SPC: Customizing & Branding My Sites in SharePoint 2010 with Heather Solomon
Published 10/21 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community
SharePoint branding rock star Heather Solomon triumphed over a series of unfortunate display problems with her demo to deliver a superb session on customizing and branding My Sites in SharePoint 2010. After a brief high-level overview of the changes to My Sites in 2010 (contrary to what appears to be the Microsoft party line, Heather refers to the Profile as just one component of a user's My Site), and acknowledgment of the importance of the social features embedded throughout 2010, Heather dived straight into the customizing and branding the My Site in 2010.
Pointing out that on 2010 My Sites, "the Ribbon is only there about a third of the time," Heather cautions that this be kept in mind not only with regard to branding, but also to end user training. More planning for customization is necessary since the Ribbon is only available to end users part of the time in their My Site, and since end users can't edit their own site in these areas, you need to consider what you're going to give them.
Beginning her demo, Heather showed that within the My Site, the Ribbon only exists in the My Content area. Heather pointed out that there is a horizontal UI that, so far as Heather is aware, only exists in the My Site in 2010. As well, Heather mentioned that, "there is a lot of content, a lot of code" that only exists in My Sites.
Heather demonstrated that the Ribbon has come to SharePoint Designer (SPD), and while beginning her SPD demo, pointed out that, "SPD is turning more into an actual management tool for your website." While demonstrating how to create a new blank master page, it is Heather's strong recommendation that you always edit your master page in Advanced Mode.
Heather noted that as part of the migration to 2010, the option exists to not update the UI to the 2010 style and, as a result, there is going to be legacy code in the master page. In response to a question about whether it would be advisable to strip out that (v3) legacy code, Heather said that, "if you're upgrading the whole kit and caboodle, I haven't yet seen a reason not to." One of the aspects of removing this legacy code which met with applause from the audience was the fact that since there are no tables in the master page of the v4 (or, 2010) file as it's entirely div-based, removing that legacy code will happily remove all tables from your master page. While on the topic of the master page code, Heather also mentioned that something to be aware of is that there is now a lot of accessibility code present.
Since there isn't one provided out-of-the-box, Heather has created a baseline master page for My Sites which she will make available through her blog in conjunction with the public Beta next month. Not surprisingly, this garnered a round of applause.
In addition to the removal of tables in favor of divs in the v4 code, Heather mentioned as another of her favorite changes that, "for those of you who are CSS nerds like me, they are now using sprites inside of 2010." Speaking of CSS, Heather also mentioned that she will also start putting out a 2010 CSS chart on her blog.
Additional items of note that Heather mentioned during the session include:
- "You can still apply master pages for non-publishing sites"
- "Themes as you know it is gone ... from a 2010 perspective, themes are very different ... much more friendly to end users, [themes have] shifted into more of an end user tool than a designer tool"
- "I think it can be done that you can have one master page to rule them all - I'm working on it"
- In 2010, you have to be a Site Collection Owner in order to apply branding across public sites. No longer does just any Administrator have the ability to make these branding changes
In conclusion, while displaying the final result of the customized site in her demo, Heather flatly stated for anyone who may have still been left wondering, "yes, you can completely change the My Site branding" in 2010.
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