SharePoint 2010: What’s the same for Site Owners…

The following is for the November 09 Beta 2…

Most of the articles I see about SharePoint 2010 are about what’s new. To add some comfort for people who are considering upgrading from 2007 to 2010 I thought I would start to document what has not changed, or has only changed a little. So here is a list of things, features and screens that have not changed to much.

This is work in progress… please check back…

This list is for the Site Owners… (Dev list coming soon)

 

Site Actions, Site Settings

• Although it looks completely different, very little has changed. Click the image below to see how the “old” maps to the “new”, and what is really new (circled in green).  Almost looks like they moved things around just to move things around! 
  Site Settings for a Team Site (i.e. non-publishing)  (Click for a bigger image) 
  
                                   what a spider web!  but it shows that it’s still all there…
  
• So what is new?
  • All People (just a new link, not a new item. Same as in 2007 by clicking People and Groups and then clicking All People.)
  • Themes – a new gallery of Themes (Themes can be uploaded, or downloaded. The files are ZIP files! Download one, rename it to .ZIP and see what is inside!)
  • Solutions – These are new “Sandboxed” solutions where can deploy custom code directly to a site collection instead physically to the server drives.
  • FAST – Microsoft’s other search (extra cost) technology.  If you do not have FAST installed you will just get: “Error: Access to this functionality requires FAST Search for SharePoint be installed.”
  • Content Type Publishing - (Lots of blog articles! HERE)
  • SharePoint Designer Settings – Let you limit site user access to features of… guess what…)
  • Visual Upgrade – SharePoint 2007 sites can be left with the 2007 look and feel and later be upgraded to the 2010 look and feel (and the Ribbon).
  • Help settings – Lets you exclude from Help features you may not have installed, like the Office Web Apps.
    

Site Actions, Create (2007) or More Options (2010)

• There is a new user interface, but the old interface is still available at /_layouts/create.aspx. The new interface is a Silverlight widget that pops up over the Settings.aspx page. The old style interface will be displayed if the user’s browser does not have Silverlight installed. I still prefer the old style interface! Big icons do not make for a better experience.
   
• For a table of lists and site templates see here
   
• New list types?
  • Asset Library
  • External List
  • Status List
  • The “new” items in the Pages and Sites section are not new. They include a direct link to the Blog template and Content Page (the old Basic Page, but you have not choice of libraries, it is now always saved in SitePages). In Beta 2 both “Team Sites” and “Sites and Workspaces” both link to the old “Sites and Workspaces” page (but with slightly different URLs!).
     
• The new user interface: (click for a bigger image) 
  
  
  
• The 2007 vs. 2010 Create pages (using the 2010 old style interface)
  New items circled.
  
  

more to come as I get time…