UX & IA Design Thinking

My blog was tagged by blogger as a spam blog and was taken down for the last 2 weeks. I am sorry for the inconvenience and hope to be adding more posts shortly. I would love to move my blog to another more reliable spot. Leave a note letting me know what blog engines work for you! I would love to have a SharePoint 2010 blog but I don’t own my own servers… Thanks for your patience.

If you ever had the issue where your SharePoint site had presence turned on, but you could not see the presence indicator colors next to user names within lists/libraries or within the My Colleagues web part. Then Please read on for a solution. The solution to view the presence indicators with full color is to add the site to your trusted sites. Now when you refresh the page you will be able to see the presence indicators in full color.

I really was not that happy with the look of the first calendar so after some modifications and a bit of CSS magic I have come up with a really good looking small calendar. At least I think so… Basically I have replaced the text of an event item with a color coded box. The benefit that you get out of this is that you don’t have to try and read the even within the small calendar but if you hover over and click on the color block you get the list Item display. Orange is for single event items (8am-10am, etc) Green is for full day events or repeat events Another nice feature to this is that I have also simplified the visual indicator when there are more then two event items in one day. Instead of seeing the arrow and text all you see is the arrow. Once you click on the arrow it will show the other blocks of events (Right image). Here is the CSS Code: Download Here Simply place a content editor web part on the same page as the calendar Paste the code from t...

Well I guess I did not do my research enough and found a site that had an even smaller SharePoint calendar by just modifying the CSS. http://pathtosharepoint.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/tiny-sharepoint-calendar-1/ With these styles below you can drastically transform your SharePoint Calendar view into a tiny box. Yes there is limited functionality but if you have been looking for something like this with no custom code you got it!   (Left) No events                     (Right) Events populated Copy this CSS code below and past it into your custom CSS! /* Remove week blocks */ .ms-cal-weekempty {display:none;} .ms-cal-week {display:none;} .ms-cal-weekB {display:none;} .ms-cal-weekB {display:none;} /* Shrink cells */ .ms-cal-workitem2B {display:none;} .ms-cal-noworkitem2B {display:none;} .ms-cal-nodataBtm2 {display:none;} .ms-cal-todayitem2B {d...

Have you ever needed to add a Event Calendar to your Team Site with the calendar view but you didn’t because it basically took up the whole site? Well just today I was messing around with this and came up with some interesting results. If you look at the code for a calendar view everything looks fine except for a hidden shared class at the very top of the calendar right below the webpart title. This image is 742 pixels wide and forces the calendar view to be minimally that width. With the CSS below you can now hide that image and allow the calendar to fit within your team site with no problems at all. By making these changes you will not change the look of the full view of the calendar when you click on the event list. The screenshot below was taken with 1024x768 resolution. Here is the CSS: .ms-calheader img{ display: none; } #CalViewTable12 img{ display: inline; } .ms-cal-nav-buttonsltr{ white-space: nowrap; } Full Calendar View with styles applied: ...

I can pretty much say I know my way around SharePoint… But every once in a while you learn about a feature that you never knew was there… Most of the time its those annoying bugs that we call “features” but are true head against the wall things that make you go hmmmm… But this time its a good thing… I was tasked with finding a way to create a header and footer for a publishing site. This header and footer would be consistent across all pages within the content area of the site. My First thought was ok I need a custom page layout, but this would not work since it needs to be easily updated via the SharePoint Interface. So after some investigation I found out that SharePoint has a built in feature called “Reusable Content” Basically all you need to do is simply edit the page of your publishing site and click on a content editor control. If you look at the image below there is a icon next to the image icon. The icon is not very obvious hence the reason why I never noticed it befo...

During the creation of the CSS, Master Pages, and Page layouts its critical to stay on top of your Front End Development testing. As you know many classes in SharePoint are shared classes so when you make a modification to one element you have to test, test, test. Below are some helpful things to review before giving that oh so critical demo… Hopefully these will help you out during your development process and testing. Create and test all OOTB SharePoint templates Publishing Sites Publishing Toolbar Page Layouts (All that are available) My Sites My Profile Organization Hierarchy web part In Common with you web part Team Sites Meeting Workspaces Tabs Recurring Meeting Workspaces Quick Launch Blog Unique Quick Launch Post date, title, content, and links Wiki Functional Links (Edit, History, Incomin...

Rounded corners have become a staple in website design. But they come with a price. Don't get me wrong I really like the look of them and they really help soften the look of the site. In most cases you can create this look by using the method below. Later on in this post I will highlight some of the things you can do and some of the things not technically possible without major custom development. Design 1: Rounded corners to frame a site: Open up your master page and add 1 <div> tag right before the ms-main table to represent the site container (This is used to position the site and give it its width) Add 4 more <div> tags before the ms-main table to represent your 4 corners (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right) <div id="xyz-content-corner-tl"> <div id="xyz-content-corner-tr"> <div id="xyz-content-corner-bl"> <div id="xyz-content-corner-br"> Add in the followin...

Click to watch the video presentation (36MB WMV), thanks to my friend Paul Galvin for taking the video. Update: For some reason the link was not good. I have updated it and it should work now.

I want to thank everyone for attending my presentation. It was a great success! I had a co-worker video record the session but it will take a little while to get that uploaded/edited for the masses. Here is the link to my presentation. I have included notes on each slide for the dialog. Download: http://cid-ed1a37150dabcd2d.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/IA%20and%20Branding%20Process%7C_ErikSwenson.pptx?ccr=80 Thanks again, enjoy and please add your comments to this post!

As a teaser, I would like to provide a sample of my upcoming session at the SharePoint Summit 2009. Roles: Information Architecture –Much of the interface navigation and page structure will be driven by the Information Architect. Designer – Skill depends on several factors, if leveraging native features, skill is very dependent on knowledge of SharePoint. SharePoint Front-End Development – MOSS-FED highly specialized skill set, especially if doing CSS-based changes. UXD Process:

Here is the final agenda for my presentation for the SharePoint Summit in Montreal on April 8th from 9:15 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. I only have 45mins to get it all in so wish me luck. Anything is possible Roles Design process Gathering Branding Requirements Create Sitemap & Navigation Create Wireframes Create Visual Design Tools for building the design Implementation methods options Additional guides/references Q/A Note : I will post my slide deck after the conference. Thanks for whoever posted that question in the comment area.

As I prepare my slides and agenda for my presentation at the SharePoint Summit in Montreal Canada I would like your input.  Please provide your feedback/comments and if you plan on attending my session! " IA and Branding Process: Sketches to Wireframes to Hi-Fidelity Designs". Methods to gathering requirements Benefits of a creative brief and Style guide Understand what functional concepts are and how they can be used Explore options on creating wireframes Creating the Design Composition (Differences between design adaptation and custom design) Building the design (CSS, Images, Master Pages, Page layouts, testing for multiple browsers and Mobile devices) Thanks!

OOTB SharePoint will not allow you to remove the 1st tab on the main navigation through the UI. To do this you can simply use the following CSS below and add it to your custom CSS or use the CEWP page style method to just make the change just for that page. If you look at the code, you will notice that each top navigation item has an ID. zz1_TopNavigationMenun0 (Home Tab) zz1_TopNavigationMenun1 (Tab #2) zz1_TopNavigationMenun2 (Tab #3) zz1_TopNavigationMenun... (Tab Etc) Since the home tab is always #1 it is always given the ID of "0" CSS Code: #zz1_TopNavigationMenun0 { display: none !important; }

Two tier navigation is not a new concept and has been out for quite a long time. However SharePoint OOTB does not allow you to have a global navigation that spans multiple site collections. Here are a few examples of a multi tier horizontal navigation. Example 1: MSDN: Microsoft Developer Network Example 2: Fed Ex Example 3: Wall Street Journal   During a recent project I was given the task to create a global navigation that had two tiers like the examples above. After some investigation my friend Sahil Malik had put together a great blog about creating a consistent navigation across site collections . (Thanks Buddy) Well this is great and all but his code replaced the OOTB navigation with a custom one. So after some hard thinking I figured out that you could create your own control that drove the tier 1 global navigation (Across site collections) and a tier 2 local navigation (OOTB) that was security trimmed. To get this to work you should use Shail's ...

I think we all know that building a custom design and master page requires lots of patience and open ended thinking. The SharePoint Meeting Workspace template to say the least does not play nice with all of the other templates and master pages. These templates include the following: Basic Meeting Workspace Blank Meeting Workspace Decision Meeting Workspace Social Meeting Workspace Multipage Meeting Workspace Here is what the template normally looks like: If you attempt to apply your custom master page to any one of these templates you will see something like this: Note that the navigation tabs are gone and you get a message on the left saying: " There are no more meeting occurrences to select from. " It also removes the function on the site actions to add or manage pages. The issues above are caused because the controls below a not included into the regular "default.master" file. Microsoft decided that all meeting workspace ...

All, I want to apologize to all who wrote comments on my blog and never saw them published to the site. I did not know that I had a rule that stated any comment left 7 days after the published date would need approval. I have published all appropriate comments to my blog. Again, Sorry for the delay. I will review and respond to all questions as soon as I can. Thanks!

The following instructions describe how to change the title bar, background color, and webpart title for one or more web parts on a specific page or site. 1) Navigate to the page or site that requires the styling 2) View the browser’s source code for the page: Page > View Source (IE7) or Use IE developer Toolbar DOM Explorer Search the source using the title of the web part that requires separate styling (i.e. “News”, "Links" etc.) From the “td” tag that contains the web part “title”, select the “id” from the grandparent “td” tag. For example, see the web part “title” and corresponding web part “id” highlighted below: <td id=" MSOZoneCell_WebPartWPQ2 " vAlign="top"> <table TOPLEVEL border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> ...

I have been selected to present at the 2009 SharePoint Summit in Montreal Canada on April 8th. My Session: IA and Branding Process: Sketches to Wireframes to Hi-Fidelity Designs Learn about proven methods to guide you from paper napkin sketches to hi-fidelity prototypes. Explore how to transition from each process and who is involved. This session will entail the following: Methods to gathering requirements Benefits of a creative brief and Style guide Understand what functional concepts are and how they can be used Explore options on creating wireframes Creating the Design Composition (Differences between design adaptation and custom design) Building the design (CSS, Images, Master Pages, Page layouts, testing for multiple browsers and Mobile devices) This track is designed for IA’s and Developers looking for proven methods for designing and branding their sites. http://www.interdoc.com/site/SharePointSummit2009/conference_day2.htm#session_7_2 ...