Pro SharePoint 2013 Branding and Responsive Web Development

Pro SharePoint 2013 Branding and Responsive Web Development is the definitive reference on the technologies, tools, and techniques needed for building responsive websites and applications with SharePoint 2013. The book focuses on solutions that provide the best browser experience for the myriad of devices, browsers, and screen orientations and resolutions.

Web technology has changed considerably in the past few years. Microsoft has embraced the new generation of open standards represented by HTML5 and JavaScript, and these changes are represented in a fundamental shift in how SharePoint 2013 supports web content management and publishing. Authors Eric Overfield, Oscar Medina, Kanwal Khipple, and Rita Zhang join forces to dive into the new features and capabilities provided by SharePoint 2013 and combine them with the latest techniques in responsive web design and development to demonstrate how to build modern and progressive websites and applications.

Pro SharePoint 2013 Branding and Responsive Web Development covers the following technologies:

• SharePoint 2013 Server Edition
• Office 365 SharePoint Online
• Expression Blend 2013
• Napa Tools for Office and SharePoint Development
• Visual Studio 2012
• HTML5 and CSS3
• JavaScript, JQuery, JQuery UI, Modernizr, and the Bootstrap Framework
• SharePoint 2013 Client Object Model

What you’ll learn

Through the context of building a complete website on SharePoint 2013 from start to finish, readers will learn how to combine SharePoint 2013 web content management features and capabilities with modern web design and development skills. The key topics to be covered include:

• Design Manager – this new feature allows web designers and developers to build SharePoint branding templates using standard HTML and CSS and convert the templates to SharePoint master pages. This opens up branding to a wider audience of designers who struggled with having to understand the complexity of SharePoint and ASP.NET master pages.
• Client Object Model – this feature is based on web service technologies for interacting with server-side data from client-side. This feature has been extended significantly to support the new SharePoint application model, which heavily emphasizes client-side development. This book will provide full coverage of utilizing these updated web service technologies and how they can be used to build interactive websites.
• Device Channels – similar to the capabilities provided by HTML5 media queries, the new channels capability allows SharePoint to detect client devices and browsers to load the appropriate master page to provide a unique browser experience.
• Variations and Translation Services – SharePoint 2013 continues to improve features and capabilities for building multi-lingual sites including new support for integration with professional translation service providers, or automated translation web services.
• Term Set Navigation and SEO Improvements – SharePoint 2013 now provides native support for Search Engine Optimization requirements such as page meta fields, as well as a completely new approach to site navigation and human friendly URLs through the use of Managed Metadata navigation.

Who this book is for

Pro SharePoint 2013 Branding and Responsive Web Development is designed for web designers and developers who have existing knowledge of basic website design and development, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This book builds upon that foundational knowledge to walk the reader through a complete project lifecycle for building a responsive website on SharePoint 2013.

About the Authors

Oscar Medina is a seasoned technology consultant with over 17 years of software development experience. He runs SharePointAce Consulting Group, a boutique SharePoint Consulting firm based out of Northern California. His SharePoint specific experience dates back to the SharePoint Portal Server 2001. Oscar was previously at Microsoft Consulting Services, helping fortune 1000 companies reap the benefits of the entire platform and related technologies. He has a diverse technical expertise on multiple platforms, including web development & design, n-tier app development and mobile app development on Windows Phone and the iPhone platforms. Oscar is the Founder, Senior Architect, and Creative Director of SP.me - the first mobile social app for SharePoint, which allows companies to enable their employees to stay connected with their team on the go.

Kanwal Khipple is a leading User Experience expert within the SharePoint industry, with experience in building solutions for large intranet, extranets and internets all based off of Microsoft’s SharePoint platform. As VP of Consulting for BrightStarr, a digital design agency, he continues to push for user experience innovation when redesigning intranets for some of the largest brands in the world. He continues to preach on the importance of designing with usability as the primary focus. Because of his passion and his involvement in many community driven events, including launching successful user groups in Canada and the USA, Kanwal has been recognized as a SharePoint MVP by Microsoft for the past four years (2009 to 2013).

Rita Zhang is a Senior Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services in Northern California. She specializes in Information Worker Solutions and Custom Application Development Technologies. She has extensive experience in working with enterprise customers to deliver end to end SharePoint solutions and custom developed applications from architecture, design, development, to deployment to production. Rita has acted as an extension to the Microsoft product group to provide proactive help to large customers to unblock deployment issues and ensure fast and smooth implementation of SharePoint technologies. Rita is the Founder and Senior Architect of SP.me - the first mobile social app for SharePoint which allows companies to enable their employees to stay connected with their team on the go.

Eric Overfield is a leading expert in SharePoint Branding and User Interface design. Eric, President and co-founder of PixelMill, has over 13 years experience with webdesign best practices and techniques, and over 8 years experience with SharePoint branding. Besides his in-depth knowledge of SharePoint’s branding capabilities, his expertise includes general SharePoint technology, design and architecture along with custom coded web parts, solutions, JavaScript,HTML5 and CSS3.