SharePoint wordt steeds vaker gebruikt in de overheidsinstellingen voor het realiseren van publiek toegankelijke websites. De toegankelijkheid van websites is momenteel een hot item bij vooral overheidsinstellingen, maar ook bij andere organisaties die websites realiseren voor een breed publiek. Door de Nederlandse overheid is een set van webrichtlijnen opgesteld en er is een keurmerk (Drempelsvrij) ontwikkeld waaraan sites moeten voldoen voordat ze “toegankelijk” genoemd mogen worden.
SharePoint voldoet standaard niet aan deze richtlijnen. Betekent dat dan dat je met SharePoint geen “toegankelijke” websites kunt bouwen? Zeker niet. In deze sessie wordt ingegaan op de onderdelen van SharePoint die niet voldoen aan eisen volgens de webrichtlijnen en de mogelijke oplossingen die je kunt toepassen om wel een website te creëren die voldoet aan de webrichtlijnen.
Stem op deze DevDays09 wildcard sessie als je wilt weten waar je tegenaan loopt als je een “toegankelijke” website met SharePoint aan het realiseren bent en wat je in de vormgeving van je SharePoint omgeving kunt aanpassen om wel te voldoen aan de webrichtlijnen.
[english version]
Building Accessible websites with SharePoint, is it possible?
SharePoint is being used more often in governmental environments for implementing public facing websites. Accessibility is a hot issue for the Dutch government, but also for other large companies with websites intended for a wide public. The Dutch government has set up a set of accessibility rules and a quality mark (Drempelsvrij.nl) has been developed that must be followed before a website can be called “Accessible”.
SharePoint, by default, doesn’t satisfy these Dutch accessibility rules. Does that mean that you cannot implement an “accessible” website using SharePoint? Absolutely not, in this DevDays09 session you will be presented the parts of SharePoint that have difficulties according to the accessibility rules. Also the solutions for creating an accessible website with SharePoint are presented.
Vote for this DevDays09 wildcard session if you want to know what you will encounter when you start with building an accessible website with SharePoint in The Netherlands and what parts of the SharePoint branding you can adjust to meet the accessibility rules.
If you work a lot with the office suite. You'll probably have your own templates for all kinds of word documents, excel workbooks, etc. Everytime you need a new document you start by making a copy of an other document and first clear all text.
Wouldn't it be nice if you had all your templates right on the 'select new template' page in Word or other office products like the picture below.
With the office 2007 suite it is very easy to add your own templates.
First you copy all your templates to a directory that will hold all templates e.g. c:\templates.
Second you create an xml file like the one below:
<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?>
<o:featuredcontentlcid="1033"xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">
<o:applicationid="WD">
<o:featuredtemplatesstartdate="2007-01-01"enddate="2014-01-01">
<!-- TEMPLATE 1 -->
<o:featuredtemplatetitle="Briefpapier"source="C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Mavention\Templates\Briefpapier_template.dotx" >
<o:mediamediatype="jpg"filename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
<o:previewfilename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
</o:featuredtemplate>
<!-- TEMPLATE 2 -->
<o:featuredtemplatetitle="CV"source="C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Mavention\Templates\Curriculum_Vitae_template.dotx" >
<o:mediamediatype="jpg"filename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
<o:previewfilename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
</o:featuredtemplate>
<!-- TEMPLATE 3 -->
<o:featuredtemplatetitle="Offertedocument"source="C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Mavention\Templates\Offerte_template.dotx" >
<o:mediamediatype="jpg"filename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
<o:previewfilename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
</o:featuredtemplate>
<!-- TEMPLATE 4 -->
<o:featuredtemplatetitle="Ontwerpdocument"source="C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Mavention\Templates\Ontwerpdocument_template.dotx" >
<o:mediamediatype="jpg"filename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
<o:previewfilename="MaventionLogo.jpg"source="" />
</o:featuredtemplate>
</o:featuredtemplates>
</o:application>
</o:featuredcontent>
In this sample you see that the line <o:applicationid="WD"> contains “WD” as value for the id attribute. This means that the next featuretemplate elements are used in Word. You can also define the values “XL” for Excel templates and “PP” for PowerPoint templates.
The featuretemplate element allows you to define the title as it will appear in the ‘select a new template’ page. The source attribute is used for locating the template file (e.g. the ones you copied to the c:\templates directory).
The elements media and preview can be used for adding a previewimage for the template.
Now that the XML file contains proper values for all elements there’s just one thing that needs to be done. Adding a key to the Windows Registry.
I’ve created a installOfficeTemplates.reg file that contains the following information:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers\Mavention ]
"ServiceURL"="C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Documents\\Mavention\\Templates\\Mavention.xml"
As you notice, this .reg file installs a new key with its value pointing to the xml file we just created. If you run this file or create this key manually, you can use all template files that are in the xml file in your Office products.
Ciao,
Niels
The Mavention office is located in the former Caballero Factory (CabFab) at unit 86 which is an old cigarette factory which has been completely renovated to a modern office. The Caballero Factory is a breeding ground for innovative, creative and cultural businesses and we are very proud to be one of these. On the 9th of April we celebrated the opening of our new office. We were pleasantly surprised by the number of attendees and we would like to thank them for their presence and presents :-). During the event Mavention introduced a new product for SharePoint intranet solutions. Our product eases the necessary effort and decreases the realization time. If you like to know more about this product then feel free to contact us.
Now the first two days of the SharePoint best practices conference have finished my view of the conference and things I can expect here become clear.
Both the terms “SharePoint” and “Best practice” can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. For SharePoint I already knew that. That a best practice is interpreted differently is something I found out here. Although for some of the sessions the title did not really cover the content (or the expected content) in the session, the overall feeling about the best practice conference is very good.
Bringing around 450 SharePoint enthusiastics and lots of SharePoint experts and/or MPV’s together in the centre of London, means that you will, for sure, get interesting sessions, conversations, discussions and so on.
Joel Olson set of the conference in the key note with a comparison between Monty Python’s killer rabbit and SharePoint, showing that serious stuff like ECM, Collaboration, Social Networking can always be combined with not so serious stuff to make it fun to watch and listen.
Later I will post some more info on the sessions I followed.