoint sites. As mentioned earlier, a basic understanding of the .NET 2.0 Framework and of SharePoint concepts will be helpful as well, although not critical.
As far as tools go, this book uses Photoshop CS3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 as its primary development tools. Photoshop is not necessary, as any graphics editing program will likely do the job. And, honestly, most of the concepts presented in the chapters dealing with Photoshop can be fairly easily ported to any other graphics program.
However, SharePoint Designer is probably a must-have, as it is the only easy way to directly interact with the virtual CSS, master page, and ASPX files that are a part of your SharePoint site. Since they are not physical files but merely files created on the fly from data in XML and database records, modifying them provides a fairly unique obstacle. SharePoint Designer is engineered to modify these files for you and, as such, it would be too much of a hardship to try to get around this requirement. To get the most out of this book, you really need SharePoint Designer.
Other than that, you shouldn't need much else. Throughout the chapters you will find references to other tools that might help you do the job, many of them free. But those are all optional. This book was not created to be a shopping list of expensive tools you need to make your sites awesome. Instead, it was aimed at making your sites awesome using tools you probably already have or can get easily. And if you work in SharePoint, you should already have SharePoint Designer. And if you don't have and can't afford Photoshop, there are some free alternatives available. The point is the design and the underlying concepts. And the biggest tools necessary are your brain and your vision.
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