Introduction

The idea ofWeb 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 Share- Point 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 andWSS 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.