Design Patterns in SharePoint

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Kyle.

Last week, I was happy to present at SusQtech’s “30 on Thursdays” weekly webinar event.  This is a great series of free webinars from some talented speakers, and the succinct format is a great opportunity to learn something new without a huge investment of your time. Continue reading →

Join me for Advanced SharePoint Design

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Kyle.

On January 23-26, 2012, I’ll be instructing a class that focuses on the more advanced strategies behind applying style and branding to a SharePoint 2010 website. This isn’t your average SharePoint training class: we’ll cover topics like improving the SharePoint user experience, creative design for the SharePoint platform, and implementation strategy for making your creative designs come to life. Continue reading →

10 Things a Website Should Never, Ever Do

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Kyle.

As a designer of the world wide web, you are armed with the power to amaze, enlighten, entice, and captivate. The web is an easel for your creative aspirations, and the content you design for is the foundation of your creativity. With so much power at the tips of your fingers, you also possess the ability to deter, annoy, anger, and infuriate. Your users are yours to command, their emotions yours to pluck like the strings of a harp. Continue reading →

From “Developer” to “Designer”

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Kyle.

It’s easy to forget how a website really works. I mean really works. I’ve had the pleasure of working with many brilliant and talented developers (programmers) who could bend the functionality of any application or server-side platform at the drop of a hat. They are problem-solvers, as is everyone in this industry of the online. Continue reading →

SharePoint Design in Five Minutes

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Kyle.

You can now download my free SharePoint theme, Medazio, on SharePointDesigNerds.com. We’re still working on cleaning up the site while it’s in “draft” version, but feel free to sign up, browse a couple of the themes that we’ve uploaded, post your amazing SharePoint spotlights, and give us feedback on the design, navigation, and functionality in the site. Continue reading →

Responsive Design Testing with Screenfly

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Kyle.

Responsive design is all the rage. Ethan Marcotte, just today, released a new book on the subject, of which I’m quite excited. My last post was all about responsive web design, and after writing the article, I couldn’t help but ask myself: what now? Designing and implementing experiences for an unknown number of devices can be an intimidating task, especially when you don’t have the opportunity to test your designs on many (or any) of them. The answer, for me, was to create a new web app that aids in this testing process. It’s called Screenfly, and it’s the first of many apps that will be available on QuirkTools.com. Continue reading →

Responsive Layouts Using CSS Media Queries

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Kyle.

The days of the desktop are numbered. In the past, designing a web interface involved targeting a screen resolution in the vicinity of 960 pixels wide. For many years, this worked, and it worked well, because 99% of online users could easily read and scroll at that resolution, regardless of the browser, operating system, or machine they were using. Times have changed. Continue reading →

SharePoint 2010 Item Styles and DDWRT

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Kyle.

I’ve done some crazy things to make SharePoint work like I want it to. One of the things that I’ve done in the past is write some insanely complex XSLT functions to format dates in SharePoint 2007 item styles. SharePoint 2007 offered a very useful FormatDate feature of the DDWRT XSL library, but the formatting customization was limited to picking a prefab format, which didn’t always gel with what you or your client wanted to see. Continue reading →