SharePoint 2010 – New Web 2.0 Enhancements

A long awaited new version of SharePoint is finally here (public Beta in November). WOO HOO!!!

I have been working on the SharePoint platform since 2004. When SharePoint 2007 first came out, it changed the game from development perspective. Unlike the 2003 version, the 2007 version was based on standard ASP.NET 2.0 platform; all of the sudden the web part development became easier and the development community could use their ASP.NET 2.0 programming skills and apply them to SharePoint without learning a ton of new stuff. In my opinion, this was the main reason why SharePoint 2007 became a very successful web application platform. However, SharePoint 2007 is not perfect (nothing ever is); it has it’s quirks that can sometimes become quite difficult to deal with. In this blog, I am going to examine some of the new Web 2.0 features of SharePoint 2010 and some enhancements of the new version over the existing 2007 version.

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Dev OOTB enhancements:

1. XHTML rendering
   This is by far the best thing that happened to SharePoint, IMO. Proper XHTML rendering makes AJAX integration a lot simpler.It also reduces the cross browser rendering issues. If you are building public facing websites on SharePoint, this enhancement will save you a lot of time in fixing cross-browser rendering issues. You will notice that DOCTYPE is declared as *xhtml1-strict* which is even better. You can read more about DOC types here or on W3.org website.
   
2. Silverlight 2 (and above) Integration
   You can integrate Silverlight in the current version of SharePoint, but it is not very simple. Additional server side installs are needed to run Silverlight, if you are planning to use ASP.NET Silverlight controls. OOTB support for Silverlight in SharePoint 2010 is an excellent improvement.
3. AJAX and AJAX Control Toolkit.
   SharePoint 2010 is heavy on AJAX (or should I call it AJAJ?). AJAX is used everywhere in the platform, even for simple things like creating a new item through user interface. AJAX integration is possible in SharePoint 2007, but AJAX enabled controls and especially AJAX Control Toolkit controls don’t always work in SharePoint as they do in non-SharePoint environments. There are usually quirks and rendering issues. SharePoint 2010 will support AJAX Control Toolkit natively. There is even a “ajaxtoolkit.js” JavaScript file in the LAYOUTS folder. AJAX Control Toolkit will also be a part of standard ASP.NET 4.0.
   
4. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
   I would be surprised, if I wouldn’t see WCF as a key player in SharePoint 2010; it’s been long over-due. After all, Windows Workflow Foundation has been a core piece of SharePoint since 2007. WCF provides a lot of improvements over ASMX web services.WS* standards are built right into WCF and not as a separate add-on. However, I found only few SVC services in the “_vti_bin” folder (SharePoint web services folder), but again I am new to the platform and I need to deep dive into functionality a bit more. All ASMX web services of SharePoint 2007 are also available in SharePoint 2010.
5. Business Connectivity Services (next step from BDC)
   Currently, Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is known as BDC in SharePoint 2010, but according to the SharePoint 2010 sneak peek site, it will soon be renamed to BCS. The cool thing about BCS is that it looks a lot like entity framework. There is a quick example on the sneak peak site; take a look.

Overall, I am sure that you will like the new development enhancements in SharePoint 2010.

Talha