New Scrollable Tabs Design Pattern

By nature most people are resistant to change. I have learned the hard way that just because something has been working great for the last 10 years does not mean it is always the best solution now. So much has change with technology not only within the last 3 years but over the last 6 months I have seen drastic evolutions of the art of possible. Users are demanding more and in faster timeframes. We as designers have to keep up with the latest trends, patterns, and interactions or you will be left in the dust.

I recently had a design challenge that required the ability to display a horizontal sub navigation for mobile. Since we already had a main navigation being taken up by the parent hamburger menu I was in a bit of a jam on what to do.

My first instinct was to group all of the navigation elements into some sort of drop down so that when users clicked on the drop down they see the navigation list options. This would have been fine but was more of an old school way of looking at things. Also the animation of the drop down was a bit jarring on a mobile device.

A designer suggested using a new design technique to have the same tabs but allow the users to swipe through them when presented on the mobile responsive view. At first I was hesitant since it would require the user to clearly understand the menu was cut off on one side and all they needed to do was swipe from right to left to see the other options.

After further research this was a design pattern that was introduced through Google’s Material Design Scrollable tabs. See video animation HERE

Overall I think the scrollable tabs is a great new design pattern but only used in moderation and in specific scenarios. I find myself a lot of the time thinking about the old school way of doing things that worked from project to project. However I think we as designers need to push ourselves to think more outside the box. The traditional top or left side navigation is just not going to cut it anymore. We are in a world of younger user types that expect cutting edge design experiences that were limited by technology just a few years ago.

SharePoint 2010 Base CSS Classes

This will be the first of many SharePoint 2010 posts. I will be focusing on a few of the main CSS classes used for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta. As the product becomes more final there might be some changes to the class names but I will be sure to create a new post if that happens. This will be quite a lengthy but it should be helpful. The default CSS given below are just highlights of the full CSS attributes for that class. I will be using a basic team site as my base for the screenshots. Here is a basic structure of the main areas that I will cover. Ribbon Row Table Row Left Site Actions Navigate Up Edit Tab List Browse Page Table Row Right Give Feedback Welcome Menu Workspace Body Container Title Row Title ...

SharePoint 2010 Content Query for Blog Posts

I hope this post will help many of you feel comfortable with using the Content Query Web Part. In this post I will walk you through the process of creating a content query web part and configuring it to show custom field types. I will also give details on how to use XSLT to stylize and format the data being pulled. I will be using the following scenario as an example. Say that you had a site collection with a top level publishing site. This publishing site would display a the most recent blog posts from all blog sites within its own site collection. To solve this problem we will use a Content Query Web Part and a customized ItemStyle.xsl using XSLT. Please note that the “SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” needs to be enabled at the site collection to display the content query web part. Step 1: Add a Content Query Web Part to Page Navigate to the site that you want the blog posts to show up and click on edit page. Under Editing Tools in the Ribbon, Click on ...

How To: Create Hyperlink to Modal Pop-Up Form

I was asked by a client recently if there was a way to create a hyperlink to a New Item Form anywhere within a site but still get the rich experience of the Modal pop-up window that grays out the background. (Note this is for SharePoint 2010 Only…) I basically took the code directly from the “Add new item” and the “Add Document” link within the list view. What this allows you to do is simply add in the following code to any content editor web part, Master page, or Page Layout in any site collection and display the form to be filled out. The user will get the nice experience of the modal window and not have to navigate away from their current page. This could be used for example a feedback form that is included in the master page so whenever someone wants to give feedback it is always going back to a central list. The only that is required for you to know is the List ID and the site name. Full Code For a List Item: <a onclick="javascript:NewItem2(event, &quot...

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