Building the SharePoint User Experience (Expert's Voice in Sharepoint)

The SharePoint user experience is critical in application architecture and user acceptance. Using tools available to all developers, you will learn how to rebuild a SharePoint site, taking it all the way from the default out?of?the?box experience to your very own customized user experience.

Along the way you will receive a solid understanding of the SharePoint architecture that will enable you to take full advantage of the capabilities of SharePoint as a platform. This will allow you to tailor the SharePoint user experience to increase the value of solutions and to work more effectively with projects. And that, of course, leads to successful SharePoint solutions in your business that your users are happy to accept and use.

What you?ll learn Learn the tools needed to create effective and highly tailored user interfaces and experiences. Dissect an out?of?the?box site to learn how every user experience element is built. Master the core functions of sites, lists, content types, and fields. Build a site from scratch using tools available to everyone. Speed up development time by using little known tips and tricks. See how new skills can be applied to everyday tasks with simple exercises.
Who is this book for?

This book is for SharePoint developers who want to learn how to work with designers and other developers to create custom and tailored user experiences, including custom forms, content types, lists, fields, pages, and navigation that will better match your project?s requirements. This is not a book for graphic designers?you?ll find no Photoshop tips here!

User review
Must read for serious SharePoint/MOSS developers
If you are not developer (or not involved in heavy development), this is not book for you. I thought there is no good SharePoint book out there (as other reviews mentioned). I couldn't find info that this book has in dozens of other books from different SharePoint/MOSS `experts`. Glad I found a book that puts together lot of the core info that I had to dig from all kinds of sources.

Book itself is easy read (though you should have some introduction to SharePoint first I guess) and is valuable if read from cover to cover and later as a reference.

It is not ultimate source for the SharePoint (If there was such it would be at least 10K pages long), but will give you good understanding and reference material of core SharePoint stuff that you as a developer have to know or understand if you are serious enough about the work you do.

This book may not be best source for
- Installing/Configuring/Administering SharePoint/MOSS server
- Using SharePoint/MOSS UI and doing stuff through the UI (but may help you)
- Using SharePoint Designer (though may help)
- Explaining all different OOTB SharePoint/MOSS web parts and tweaks
- Explaining all kinds of different features in SharePoint/MOSS (though you would be surprised what tricks it can teach you)


User review
Very useful SharePoint book
This book is unlike any other SharePoint book I have ever read. It is not a giant bible but an easy to read information packed summary and overview of all the issues that SharePoint developers need to know if they are not happy with their MOSS sites looking like the OOB product. If you ever need to do any sort of User Interface customization in SharePoint, start with this book. The information provided here is also scattered in bits and pieces all over blogs, MSDN articles and who knows where else, so having it in one place is fantastic.

User review
An Impatient Developer's outlook
I'm glad to see the raving reviews from the other developers.

Personally, I am annoyed by the deluge of babble in this book. I find it distracting and time wasting. If it's intended to fill up some space for volume, maybe the author should have inserted pictures instead.

I do appreciate the links to useful tools. That gives you 3 stars instead of 2.

User review
The Philosophy of SharePoint
This author is always described as 'unique' by his peers and I often say that he is not just a developer but a philosopher. If you enjoy thinking deeply about how your work as a developer ultimately impacts the end user, then Bjorn is the guy you want to learn from.

User review
Review from a Furuknap Groupie
This book, maybe call it art, that Bjorn has written is for me one of the more unique books on Sharepoint development or maybe even programming in general. The guy has a very different outlook on life that you can see right from the get go in the acknowledgments section--in my opinion it's a good thing. One big win for me in this book is the introduction to and descriptive use of helpful tools like Sharepoint Manager 2007(SPM) and WSPBuilder. I actually first found out about these tools because I attended one of the Sharepoint seminars in San Francisco that Bjorn was speaking at. Bjorn had a few different sessions and during each he was really pressed for time. It was difficult for him to get out all the detail he wanted within the available time. None the less I walked away realizing that he was a man of great character who was committed to getting granular and not glossing over details for the sake of a time limitation. That is one of the key reasons I wanted to buy his book. I knew that the amount of detail he would put in would probably be better than many of the other Sharepoint books out there that seem to just repeat the same stuff, leaving you searching forever for the missing link. That said though, this is a rapidly moving topic and since 2007 when I was first trying to wrap my brain around Sharepoint there have been so many more `how to` articles published on the web in blogs etc. that it is getting ever easier. So even reading through Bjorn's book there are parts where I find myself looking for certain answers to questions that arise. No one book can hold all the answers but I think one book should be able to hold most of the detail over a specific part of the subject. If you are a sharepoint programmer then think of buying this book as extending your relationship with a guy who has really spent his time trying to understand wss and cares a great deal about imparting that knowledge; And remember that it doesn't end with this book he has various articles that he publishes online which really help you walk through some complex real world sharepoint solutions. Some of the drawbacks that another guy posted about the chapter titles is very true but I think if you are going to use a book for reference the best thing to do is buy the ebook up front and then you can bookmark it up however you like or do text searching.