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Some say that Microsoft hasn't really made many changes to SharePoint 2007's web content management functionality for SharePoint 2010 (news, site). While the underlying architecture may not have changed, there are some improvements that you are bound to like. Here are 8 changes to SharePoint WCM that you need to know about.
UI Improvements
Rich AJAX Interactions
This by far is the most impressive improvement in SharePoint 2010. You may have your own opinion on the style of the UI itself, but you can’t deny that it’s a large improvement over the 2007 interface. The entire user experience for SharePoint 2010 has been revamped with a sleek, AJAX-enabled interface.
Just about every action that an end user needs to do will require zero page loads. How will this benefit the management of content? Fewer page loads and a more intuitive interface means higher productivity and efficiency. It also means increased end-user buy-in.
If you’re a 2007 veteran, navigating the 2010 interface will be a more enjoyable experience in every way.
The Ribbon
The Microsoft Office 2010 suite will signify the consistency of the ribbon across all products. SharePoint 2010 will also be receiving the ribbon. In general, you either love the ribbon or you hate it.
For some, the ribbon was the single greatest thing that ever happened to Office. But others simply don’t like change, and since the ribbon was a significant one, this feature was not always welcoming.
However, the emergence of the ribbon made third-party product integration a lot easier. This trend should continue with SharePoint 2010 as innovative developers extend the ribbon to integrate their products further into the SharePoint UI.
WSIWYG Editor
I won’t tell you that the new WSIWYG editor is an all-encompassing, wonderful editor, but they have certainly improved it since the 2007 release. Tight integration with the new UI and ribbon will cut down on page loads and confusion that were frequent with the end user experience in 2007.
The editor now natively supports browsers other than just IE. So you should be able to fire up the editor in Firefox 3 and Safari 3 with no issues. It's about time.
SharePoint 2010 WYSIWYG Editor
Accessibility Improvements
SharePoint is finally joining the ranks of other popular WCM products by simply conforming to modern web standards, like XHTML and WCAG 2.0 AA. Not only will this decrease the financial costs of branding and customizing a SharePoint 2010 site, but it will hopefully allow organizations to brand the site themselves without hiring SharePoint-specific branders.
Browser support
Part of WCM is accessibility. SharePoint 2007 is for the most part jailed to Internet Explorer. Sure, you can load any SharePoint site in Firefox or Chrome, but it’s not fully supported and several features do not function correctly.
Firefox now has roughly 25% of the browser market share, and Microsoft is listening. In 2010, Firefox 3 is now a tier 1 supported browser. This essentially means that it has the same level of support as IE, but only on Windows machines.
Although you might not have the same experience on Mac or Linux with Firefox, Safari 3 is now a tier 2 supported browser. That will no doubt increase the ability of non-Windows users to browse SharePoint sites in an environment they are comfortable with.
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