User Experience, UX Blog
Bring your opinions to the table
Your clients hired you for a reason and want to hear what you have to say. You’re also hired for your skill, so don’t be afraid to share your knowledge and challenge the directions you’re given. If nothing else, this will provide better insight into decisions and drive UXD further.
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User Experience, UX Blog
Be bold with your design choices
Be BOLD with your design choices. Keep in mind that visiting a new website is like going on a date. Be bold, be beautiful and be brave!
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User Experience, UX Blog
Gamification of websites, apps and intranets
Gamifying websites and intranets? That sounds silly doesn’t it? Websites maybe, but even intranets need a good level of engagement, and you’d be surprised at the options available to you.
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User Experience, UX Blog
“Am I a copycat?”… Create a familiar interface where users feel at home
Competitor analysis and reusing paradigms that users are already familiar with is not necessarily a bad idea. This blog post explains why.
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User Experience, UX Blog
The importance of establishing a baseline when measuring success
Establishing a baseline for all measurable metrics on a project is extremely valuable. This article explains which ones you should consider and why.
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User Experience, UX Blog
User psychology and expectations
Users expect your site to be intuitive, even if they aren’t. Use this guide to create a predictable users experience for all visitors.
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2010, 2013, 2016, Information Architecture, Office 365, SharePoint, User Experience, UX Blog
The art of findability
Ensure users can find what they’re looking for on your intranet. Understand your users, understand your content, and consider a few easy changes to ensure everything on your intranet is easily findable.
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Information Architecture, User Experience, UX Blog
Metrics that Matter
Metrics are important. These are the ones that you should be paying attention to and why.
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2010, 2013, 2016, SharePoint, User Experience, UX Blog
5 easy steps to user adoption
Use the following steps before, during and after your project to ensure users are exited with you for the changes they are about to embark upon.
Read More2013, 2016, Development Blog, jQuery, SharePoint
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames in SharePoint (2013 & 2016) vs. jQuery’s document ready
Since SharePoint 2013, Microsoft seems to have embraced jQuery, and you can now happily use jQuery or $ as you please in the SharePoint environment. Here are some code samples and explanation on how to use it.
Read More2013, 2016, Development Blog, Office 365, SharePoint
Load SP.js, Taxonomy and other utilities in SharePoint 2013, 2016 and Office 365
Learn how to properly and easily load dependencies in SharePoint and Office 365 (classic). In this article, you’ll find some code samples on how to properly work around some of the issues that may arise when following the prescribed documentation from Microsoft.
Read More2013, 2016, Development Blog, Office 365, SharePoint
SharePoint JavaScript CSOM – currentItem.get_item(columnName) – how do I get at the property options and values?
No doubt if you’ve worked with CSOM/JSOM (JavaScript Client-Side Object Model), you’ve accessed lists and libraries to consume the contained data.
This article aims to help you access the data AFTER you’ve successfully loaded the list data.
2010, 2013, 2016, Development Blog, jQuery, Office 365, SharePoint
Clean CSOM JavaScript structure to access SharePoint list data
With proper code samples, learn how to write clean, maintainable JSOM/CSOM for SharePoint and without overriding other third party frameworks already running on your site.
Read More2010, 2013, 2016, Development Blog, Office 365, SharePoint
Handy Links within SharePoint
SharePoint 2013/2016 links to standard and more obscure SharePoint features. Some are easy to find within the application interface and others quite difficult to discover. I broke them down into the more obscure ones (first) and the standard site settings (as viewed from a Site Collection) links.
Read More2013, 2016, SharePoint
Build a Page Layout with integrated content type and SEO (Page) properties in SharePoint 2013/2016
Currently, there are 3 places for users to administer: Content Type data, SEO and Page elements (web parts, article field, etc). Why not combine these in a nice format so users can administer all the page properties in a single area? This article explains how.
Read More2010, 2013, SharePoint
SharePoint 2013 log in as another user (log yourself out and log in as someone else)
This option is missing, as you know. Microsoft has confirmed this is a problem, and here’s how you get around it.
Read More2010, 2013, Office 365, SharePoint, Web Design
SharePoint image max-width in IE and FireFox not working
So you have an image that is styled to max-width: 100% but it displays at its native width and pushes over your other content.
max-width: 100% works well in Chrome, but IE and Firefox (and potentially some other browsers) don’t honor it.
This article explains why and how to fix it.
2013, Development Blog, SharePoint
Visual Studio Solution for SharePoint 2013 Branding (MasterPages, Page Layouts, Images, Web Parts)
2013, Development Blog, SharePoint, Web Design
SharePoint 2013 Image Renditions (automatic image resizing)
Automated image resizing in SharePoint 2013 is pretty cool! This article outlines usage, quirks and setup.
Read MoreDevelopment Blog, jQuery
Debugging HTML / CSS layout on an iPad
In creating a new store locator for Dairy Queen, my layouts were working well on all the supported browsers. On iPad, the layout works 99% but had some pixel discrepancies on a couple of elements. I found this article by Lorenzo Orlando Caum on debugging layouts in with FireBug Lite very helpful.
Read More2010, Development Blog, SharePoint
Create cross-site lookup fields in SharePoint 2010 utilizing site columns
This is a handy article to help with looking up information in the same site collection and when you need to have one site column point at another site column in the same Site Collection, but across different web sites.
Read More2010, Development Blog, SharePoint
Show audience-targeted content in a SharePoint 2010 web part from a SharePoint list
SharePoint does not automatically trim out anything based on audience-targeting. The web part has to do that work – this explains how.
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2010, Development Blog, SharePoint
SharePoint 2010 – Page Layout button disabled in the ribbon – how to enable it
If you have a potentially broken masterpage or page layout and your Page Layout button is disabled in the ribbon, these steps may help you change your page layout.
Read More2010, Development Blog, jQuery, SharePoint
jQuery’s $() vs. jQuery() and why you should use jQuery.noConflict();
SharePoint uses the $() namespace in specific instances, which can cripple jQuery (or vice versa). This article explains how to use jQuery and SharePoint in harmony.
Read More2010, Development Blog, SharePoint
XML Structure for FAST Search Core Results Web part
If you’re an XSLT guru, you need to know the XML structure you’re working with. Getting into the guts of SharePoint isn’t always a walk in the park, but Microsoft has made it easy to view the XML structure in FAST. This article tells you how.
Read MoreDevelopment Blog, SharePoint
Deploying Page Layouts to SharePoint 2010 through Visual Studio – Publish and Check-in
This article explains how to automatically deploy and publish Masterpages and Page Layouts. This article explains how to get it done without server errors.
Read More2010, Development Blog, SharePoint
Deploying page layouts with Visual Studio to SharePoint 2010: Revert to Site Definition (Ghosting Unghosted files)
Deploying branding through Visual Studio into SharePoint 2010, which includes your Masterpage(s) and Page Layout(s), can be problematic when overwriting a file that is in-use by SharePoint (it can be locked down and deletion may not be allowed). This article explains how to do it correctly.
Read More2010, Development Blog, SharePoint
Setting a custom Master Page in a Team site
Natively, SharePoint uses v4.master for Team sites and does not give you the option to choose a different master page. To enable master page selection, you need Publishing enabled. Follow the steps in this article to enable publishing features.
Read More2010, Development Blog, jQuery, SharePoint
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames in SharePoint vs. jQuery’s document ready
Instantiating the jQuery has always been an interesting challenge in SharePoint. As time goes on and more content is added, different site types are used, etc., you can run into some interesting behaviors ranging from $ collisions and scripts not loading at all. This article explains how to make it all play nicely together.
Read More2010, Development Blog, jQuery, SharePoint
Adding Images & Links to a SharePoint 2010 Survey
As you probably know, SharePoint 2010 (like 2007) only allows plain text in the question fields for surveys. This post explains why, and gives a solid workaround with little effort.
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