Get Consistent Branding Across Classic and Modern SharePoint Experiences

Full feature parity between classic SharePoint experiences such as classic/traditional team sites and publishing sites, and modern SharePoint experiences including communication sites, modern team sites, and hub sites continues to cause migration concerns for organizations of all sizes. Modern SharePoint sites provide many exciting features including a clean, mobile-ready interface, faster page load times, improved […]

The SharePoint Framework: The potential to replace the SharePoint UI Unchanged since 2007

The First Real Change in the SharePoint Interface The release of the new SharePoint Framework (SPFx) signifies the first real shift in the SharePoint interface development since 2007. Microsoft introduced the concept of Master Pages and Page Layouts to SharePoint 2007, leveraging the controls found in ASP.NET at the time. Since then, SharePoint Developers and […]

SharePoint 2016 Preview and Version 16 Branding Elements

About once every three years we SharePoint geeks get an odd kind of gift that we get in an odd kind of digital package. Just like a child waiting for days, weeks or more, looking at that shiny new gift under the Christmas tree, we eagerly await the next version of SharePoint. Remember when we […]

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 8 – A Better Logo Snippet

In the SharePoint 2013 Snippet Gallery, you will find the “Site Logo” snippet. This snippet allows you to quickly and easily add the SharePoint site logo controls to your HTML Master Page, as well as make it a link if you set the NavigateURL property found in Customization – Site Logo ( SPSimpleSiteLink ) -> […]

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 7 – .NET Code Blocks in Snippets

In Master Pages and Page Layouts, there is often a need to reference .NET code blocks within a ASP.NET control. A common example is referencing a SharePoint resource within a control such as <asp:Label text=”<%$Resources:cms,Article_rollup_image_text15%>” CssClass=”ms-textSmall” runat=”server” /> I pulled this control out of the ArticlesLists.aspx OOTB Page Layout. This control is an ASP.NET Label […]

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 6 – Hiding Elements in Dialogs

SharePoint 2013 allows us to hide site elements in dialogs just as we could in SharePoint 2010. Just be aware that the class we add to such elements we wish to hide has changed. The Problem: In a custom branding project you add a new container element, such as a new header, navigation block or […]

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 5 – Content Delivery Networks

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are useful to increase website performance, such as a great way to help speed up your site download times, even if by a fraction of a second. In branding, we often use public CDN’s offered by Google or Microsoft that host common files such as jQuery libraries. If we plan to use Design Manager for our Master Pages and Page Layouts, an issue arises with how SharePoint 2013 and Design Manager parse our HTML using XML.

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 4 – Web fonts

Web fonts such as the free Google web fonts have become a popular alternative to standard web based fonts. We can easily include them in our SharePoint 2013 branding projects as well. Note be aware that older browsers may have more issues with web fonts although they are widely supported by IE 8 and newer. […]

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 3 – HTML5 DOCTYPE

Here is a simple one that can be frustrating when overlooked, yet the problem makes sense and is very easy to fix. More than once a HTML file has been handed off to me “ready” for SharePoint 2013’s new Design Manager, i.e. we want to concert the HTML5 file to a HTML Master Page in […]

Branding SharePoint 2013 Tricks – 2 – Design Manager, Boilerplate and XML Validation Errors

In this post we are going to review a common XML validation error in SharePoint 2013’s new Design Manager when converting a HTML file to a Master Page, its cause and how to fix it. SharePoint 2013 is now HTML5 friendly and with the addition of Design Manager and Design Manager’s ability to convert a […]