Sharepoint 2010 Top 10 : UI Improvements & WCM

UI Improvements

1. Multi-Browser Support - Microsoft says they recognize the need to support multiple browsers such as Safari and FireFox.
2. Ribbon –
   • A new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customization of SharePoint sites easy. It's contextual, so it changes as required and it grays out the options in the ribbon that you may not have access to.
   • The Ribbon serves as the primary command surface that you can use to interact with objects inside of SharePoint Foundation. Commands are grouped in a logical manner through the use of tabs and groups, making them easy to find. You can also extend the functionality of the Ribbon to include your own custom functions.
   • Basically it is a SharePoint control that looks like this: <SharePoint:SPRibbon runat="server" PlaceholderElementId="RibbonContainer" FixedPositioningEnabled="true" PermissionsString="EditListItems, AddAndCustomizePages" PermissionMode="Any" Visible="false" ApplyPermissionsToRibbonOnly="false">
3. Dialogs - Now SharePoint will have real dialog boxes, instead of redirects to another web page with your dialog box options. The background is grayed out when a dialog box pops up.
4. CSS
   • The CSS have been revamped. The CSS has been divided into multiple files to enable more targeted customization scenarios and to improve page loading performance. All those CSS classes were factored and cleaned up quite a bit…and they are all documented in the SDK now!
   • UI implementation is no longer table-based… it’s pixel perfect (via CSS)
   • XHTML compliance
5. Inline upload of images when in Rich Text Editor
6. Themes
   • SharePoint Server 2010 has changed the way themes work, making them easier to customize. It is possible to import PowerPoint themes directly into SharePoint Server. Additionally, themes can now be applied to all subsites from this interface. Ability to take your PowerPoint theme and upload and apply it to your SharePoint site.
   • If you are modifying a web page, you now have Live Preview capability, so you can see how the change will look before you actually accept it.
   • Now in SP 2010 the business users can define the themes in the browser and use it. You can modify colors and fonts by applying a .thmx file to your site and can apply a "theme" by using a simple, Web-based UI that requires no knowledge of CSS. The "themes" feature provides broad, clear control of colors and fonts on a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 site. It also supports the re-coloring of site images.
7. Master Pages
   • While SharePoint Server 2010 still relies on master pages for implementing a custom look and feel to sites. Administrators will be able to specify whether the system pages in the _Layouts folder are rendered by using the site master pages provided by site owners or by default master pages available across the system. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, pages rendered from this directory used application.master.
   • Not only does SharePoint Server 2010 add greater flexibility for how to apply branding to these system pages, it also provides a fail-safe mechanism. If there is an error in the master page used for pages in the _Layouts, SharePoint will reference the default.master file so that system pages can still be accessed. Additionally, it is now possible to use Windows PowerShell to specify a customer master page to system error pages, login pages, confirmation pages, and other non–site-specific pages.
   • Content and application pages now contain the same content placeholders. Administrators can turn off custom master pages for application pages as well.
8. User Management
   • SharePoint Online 2010 will allow Anonymous Access, so can be used for Internet solutions.
   • In 2010, contributor rights are being changed in 3 distinct areas:
     • Type of files that must be downloaded explicitly
     • The ability to change HTML markup in pages
     • The ability to change web part properties
9. Wikis
   • Wiki Homepage Feature - When you activate the feature it creates a document library called “SitePages”, adds a wiki page named “default.aspx” and set it as the new homepage for the site. The feature transforms your whole site to a wiki. Every time you create a new page it will create a new wiki page and store it in the “SitePages” lib (similar to the publishing features in 2007).
   • You now could upload files (will be stored as a separate file) and add Web Parts. you can now add Web Parts at any place within the wiki rich text!
   • You can now link easily pages, lists, items, documents and views.
   • Additionally there’s a new Site Collection feature called “Enterprise Wiki Layouts” for creating a large-scale wiki with categories and page layouts. the feature add a new page layout content type. This means you can create wiki page layouts with SharePoint Designer 2010.
   • wiki markup being used on default Site (SPWeb) pages they have also got the ability to add web parts to these pages
10. Web Parts
    • Wiki web parts - are new and do not have web part zones. You can add the web part in the text. This will allow us to give an option for the end users to create a page without an underlying page layout.
      
    • asp.net web parts will now have more functionality available to them such as:
      • Versioning of web parts in pages - if you make a change in a web part in a page - and then revert the page to old version of the page, the web part will be versioned with the page.
      • Ajax
      • Client object model
      • Cross site scripting safeguards
      • sandboxed solutions
    
    
    
    • Content Query Web Part (CQWP) –two huge improvements:
      • Dynamic filters –Now you can have filters be based off other fields on the page OR from a value on the QueryString
      • CommonViewFields – In the past you had to export, tweak the CommonViewFields property & reimport it into the page to get the CQWP to pass additional content fields down to the XSLT for rendering. No more… all are exposed in the CQWP’s Editor Part.
      • New content query web part finally allows choosing columns you want 2 display.
    
    
    • Web Part versioning –
      • Web Part instances are versioned only when a page is checked in.
      • Only Shared instances are versioned
      • Versioning is controlled by the document-level settings
      • There is no visibility into a Web Part's history or opportunities for a Web Part to control its own destiny. Web Part versioning is directly tied to the page history.
    
    

WCM

1. New Web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, enabling anyone to access SharePoint Server sites
2. Server Ribbon –Authoring in a WCM site is no longer a unique experience… it’s just like the rest of SharePoint and fully integrated in the ribbon.
3. Reduced Postbacks / Page Refreshes – now the only time the page refreshes in the authoring process is when the context of the page changes… no more interruption in authoring!
4. Content Query Web Part (CQWP) –Two huge improvements: Dynamic filters & CommonViewFields
5. Authoring :-one-click authoring:
   • Rich Text Editor –The OOTB one is fully cross browser supported. generates clean markup.
   • One-Click Page Authoring – No more “before you start authoring, what is the name of the page, the URL, the content type and page layout”. Click Site Actions > New Page and you’re off to go! .Use ribbon to switch to a different content type / page layout.
6. Content Deployment –SharePoint Server 2010’s content deployment can now take advantage of database snapshots. The snapshot is used to collect the content and then the package of exported content (not the snapshot) is sent along to the destination box, then the snapshot is discarded. This should affect the majority of those customers who’ve had trouble with massive export packages.
7. Publishing Improvements –
   • Now when you publish a page, SharePoint automatically does a spell check on your page as well as analyze it to see if there are any assets referenced in your page that are currently unpublished.
   • Large Page Libraries – folders in the /Pages library are now supported.
   • Ratings - Now it’s as easy as enabling the Ratings Feature. There’s a new site column you can add to your content types and associated field control to let readers of your page vote on a scale of 1-5. These ratings are then processed (in a background job) and shown as the commonly seen filled in stars.
   • Video and Rich Media - There’s a lot more support OOTB in SharePoint Server 2010 for video and rich media including a skinnable Silverlight player and various storage options.
8. Content Organizer - This tool has two purposes. First, The content organizer will help with large page libraries with hundreds or thousands of pages and make sure you can keep things a bit cleaner and more organized. The other goal of this tool is to help content authors with the question: “where does this go on the site?” The content organizer is actually very straightforward. What you do is setup a few rules on a Publishing site and when new content is saved / published, if it meets the criteria of one of the rules, the content will be automatically moved to the location you specify. To make this work you have to activate the Content Organizer site (SPWeb) Feature. Then from Site Settings, pick Content Organizer Rules create your rules. When creating a rule you can use any of the fields in a page as part of the rule criteria. You can also have the content organizer automatically create subfolders inside a /Pages library if the target location is getting too big.
9. Metadata Everywhere! - There is a new Metadata Manager service application that enables administrators to define and manage taxonomies.you can now add a new column that’s based on the field type called Managed Metadata to your content types. Then your content owners can tag up a page which you can then leverage in search solutions, navigation solutions or any way you like as Microsoft ships a huge taxonomy API in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.dll assembly.
10. Web Analytics -Replacing the usage analysis, the new Web Analytics service application will give you a good overview of what your site looks like from the perspective of most hit pages, size and other things like that. you can setup some alerts and use some included Web Parts like that will show your users the most popular pages in the site.

More - SharePoint 2010 Top 10 Features Source - SharePoint 2010 Resources