2/26/2008

SharePoint: If I had written SharePoint.......

We all have our gripe list, and I know SharePoint was created by a very large team, but .... I just have a short list of what I would have changed:

  • Calendars: when you enter a start date, automatically set the end date to match. This is always needed for one day meetings.
  • Calendars: I would have name the "Current Events" view something meaningful. To me "current" means today, this week, this month or some time frame. This view expands all recurring events and probably should have been named "Detailed event view".
  • Calendars: I would have put the All Day and Recurring checkboxes above date and time fields so users would not start to enter these and then find them gone after clicking the check boxes.
  • Make all the buttons consistent!!! Is the OK button at the top of the page, at the bottom, both or in the toolbar? Is it called OK, Save or Save and Exit???
  • Make the Delete and Remove buttons consitent and in places considered good user interface design! Too often you find these buttons: Delete, OK, Cancel all together, and your first instinct is to click the first button.
  • Wiki's would have had an Actions menu without having to click the out of sight (bottom of page) "View all pages" link. Wikis would also add "this list" to the search scopes dropdown without having to first click "View all pages".
  • The "Edit Item" button in Welcome, My Settings (userdisp.aspx) would let the user edit something, anything! (They can only update their profiles if My Sites is enabled, and a lot of companies have disabled My Sites until they figure out how to manage My Sites! [the first user who creates a "football betting pool" subsite under their My Site kills My Sites for everyone!])
  • Publishing and non-publishing features would be more consistent. Why do you have a "Navigation" option in a Team Site under a publishing site and "Top Links" and "Quick Launch" in a Team Site under a non-publishing site. (everyone wants dropdowns in the tabs, but can only get them with the "Navigation" option!!!)
  • I would have provided dropdown menus in the Top Link tabs to both WSS and MOSS Publishing users.
  • Site vs Site Collection vs Web? I would have used consistent naming of SharePoint sites in both Central Administration and the developer's API. (A single site is sometimes called a Site and sometimes a Web. A site collection is sometimes called a Site and sometimes a Site Collection)
  • The default view in Discussions would have been Threaded, not Flat.
  • Grouping in views would support more than two levels.
  • SharePoint Designer would be fast!!! (I can dream can't I?)
  • The Help files would be more helpful.

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