SharePoint 2010 now supports Chrome, Firefox Microsoft has made a small-but-useful change to SharePoint 2010, as the popular collaboration suite now supports Firefox and, for the first time, Chrome. The change was announced in a low-key blog post by Kirk Stark, Senior Writer on the SharePoint Server Platforms Team, which states “For any third-party browser (including …
"64-bit browsers are still a no-no" - ummm, why, if standards are finally being followed?
"and various limitations crop up when using ActiveX controls" - ahhh, standards are NOT being followed then... When will they learn? It really is a rod for their own back, repeated thrashing thereof.
We suffer Microsoft ShitPoint at work. The irony is that though it may not support Firefox or Chrome at the moment it does support them better than it supports IE6 (which is still common on many company computers).
I'd hardly say it's popular either, it's an atrocious product - a place where documents go to die. However all said and done, if the new version supports more popular and modern browsers, then that's a small mercy...
Our company moved to Sharepoint at work. All the engineers now use perforce for externally releasable documents and a wiki for internal docs (which can link to the external docs in p4web). And it works really nicely... shame no one can find all the legacy docs they discarded into the Sharepoint abyss.
I assume this news applies only if you are running Windows or Macintosh. I know that under Exchange 2010 your options under linux are Firefox only, even though fiddling with browser agents and developer tools can get chrome to work.
Why can't $MS just make a web-standards compatible interface and be done with it ? Google manage okay.
We suffer under the tyranny of Sharepoint, complete with legacy VBScript and Active X controls - neither of which are of much use when I and several colleagues run Linux on our desktop machines. It's quite annoying to have to run a virtualised Windows install just to access Sharepoint, and even then we struggle to find anything since the search functionality is useless.
As someone else said, Sharepoint is a place were documents go to die - since you'll never be able to find them again.
How can you implement Sharepoint "properly", when it implements its entire feature set in such piss-poor ways? We have had successive Sharepoint contractors, and all they seem able to do is break other functionality as they attempt to fix things. Googling around, I find many blogs and articles describing in varying levels of detail how Sharepoint is fundamentally flawed for most if not all of the applications it is being used for. A suite of individual applications, each aimed at a specific subset of required functionality, makes a lot more sense. For example, the ticket tracking system that was built on our instance of Sharepoint doesn't work (inadequate features, lost tickets, inaccessible to non-Windows users, etc) so in the development team we simply ignored it and used Trac instead. For document management, we rolled our own minimalistic app with Lucene for indexing and searching, along with an application enforced naming convention to support versioning.
Firstly, SharePoint uses Content Types, Feature stapling, Site Templates and Master pages to ensure you have a consistent, structured approach to whatever it is you want to create. Deployed code can be done through Visual Studio to create and manage a complete farm solution from Development to Test and finally to live, with little or no "fundamental flaws".
I will certainly grant you that as a product (and as with many Microsoft products) it tries to be all things to all people - and if you look at it with that attitude it will end up pleasing no one.
What it IS however is a very flexible, powerful platform for delivering business-critical services, IMO.
Here's what we use it for:
Retail Estate Helpdesk (80,000 calls logged in 6 months and counting)
Marketing Campaign Management (extended to the Internet to provide a download centre to Newspaper and Media suppliers to get campaign data)
Estate Leasing, Rental and Property Management (a records centre stores scanned lease documents for over 1500 shop locations)
Compliance (web services have been used to interact with the users desktops to ensure they are reading and understanding the latest company policies)
Security and Finance (business data catalogs query our Oracle databases to provide real-time transaction information for financial auditing).
Ordering System (users can browse a catalogue of items, add them to a basket and order it for next day delivery - all acheived via a web-service that connects to our office stationary suppliers).
Reporting (SQL reporting services used to extract relevant data and report to all corners of the business on a variety of things).
Now clearly from the above, we've invested a great deal of time and money in getting to a stage where we are happy with it, and it's definitely not *perfect* - but it's a real shame that you've been screwed over by greedy consultants who obviously cared more for lining their pockets than providing you with a decent solution.
And a decent solution IS possible to with SharePoint, but it takes time, patience (and yes, a bit of money!).
Far too many companies try to use SharePoint as a magic bullet, thinking it allows them to bypass critical activities such as actually engaging business users. So SharePoint gets forced on the users without consultation, and of course, the users hate it because it doesn't do what they wanted; because no-one ever asked them what they wanted, nor what the business actually needed.
I think there's two warning signs to look out for when SharePoint gets considered:
1) If you're using SharePoint simply as a place to dump documents, you're using the wrong product.
2) If your SharePoint project is IT driven and not business driven, it will fail.
Forced to use Shitepoint at work, I have to keep certain pages as bookmarks because if I try to use navigation I can never find them again.
Sure it's badly implemented, but how much of that is down to skill of the implementor and how much is down to the ease of use of the tool itself? A bit like trying to use a screwdriver as a hammer.
I disagree completely - the SharePoint "out of the box" feature set is very rich indeed, though it will only extend so far.
If you're team wants to create a site for a specific purpose then there are tons of templates to choose from - all of them pre-created (including necessary navigational aspects to help alleviate all of those bookmarks).
But as with any OOB approach - they are based on assumptions about you're requirements. If you want to extend the functionality, then there is some customisation work involved (you can take it as little or as far as you are able to).
Not so much using a screwdriver as a hammer, more like buying a screwdriver and realising you needed a drill.
OK @Phoenix50, I'm going to assume yours is the downvote.
I think you pretty much contradicted yourself in your own post when you opened with,
...the SharePoint "out of the box" feature set is very rich indeed, though it will only extend so far.
Then went on to explain how I'm supposed to be wrong in my assessment of this turd.
Can you tell me how you came about to disagree that I hate using Shitepoint? I'm pretty sure I know my own experience and feelings about the piece of crud.
Can you also explain why I must waste time trying to customize something I don't want, don't need and is not part of my work order or job spec?
Your extended analogy fails too, it's more like I need a screwdriver, but I'm being asked to use it as a hammer also, rather than being given a hammer.
Woah there my refrigerated fellow.
Not once did I assert that you are not entitled to your opinion - you said you don't like it, and I disagreed with your reasoning. I'm not here to try and convert you or sway you in some way, but rather to highlight that there are others out there who have had a far better experience using it than you have - and that's a shame.
You seem annoyed with the fact you had to spend any time on it and didn't ask for it - perhaps a discussion with your manager and or colleagues was in order, to fully assess the business' requirements- and if it really WAS something foist on you from on-high, how about getting yourself some training in the product? That way you can fully understand it's purpose (it's TRUE purpose) and not fall into the usual pitfalls and traps that catch other businesses (and leads to users hating it).
Finally, there's nothing contradictory about my original statement - something can by feature rich, but not extend very far by default. Quality, not quantity, eh?
I appreciate you'll never like SharePoint - in fact you will likely despise it to your dying days, but try and understand that there are others out there who really enjoy using it and championing it's virtues.
All the shitepoint pointers come out to play and don't actually...
a) come up with any valid reasons why it's crap
b) mention any alternatives they'd like to put in place if they had the choice (tough $hit, you're not unfortunately btw)
Personally, Sharepoint is there for bulking projects together and sharing information quickly within teams. It does a good job based on older techs which wrong. But everyone complaining... isn't that the way most of their products? Build products using short-shifting techniques rather adopting the standards?
It's like the old record is continuing about M$. By the way, if you're that disgruntled; offer your opinion to managers and even M$'s feedback pages. It isn't difficult and if you're stuck with it, make the best of it rather than bitching away.
Actually, I think Keep Refrigerated made his reason clear - He can't find stuff in ShitePoint
I've had the misfortune to have to use it in 2 companies:
The first, a Government department, had search implemented but excluded PDF files so it wasn't reliable. Only the admins could add documents but it took them ages to do so, so everyone kept their own copy with their own changes. An internal website would be more appropriate and could implement Search easily.
The second, a huge IT company, lets anyone upload so useful info CAN be shared. They've created a standardised directory structure - mostly empty, but there's no way of telling until you navigate down to the empty folder. Search is completely disabled, so I have to open a Windows Explorer view and search (by document name) from there. A shared network drive would give the same functionality and be faster. (you can restrict access to network shares by userid)
I expect you'll say that they're using the wrong tool for the job, but if indexing/searching can be disabled, it's basically a crap product. And navigation is slow & awkward, and the presentation is ugly.
So there you go - Reasons, and familiar, reliable alternatives. As an end user, I don't care about the tech - I just want to be able to get at stuff that I know exists!
And once again -this is a perfect example of poorly implemented SharePoint instances causing headaches and wasting time and money.
If we take your Government department - PDF files can be included in Search and the .pdf extension can be added to contexual crawling with basic IT skills. As for only the admins being able to add documents, this is as much about permissions and policy and is it about practicality. A well-thought out document library supports versioning, content types and routing policies that would allow anyone the ability to upload items to it - *if they are authorised to do so*.
Secondly, your IT company - why did they turn off Search? That's just stupid! It's not SharePoint fault is it? Why are they using Dataviews to filter the document libraries based on who is viewing them to show users document that are relevant to THEM and them alone? That way there's no need to go digging around. Incidentally - if you're looking to SharePoint as a replacement for a file server, then you've got the wrong product - that's NOT what it's about at all, and that's a common misconception.
As for indexing and searching being disabled - of course it can! You wouldn't always want indexing and searching in a specific web application would you? That's part of the product's felxibility - but you CAN turn it on for other applications - this is not an "absolute" that must be turned off or on for everything and everyone.
As for slow and awkward, a few tweaks in the web.config file can increase response times - some IT knowledge is required, but overall the number one reason a SharePoint site is slow and unresponsive is a poorly-thought out farm configuration and infrastructure.
Finally, regarding presentation being "ugly"...well, there's no accounting for taste I guess :-)
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