YASR: Navigation in SharePoint 2007, Part One

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] One of the pain points of SharePoint 2003 (especially Windows SharePoint Services), is the lack of navigation possibilities. It’s quite hard to find out which sub sites are created under a WSS site. Also when you’re on a WSS site, you don’t have any clue or way to navigate to the parent site hierarchy. With a small amount of customization however, it’s possible to solve these issues. In my SharePoint classes I always show how to create a breadcrumbs web part and drop-down navigation web part. For a pre-fabricated solution, check out Tom’s tree navigation web part. In SharePoint 2007 these web parts become obsolete, navigation is available everywhere. First of all, breadcrumbs are everywhere! Take a look at the screenshot below; it’s displaying a Contact list on a site. Notice the breadcrumbs to navigate back to the site.

When we drill down to the list item itself and edit the list item, the breadcrumbs will allow the user to navigate back the list item, the list and the site! I’m not going to display all the places where you can find those breadcrumbs, but they are really everywhere!

On site level there are also a couple of new options. First of all you can specify if you want to show the quick launch on the left hand side of the site’s home page. Additionally you can enable a tree view.

When you enable this tree view, it will show all document libraries and lists of the current site. The screen shot below is taken from a sub folder in a document library; notice that the sub folder item is bold in the tree view.

This is the first part of the navigation features in SharePoint 2007, in the next part I will focus on navigation between sites. So for now, navigation in SharePoint 2007 yet another SharePoint relief!