Siolon

Category: Design

  • The Pains of Altering the SharePoint UI

    SharePoint’s default UI is built on table layouts, uncommented CSS, and obtrusive JavaScript. Branding it is an exercise in pain management.

  • The SharePoint Grade Card

    A candid report card on SharePoint’s major features. WSS earns an A, but Designer and the default interface barely pass.

  • IE 8 Compatibility Mode and SharePoint

    IE 8’s compatibility mode defaults intranet sites to legacy rendering, likely under pressure from the SharePoint team. That’s a bad sign for what comes next.

  • A Primer on Information Architecture: Navigation

    A curated guide to navigation in information architecture: global, local, contextual, breadcrumbs, pagination, and the design patterns that tie them together.

  • Being A Good Designer Isn’t Just About Being A Good Designer

    Most of us will never be truly original designers. That’s fine. Being good at discerning design choices is its own valuable skill.

  • SharePoint Wireframes

    A free MOSS 2007 wireframe template for Visio and PDF, built on the out-of-the-box master page to jumpstart your SharePoint design work.

  • A Quote On Typography

    Jon Tangerine nails what good typography really does: it makes the canvas fit the meaning of the text, not the other way around.

  • New Blog Direction

    Closing down Siolon as a design firm and shifting the blog toward SharePoint, knowledge management, and enterprise information architecture.

  • Business Site Design Cliches

    Stock photos of smiling employees, splash pages, white-paper home pages, and font chaos. The worst habits in business site design, catalogued.

  • User Interface Design For Programmers

    Slides from my Day of .NET talk on user interface design for programmers, covering usability, information architecture, and user experience basics.