Enhancing SharePoint 2010 for the iPad (SPSAusTX 2012)
Despite being marketed as an entertainment device rather than a mobile platform for business, the iPad continues to gain traction as a mobile device for the next generation business user. For some organizations, the rich user interaction and usability afforded by the iPad is a compelling reason to work towards cross-platform capability or iPad specific versions of line-of-business systems. In this session we’ll review custom iPad specific enhancements for SharePoint 2010, including changes to the user interface based on the orientation of the device.
Presented at SharePoint Saturday Austin, TX (January 21, 2012).
Demonstration Video:
Enhancing SharePoint 2010 for the iPad (SPSVB 2012)
Despite being marketed as an entertainment device rather than a mobile platform for business, the iPad continues to gain traction as a mobile device for the next generation business user. For some organizations, the rich user interaction and usability afforded by the iPad is a compelling reason to work towards cross-platform capability or iPad specific versions of line-of-business systems. In this session we’ll review custom iPad specific enhancements for SharePoint 2010, including changes to the user interface based on the orientation of the device.
Presented at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach (January 7, 2012).
SharePoint Saturday Tampa
For anyone interested, here’s the slide deck that I presented at SharePoint Saturday Tampa on June 11, 2011 on Enhancing SharePoint 2010 for the iPad. You can also download a copy of the slides here.
Content Sync Done Right; Soocial
Many of us struggle with the synchronization of our contact lists; we all use Facebook, we all use email, we all have phones, but what we never seem to get “right” is one common contact list. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to send an email from my phone and not had the email address stored there. Sure a single Exchange or LDAP server solves the issue, but how many of us want to have to maintain Exchange, let alone run one at home. Enter, Soocial. Yes, there’s two o’s… probably because it’s twice as magical as you’d think, or maybe it’s because the two o’s look a bit like an infinity symbol… who knows.
Simply put, Soocial is a cross-platform contact synchronization service. And when I say cross-platform, I don’t just mean Windows vs. Mac; according to their website, Soocial supports over 500 devices and services, ranging from phones (Symbian, Android, iOS, etc.) to applications (Outlook), and services (Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo!, etc.). Once you signup and configure each device you want included in the sync, Soocial goes to work making sure that all of the contacts match on each device. Cue the cheesy “but wait, there’s more” music… Sure Soocial syncs your contacts (that’s what it “sells” itself as doing), but it also lets you download and store full backups of your contacts, import/export contacts, automatically remove duplicates, edit contacts (including photos) within the browser, and even manage and view versions of each contact (yes, it stores an incremental version each time a contact is edited).
TRISPUG Presentation (2/1/2011)
Despite being marketed as an entertainment device rather than a mobile platform for business, the iPad continues to gain traction as a mobile device for the next generation business user. For some organizations, the rich user interaction and usability afforded by the iPad is a compelling reason to work towards cross-platform capability or iPad specific versions of line-of-business systems. In this session we’ll review custom iPad specific enhancements for SharePoint 2010, including changes to the user interface based on the orientation of the device.
Above is a copy of the charts that I presented at the Triangle SharePoint User Group meeting on February 1, 2011. I’ve included the separate YouTube video containing a hands on demonstration of the CSS approach after slide 18.
White Paper: SP2010 Enhancements for the iPad
My recent white paper titled SharePoint 2010 Enhancements for the Apple iPad includes topics on orientation detection, orientation-aware content, and cross-platform embedded video solutions.
Enhancing the SharePoint 2010 UI: Scripted Orientation Aware Content
In my previous post we looked at enhancing the SharePoint 2010 UI through CSS based orientation detection. In this post, we will take it one step further and use some client side script to detect orientation and output content accordingly.
The CSS approach utilizes orientation aware style sheets which are loaded based on the appropriate orientation of the device (in this case an iPad). While this approach is simple to implement, it’s not necessarily the most robust solution or the most scalable solution. The CSS approach is best suited to deployment with your site’s branded master page, when orientation detection is a big part of your design. What if you only wanted it on one or two pages of your site, if you don’t have access to deploy a new master page, or if you want more advanced orientation detection?
Enhancing the SharePoint 2010 UI: iPad Orientation Detection
I recently had a chance to sit down and rapid prototype some iPad UI Enhancements for SharePoint 2010. I had previously done some light orientation detection for the iPod and iPhone, but with the iPad there’s a lot more power in utilizing orientation detection. As the iPad gains more traction in the business world I expect to see more and more requirements to make enterprise platforms [like SharePoint] usable on the iPad. With Microsoft’s commitment to cross-browser functionality in SharePoint 2010 we’re fortunate that SharePoint 2010 will render on the iPad without any customizations needed.
The typical approach to porting desktop content to a mobile device is to scale content down to fit it all within the mobile device’s display. With orientation detection we can turn off specific regions of content, or change the layout completely in order to maximize on the screen real estate and mitigate the need to scale down content–relative to how the user is holding the device. If we use the iPad as an example, in landscape orientation the resolution is 1024 x 768 but when we move it to portrait orientation the resolution swaps to 768 x 1024 (~250 pixels less on the width). Again, typically we’d just scale everything down to compensate for that drop on horizontal screen real estate. With a platform like SharePoint, making things smaller inherently makes it more difficult to navigate and the two-finger horizontal scroll on the iPad isn’t really all that intuitive. The solution is to detect the orientation of the device and restructure content accordingly.