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Work in just about any big office and you have almost certainly been subjected to a semi-built corporate Sharepoint site your boss or the HR department hopes you will use rather than circulating important documents via email. And if you are like most tech-savvy folks, you have found it bafflingly difficult to use.
Microsoft hopes to correct that well-deserved reputation, and is launching a preview of Sharepoint Server 2016 to raise expectations about the new product.
Microsoft says its[sic] made “deep investment in HTML5” to give you “capabilities that enable device-specific targeting of content. This helps ensure that users have access to the information they need, regardless of the screen they choose to access it on.” And your users get a consistent experience whatever device they choose to wield, including on touch-enabled devices.
A new “cloud hybrid search” will permit users wielding “SharePoint Server 2013 and Office 365 to retrieve unified search results through a combined search index in Office 365. The index for that search resides in Office 365, one of many features billed as letting you take advantage of hybrid cloud. The idea is that your on-premises SharePoint can pop the index, or other data, into Microsoft's cloud so you get the on-prem[ises] performance you want without having to bulk out your servers. But of course you do get into PAYG territory with the cloud.
That certainly qualifies as what the Register calls "Buzzword Compliant" but maybe there's true improvement there, too. Search for the expression "Sharepoint sucks" today and you'll get 209,000 hits including this one. Stick around and see if next year Microsoft turns the corner and makes Sharepoint something people find useful and effective.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @10:07AM
So now it's going to be a bloated clusterfuck AND difficult to use.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by inertnet on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:11PM
Let's wait and see if they've 'improved' HTML5 significantly, so we can have the IE6 compatibility war all over again.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday August 30 2015, @10:26AM
Indeed. I'm still trying to figure out how HTML 5 helps give device-specific targeting of content.
I'm no web developer and I know a lot is done with CSS for different devices, but the whole point of HTML is to make it device independent. The article does make it sound like IE6 all over again.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by davester666 on Saturday August 29 2015, @10:40PM
The patent for "a bloated clusterfuck AND difficult to use" is just running out.
Now they've got a new patent for "a bloated clusterfuck AND difficult to use over the internet" which is good for another 20 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @02:52AM
...but at least it won't use ActiveX, which at this point is being actively deprecated because Edge won't run it. I remember a blog post a full 10 years ago from Brian Hook (of Id Software fame; he left prior to Quake 3's release, but joined Oculus with his other ex-Id buddies last year): "I've been doing some ActiveX coding on the side for a couple days, stuff I'm not familiar with, and I'm just flat out _appalled_ at how bad that entire API and design is. I can make an OCX that basically formats your hard drive, stick it on a Web page with a tag, and if your security settings are set low enough, you'll start formatting your hard drive the minute you visit my Web page." (This is copied from that green site, since Brian's old blog site "Book of Hook" is dead.)
...or for that matter, Silverlight. Yes, that's right: at one point, Sharepoint was using Silverlight. http://blog.sharepointengine.com/2013/07/the-future-of-silverlight-in-sharepoint.html [sharepointengine.com] (...WHY?!?!?!)