However, in recent years things haven’t been smooth for WordPress/Automattic. There have been rampant security issues with their plugin architecture, lots of corporate drama, and many questionable design decisions in recent years.

One of the decisions, the Gutenberg editor, has never really clicked for me. It feels finicky and clunky. Clicking into the wrong block, wrestling with the block switcher, watching a carefully formatted paragraph rearrange itself because I hit the wrong key. I got so fed up with it I stopped writing, and I don’t want to use the classic editor because it’s really classic at this point. I wanted a native macOS WordPress app to get around Gutenberg, and while a few native Mac apps exist for WordPress, none of them hit the mark for me.

So I decided to build something better, and that led me to desire to build a native Mac app for WordPress. There’s just one problem: I’m not a Swift developer nor do I particularly want to be.

Enter Claude Code

I’m going to be honest from the beginning—I am a huge Claude fanboy. After consulting with Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is a good product in its own right, I didn’t know how good GenAI could really be until I started working with Claude. The chat experience, Cowork, and of course Claude Code are all spectacular; and Anthropic pushes out so many updates it’s bewildering (although that’s true right now for any GenAI company).

I wanted an application that was native to macOS, did all the basics of WordPress content management well, got around my frustrations with modern WordPress, and ultimately allowed me to enjoy blogging again.

This is the very first prompt in Claude Code for this app:

That kicked off the Superpowers skill for the first of many times, and three days later I had a first release. The result is Quill, a native macOS app for writing and managing WordPress content. No browser required.

What Quill Does

Quill connects to your WordPress site using the built-in REST API and application passwords. No plugin to install, no third-party service, no subscription. Just your site URL and a password you generate from your WordPress profile.

Once you’re connected, the sidebar shows your posts, pages, and media library. It feels and runs like a great Mac app. Below is a screenshot and highlights on its capabilities.

The editor is built on Tiptap, a modern rich text framework, running inside a native web view. It supports everything you’d expect: headings, bold, italic, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, tables, and links. And it outputs clean Gutenberg-compatible HTML so your posts look exactly right when they reach WordPress. That compatibility had to be a defining aspect to this application, and it turned out way better than I imagined.

Local drafts let you write offline. Start a post without a WiFi connection, keep it in Quill until you’re ready, then publish. When it goes to WordPress, it disappears from the local list automatically.

The media library is fully integrated. Browse your uploaded images in a sidebar, drag a Finder image straight into a post, resize it by dragging the handles, and set alignment with a click.

The link picker is a small thing that makes a real difference. Click the link button, start typing a post title, and a popover shows matching posts from your site. It works the same as the Gutenberg editor.

Post settings live in a collapsible panel alongside the editor: categories, tags, slug, excerpt, scheduling, and discussion. Pages get a parent page picker instead. Everything you’d expect from managing content in WordPress.

And there’s an AI writing assistant powered by the Claude API. Highlight a selection and ask it to expand, contract, or reformat into a table or list. It can also generate an entire post from a prompt. Quill first learns your writing style from posts you’ve already published (you can select which posts to use for analysis), then uses that to match your voice. It’s optional, gated on an API key, and genuinely useful to get over that dreaded blinking cursor. I continue to explore avenues to integrate the Claude API in things I build.

Quill also intentionally doesn’t follow many UI approaches from Tahoe. I find Tahoe to be aesthetically and interaction-wise really bad. Claude Code did generate for me in its first pass a Tahoe-esque UI, but through iteration with Claude Design and my preferences, we got to the current look. I recognize it still could benefit from more aesthetic, interaction, and copy improvements; but for a 1.0, I am very pleased.

The Build Process

I had been experimenting with Claude Code to build WordPress themes, plugins, and other static web content. This, however, was a whole different project. I was entering territory I knew nothing about. The only thing I had was an idea and a lot of opinions on what it should be.

I loved everything about the process. It was so much fun to iterate and see progress so quickly. Keep in mind, this app took all of three calendar days (and a lot of maxed 5-hour limits!) to create. I kept thinking Claude Code couldn’t do what I asked, but whether it was a small tweak or a totally different approach to something, it kept pumping it out.

I can say that even though I understand next to none of the code Claude Code produced, which is arguably the biggest negative of vibe coding, I could not have gotten to this point without my experience and foundations in UX and software development. AI generated code doesn’t become meaningful and useful until someone who understands how to move from concept to production uses it. Claude Code is the closest thing to magic I’ve ever experienced, although I know it’s anything but magic, it seems functionally indistinguishable. However, that doesn’t excuse us from understanding how to do software development, and the more that person understands about what is being generated only leads to a better result.

If you’re interested, here are the architectural highlights:

• Swift 6 with strict concurrency
• SwiftUI (macOS 13+) for all native UI
• WKWebView hosting a Tiptap editor loaded from esm.sh
• SQLite.swift for local storage
• WordPress REST API — no plugins required

Download Quill

I decided to not open source the application but make it available for anyone to download and use. The product microsite is below hosted on Github Pages.

https://cpoteet.github.io/Quill-Releases/

However, there are still a few core aspects of the platform I wish Microsoft would address to advance it even further. Here are some wish lists items I have for SharePoint Online as of the end of 2023.

Modernize the Settings Pages

It is puzzling to me why the SharePoint team has spent so much time advancing the front end with the modern experience but has completely left the majority of the settings pages render in the classic UI. Not only is it jarring to go from modern to classic simply for admin experiences, but there are even feature parity mismatches between the classic pages and the modern experience. I understand that a lot of things that an admin would have to edit are now editable in the modern UI, but I would still love to see the admin pages get the same attention.

Make Templating Suck Less

Templating in SharePoint Online is still way more complicated than it needs to be. Site Designs are limited in what they can support, and PnP Remote Provisioning is a pain (particularly in the sovereign clouds). We should be able to create a site, customize as needed, and create another site from that template easily in the site creation experience by designating those as tenant templates. We can do it with Microsoft Teams, but for some reason it’s still very painful to create SharePoint site templates.

In addition to site templates, I really wish the page template experience would get a facelift. Right now when you create a page template it is limited to only that site collection. That’s a far cry from the old page layout model we used to have. I don’t miss master pages, but I do miss the flexibility and universal deployment of page layouts. It doesn’t appear the new brand center is going to solve this problem either.

Bring More Search Extensibility into the Admin Center

Right now extending Microsoft Search is limited to a handful of options in the admin center. While it has continued to improve and become more flexible, if you really need a lot of customizing, you’re forced to deploy the PnP Search Web Parts. I understand that keeping the solution as an open source solution does have some benefits, but it also requires deploying, updating, and it also limits support provided directly by Microsoft.

Much like the page layout comments above, as a long-time implementer, I remember the days of having a lot of customization directly inside the SharePoint admin experience. The Semantic Index is one of the most exciting advancements to search in Microsoft 365 in a long time, and I’d love to see that married with more integrated customization.

Advance the Term Store and Content Type Publishing

The Term Store and Content Type publishing have barely changed since both were originally made available. The Term Store has changed very little since SharePoint 2010, and there are so many things that would be wonderful additions to the taxonomic capabilities of a modern content management system. Advancing the polyhierarchical flexibility of the Term Store and significantly improved reporting are just two things that could make a big difference. This is especially true as tools like Syntex and Viva Topics are leaning into using the Term Store in really exciting ways.

Content Type Publishing is one of the most puzzling platform additions. The concept of Content Type Publishing is good, but in practice it is a nightmare to manage. From publishing errors, not handling changes well, and more, it’s not nearly as useful as it needs to be in a modern SharePoint architecture world.

SharePoint Advanced Management Should Be Free

I understand why Microsoft has introduced SharePoint Advanced Management as a premium tier. They are trying to find new revenue sources for customers who have already their base license investments. However, I feel like most of the features including sensitivity default label controls, reporting, and the lifecycle management policies should be available to all tenants. Requiring a $3/month license for every licensed user in the tenant really makes this a hard sell. This is especially important as customers are preparing for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and trying to get a customer to buy SAM and Copilot licenses is challenging.

Conclusion

There are other things I could get into such as expanding and maturing the out-of-the-box web parts and expanding tenant-level experiences, but this list stands out to me as some of the items that I interact with every day and would love to see progressed. Hopefully in time these items will get attention to improve the core experiences that have made SharePoint great for so long.

Thankfully, Microsoft has recently enabled through PowerShell (UI forthcoming) the ability to change the scope of this search input to be tenant wide. The script Microsoft shared only works for one site though, and when you want to do it for an entire intranet, no one wants to run that script for every site.

Since I am not the one to trust with PowerShell, my colleague Arya Parsee put together the following script to update as many site collections as desired from a CSV file.

$csvFile = "C:\file.csv"
$creds = Get-Credential
$table = Import-Csv $csvFile -Delimiter ","
Write-Host "Begin"
foreach ($row in $table)
{
  Write-Host  $row.SiteCollection
  Connect-PnPOnline -Url $row.SiteCollection -Credentials $creds 
  $web = Get-PnPWeb
  $web.SearchScope = 1 
  $web.Update()
  Invoke-PnPQuery
}
Write-Host "End"

As mentioned the script needs to point to a CSV so create a CSV with the following format pictured below, and change the first line of the script to point to that file.

The last things to remember are to run PowerShell as an administrator, make sure the account that you authenticate to run the script has necessary permissions, and I would suggest make a .ps1 file out of the script and running in PowerShell.

After running your script, the search box will update!

I’d argue it’s impossible to offer the customer a good experience without first ensuring that employees have good experiences on the job. When your employees feel supported and cared for, they will often put more of themselves into their work, and their energy and thoughtfulness will flow downstream to customers.

Let’s look about a few aspects of providing great employee experiences.

First Things First: Take Care of Compensation and Benefits

One of the most important ways to ensure that you are providing a good employee experience is to offer compensation and benefits that remove any questions about whether they are able to provide for themselves and those they care for. I have heard it said that an organization should be generous and pay enough to ensure that salary is never an issue for the employee. Most employees realize their experience levels and skills draw different salary amounts, but it is not helpful when your employees feel as though they are being underpaid for the services they provide to the organization and customers.

A part of providing great salary and benefits is ensuring compensation is always being adjusted based on peoples’ experience and the value they add to the organization. The organization I work for has consistently adjusted my salary positively as my experience and role have evolved, and it continues to reassure me that I am valued.

A Little Recognition Goes a Long Way

Money and benefits, however, represent only one aspect of what it means to feel valued within an organization. To be honest, I am not professionally motivated by money. Money is, of course, a necessity, but it is not usually the biggest motivator. Studies have shown this is true. 

In a column on Entreprenuer.com titled “Money Is Nice, But It’s Not Enough to Motivate Employees,” consultants Doug White and Polly White write, “Money is important, but we all want and need more than compensation alone. Our work indicates that people also want to be recognized, contributing members of a winning team.”

The times when I have felt most valued at work, and when I have felt that I was making the most impact, have come when my company has recognized my efforts. Obviously, that happens most often when I do great work for our customers, but sometimes it is for services I provide internally, such as sales, marketing and process development.

Make sure your employees are consistently recognized, and build a culture of encouragement.

Support Training and Career Development

Like probably most of the people reading this column, I work in technology, and technology is never a static discipline. As the platforms and approaches we use change, we must stay up to date on the developments in order to serve our customers well.

Because it is so important for technology professionals to keep their skills up to date, one of the most tangible steps you can take to ensure your organization offers a good employee experience is to provide training and career development opportunities.

My employer places a priority on career development, and for the past two years I have been allowed to attend the Microsoft Ignite conference. During the week of the conference, my only responsibilities are to take in all the information and network with peers, vendors and clients. When I return to work, I share what I learned with my co-workers.

Conferences are just one way to allow your employees to learn and grow. Instead of attending conferences, some would prefer to take classes, read books or go to networking events. Whatever method works, the important thing is companies should not expect their employees to work 40 hours (or more) every week and still keep up on the ever-changing technological and professional landscape.

Offer Mentoring Opportunities

Another way to help your employees develop professionally is to offer mentoring opportunities. Mentoring is a topic I am very passionate about. I have written before that I view mentoring as the single most important investment an organization can make in its people. Nothing is more frustrating for employees than to feel as though they are not being cared for by other, usually more senior, employees in the organization. Also, you are not making good use of your human resources if your employees are not consistently learning from others and, in turn, helping others to learn.

As is the case with training and development, it is important to give your employees time at work to participate in mentoring programs.

In my case, each week I have at least two conversations with leadership (including my boss) to discuss ways I can grow and to get to know each other as people. I also have the opportunity to meet with two other team members to work on ways to help them grow. I think I learn far more from the people I mentor than they learn from me!

If you make a wise investment in your people, everyone will benefit.

Investing in the Employee Experience Pays Off

Each of these topics is an important aspect of creating a good employee experience by showing your employees that you care about them. Take the time to assess your company’s offerings in each of these areas and try to find practical short- and long-term ways to improve your efforts.

You will find that any investments you make in your employees will lead to improvements in all areas of your business — most noticeably in how your employees care for and serve your customers.

(Originally posted on CMS Wire.)

In the following article, we will look at how Microsoft has evolved the usage of Office 365 on macOS. Office 365 is a big umbrella, but we will concentrate on the following pieces: desktop applications, e-mail, VOIP/IM, and web-based collaboration.

Desktop Applications

When we think of Microsoft, it is hard to not think immediately of Microsoft Office. Office has long been the standard bearer in productivity applications. Apple has tried to enter the space with their iLife suite, but it has never managed to displace Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, for a long time Office on the Mac was a very sad story.

Microsoft released Office 2010, 2013, and 2016 while releasing only one version of Office for Mac. Office 2011 was a poor attempt to bring the collaboration paradigms of Office, such as the Ribbon and SharePoint integration, to Mac users. It used old APIs and interaction models that left Mac users limping for a long time. Thankfully, Microsoft has changed all of this with the release of Office 2016 for Mac.

This version runs under the same banner of Office 365 with its constant stream of updates and innovation. The updated versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote have drastically improved upon its predecessor (Outlook will be discussed later), and the best part is that the Microsoft team made a set of applications that feel native to Office UI paradigms as well as a great Mac application. Despite some feature parity issues between Office on Windows and macOS, Office for Mac shines today on macOS.

E-mail

As much as we may wish to move away from e-mail, it has been thoroughly entrenched in our workflows. Microsoft continues to shine with Microsoft Exchange and its implementation in the larger umbrella of Office 365. There was a day when Mac users were forced to use “light” version of Outlook for the Web, but those days are gone with a quick and modern e-mail interface. In addition to e-mail, Exchange continues to shine with calendar and contact management as well.

Exchange first came to the Mac through Microsoft Entourage, which was the early version of Outlook for the Mac. It was, well, a burning dumpster fire of an application. It has the dubious reputation of maybe the worst Mac e-mail client ever created. However, Outlook in Office 2016 has improved greatly. It feels much more stable than Entourage, but it suffers from greater feature mismatch between Windows and the Mac. While Outlook on Windows offers great functionality, it is much less so on the Mac. The Outlook for Mac user voice site notes many issues including not using native macOS notifications and support for other e-mail and calendaring services. Hopefully, in time, it will catch up to its Windows counterpart. Even if you do not want to use Outlook other options remain. macOS natively supports Exchange in their stock calendar, e-mail, contacts, and reminders applications, and there are many third-party options as well such as the one I use: Airmail.

VOIP/IM

The Microsoft VOIP and IM story was also not good for a very long time. Mac users were subjected to Lync for Mac 2011, which was also a very poor application. Thankfully, Microsoft has recently released the new Skype for Business Mac application, and it has received a dramatic rewrite and rethinking. Call quality is much more solid, and the IM experience has also improved greatly.

Like Outlook for Mac, Skype for Business on Mac still lags behind the Windows version. Many issues still remain, and I hope that development for this application goes as fast as it does for the rest of the Office line. Even basic things such as enabling “Do Not Disturb” on macOS when presenting, application screen sharing, and file sharing are not yet available. The Skype for Business User Voice will tell you what is being worked on for future development cycles.

Web-Based Collaboration

When I use the phrase “web-based collaboration” I am using it to largely refer to SharePoint and the other Office 365 portals such as Delve. SharePoint has also had a checkered past with supporting browsers other than Internet Explorer. However, each version since SharePoint 2010 has improved that story, and with the latest changes to the SharePoint list, library, and publishing experiences it has largely ceased to be an issue.

SharePoint in previous versions would limit functionality to Mac users with dependencies such as ActiveX for datasheet views among other features, but those dependencies have been removed over time. I no longer, as an implementer or user, have any hesitation about using any modern browser with SharePoint in Office 365.

The one area that has changed very recently was the OneDrive sync client. Just over a week ago, Microsoft released the new OneDrive sync client for macOS. This not only greatly improves the stock OneDrive sync experience, but it allows for syncing SharePoint content to the Mac. I have used the beta for a couple of months, and I never had any issues using it. The SharePoint integration is also much improved in the Office desktop applications over Office 2011. Overall, the OneDrive sync client is a great addition to macOS.

Residual Applications

There are still several applications for Office 365 that remain Windows-only. These apps include SharePoint Designer and the PowerBI desktop application.  If you need to run these applications, there are options for you. macOS provides Boot Camp which provides native support to boot into Windows on your Mac, and great virtualization options such as Parallels and VMWare Fusion are available. I prefer the virtualization option, and it has provided me the opportunity to use those applications when I need them.

Conclusion

Microsoft should be applauded for their work to bring their great suite of applications to macOS and other platforms. The future is very bright when we look at allowing our people to use whatever device or operating system they choose to use Office 365 service. The macOS story has been one of drastic improvement, and all of us can work with that kind of progress.

The whole eBook will take about 20-30 minutes to read. If you have any comments about my submission, in particular, please do share them with me.

How to Conduct Great User Interviews

I am going to tip my hat and declare my final assessment up front: the app in its current form is not very good. It needs a significant amount of work, which I will address in this post. Let’s first start by looking at what the team did well with the app.

The Good

There are a few things that the app does do well, and it’s important to recognize those things.

• The app had no problem handling on-premise or Office 365 site collections.
• The “Sites” tab is an interesting use of the Office Graph to surface sites, and I’m glad they have included sites that are “followed” (especially since the tags and notes feature was removed).
• Search in the app is surprisingly fast.
• The presentation of tabular list data is nice.
• I like the use of the Office Graph to surface content on the site landing pages.

The Bad

Now we will turn our attention to the negative aspects of the app. I want to be constructive in my critique because I want to see the app be successful.

The first, most glaring thing wrong with the app is the inter-app dependency. To give you an example let me show you the process to open a document from a document library using the app.

1. Open the SharePoint app, and wait for it to load
2. Open your site
3. Click the dreaded hamburger icon, and choose a library
4. The OneDrive for Business app is opened, and wait for it to load
5. Find your document in the library, and tap to open
6. The corresponding Office app is opened, and wait for it load
7. Document is presented

That is asinine. Why do I need three apps to open a single document? At this point the utility of the SharePoint app itself is severely undermined since document retrieval should be the primary use case. Microsoft offers a page explaining why the OneDrive app is necessary, but it doesn’t actually provide a good answer.

It is important to keep in mind that if you are missing an app in the sequence above you are given a screen telling you to download the necessary app. I understand that the default iOS document viewer is not very kind to Office apps, but they can learn something from Dropbox. The Dropbox iOS app has a wonderful (I believe custom) document viewer, which is shown right away, and then the option is provided to edit the document, which opens an Office app.

Also, the document opening experience is inconsistent. If you try to open a document from the site landing page for some reason it does use a document preview. I am not sure why it does in that situation but not the others.

Here are some additional problems in the current app:

• When trying to open different sites, using the same site template, in the same site collection sometimes it opens a WebView and other times it gives the native app view.
• The “Links” section of the app is completely useless. There are several things that would be better suited for inclusion.
• The app search, while fast, gives little context on why the site or content is a good match for your query. It’s just a titled list with an icon, and I never got any “recommended” search results to work.
• When you open list items you are presented with a UI option to edit the item, but when you press it you get a “coming soon” message. I don’t know why MSFT continues to include UI elements that aren’t functional.
• People search provides very little utility above the Delve web app.
• The iPad version is an obvious afterthought. It is simply the iPhone version blown up.
• The global navigation (tab bar) disappears when opening a site for some reason.

Recommendation

Right now I would forego the app entirely and just stick with the Office apps (which are really great especially on an iPad). Until the Microsoft team delivers on their promise for an “intranet in your pocket” it will add little to your SharePoint experience.

I want Microsoft to succeed on this, and I want to push clients away from expensive development tasks to make a UI adaptive in lieu of the app. It is just not there yet.

When you look at responsive frameworks, while they  vary in size, scope, and intent, they all generally have the following things going for them:

• They are well-tested, open-source solutions with many talented developers working on them.
• Responsive frameworks are a great learning tool into patterns and practices for responsive web design.
• They allow developers to get a jumpstart on productivity and not rehash the same tasks for every project.
• These frameworks introduce standardization on many levels from naming to interaction design that many developers lack the ability to do well.

So with all these benefits you have to ask the question: Why wouldn’t you want to use a responsive framework? After all, it seems to solve some of the most pressing problems. Well, the case is not as open and shut as it would seem, and for the remainder of this article I will outline the reasons I personally forgo the use of responsive frameworks.

Before I get into the negatives of using responsive frameworks I should mention that at the time of this article both Zurb and Twitter are about to release new versions of their responsive frameworks. I will do the best I can to ensure my critiques take into account their newest versions.

Debugging and Code Familiarity

Responsive frameworks seem all well and good on the surface: use these classes, or include this bit of JavaScript and you have yourself a component. The problem starts when you run into something that does not work as expected. I remember the first time I had to debug another developer’s use of Foundation on a SharePoint web part, and I found myself agonizing on how to debug this code that I simply was not familiar with. This is also something that happens quite a bit when you add the complexity of a framework on top of the already present complexity of SharePoint’s out-of-the-box styles and interactions.

I simply do not want to have to include code that I am not intimately familiar with, and even if you as a “normal” developer got to the point of understanding all of Bootstrap’s CSS, JavaScript, and other APIs a new version would come out. It simply is too much to ask. The 4.0 Alpha of Bootstrap has over 40 SASS partials that spits out enormous amounts of CSS when compiled.

Code Bloat

This is a common criticism of responsive frameworks and justifiably so. The problem with these frameworks is that you have to include a lot unless you want to spend the time pruning away the unnecessary CSS. Well known web developer Aaron Gustafson (and author of a book on progressive enhancement) has this to say:

“I find Foundation, Bootstrap, and similar frameworks interesting from an educational standpoint, but I would never use one when building a production site. For prototyping a concept, sure, but to take one of these into production you need to be rigorous in your removal of unused CSS and JavaScript or you end up creating a heavy, slow experience for your users.”

Thankfully, you can pick and choose which code to bring in through opting out of partials in both Bootstrap and Foundation, and both Bootstrap and Zurb’s Foundation for Sites have customizable downloads to choose what to download. However, that does not solve the problem of code bloat.

Let’s look at Zurb’s Foundation for Sites grid system (version 5 since version 6 is not available for public viewing at this time). Even if all I wanted was to just include the grid system, you are looking at 1,146 lines of CSS when un-minified (and in a semi-expanded format no less). That is a dizzying amount of CSS that no one is going to prune for unneeded CSS. As a counterpoint, my custom SASS mixin to generate a grid generates only a few dozen lines of CSS. We live in a world dominated by 3G networks not fiber ones, and this amount of code also contributes to the problem of page size and load time where SharePoint already struggles with out of the gate.

Presentational Class Names

This is a small one, but it is one that bothers me to no end. Let us look at two examples of using the grid system for Bootstrap and Foundation for Apps respectively.

<div class="row">
  <div class="col-xs-12 col-md-8"></div>
  <div class="col-xs-6 col-md-4"></div>
</div>

<div class="grid-block">
  <div class="small-6 grid-block"></div>
  <div class="small-2 small-offset-2 grid-block"></div>
</div>

That actually makes my head hurt. I agree with Rachel Andrews who says: “Recently CSS frameworks have blossomed, many of which allow the creation of complex grids, at a cost of embedding a description of the layout into the markup itself”. Granted the idea of “semantic class names” is a bit of a misnomer, but this embedding of presentation into markup makes me cringe.

Stunted Developer Growth

When a developer continually uses something like a responsive framework it could greatly impede their ability to understand how to actually code responsively by themselves. This limits their overall ability to grow as a developer, and we have seen this with a generation of jQuery developers who don’t know JavaScript. I fear the same could happen with responsive web design. If you want to learn patterns and practices from a responsive framework then that’s fine, but don’t let it be the end of learning how to do responsive development.

Opinionated Interaction Design

This of all the negatives is for me the deal breaker. Let me open this section with a quote by Steven Bradley in his cons list for responsive frameworks:

The framework can become an arbitrary design constraint. You may find yourself designing to the framework instead of selecting the best framework for your design.

This exactly spells out what I see as the worst trait of these frameworks. As a proud interaction designer (I choose that carefully over “web designer”), I pride myself on knowing trends, options, and practices for interaction design models for all kinds of needs and problems.

For one example let us examine the off-canvas menu for Foundation for Apps. As you look at its rather plain interaction design and decide you would rather handle your multi-level taxonomy in a different way. What are you to do? Change the underlying JavaScript? It simply “satisfices” the off-canvas need whereas something like jQuery.mmenu is a significantly better plugin with nearly limitless options for extensibility and interaction choices. This is just one example of when you try and develop a component for everybody it ends up satisfying no one.

SharePoint and Framework Specifics

Each of these criticisms can apply generally to frameworks in general and using them with SharePoint specifically. I honestly did not think anyone would suggest using Bootstrap or Foundation with SharePoint due to these reasons until I read Pro SharePoint 2013 Branding and Responsive Web Development. I should say at the outset I do not mean to demean the authors nor have this be a full review like I did for SharePoint 2013 Branding and User Interface Design. I simply want to point out some things I noticed while reading the book as an example of using SharePoint and something like Bootstrap.

What I felt most frustrated reading this book, and why I would not give it to a new designer (who I think the book is intended for), is because the book teaches to a framework not the underlying how and why of how it actually works. This to me is not a good pedagogical approach to teaching someone responsive web design. I want to know the ins and outs of media query creation, choosing units in my breakpoints (and the associated content strategy implications), and more.

I also got more frustrated when I saw the section entitled: “Fix Common Responsive Issues with SharePoint” (pg. 146ff), which should have been titled “Fixing SharePoint Now That You Have Wholesale Included Bootstrap.” Fixes include some awful hacks around the box model being set to border-box (pg. 147, which the proper fix is to scope it carefully not undo and redo), managing span floats from Bootstrap (pg. 149), and writing device-specific values for media queries such as max-width: 767px to target an iPad (pg. 156).

One of the authors, Eric Overfield, manages a Bootstrap/SharePoint starter package entitled “Responsive SharePoint” on Codeplex. In the book one of the authors makes the point that you do not have to include every component from Bootstrap, but this solution does not do that and has over 7,000 lines of CSS (unminified) that includes the framework plus their additional styles on top!

An Alternative

So what is our alternative if we do not use a large responsive framework? That is why I built and maintain Archetype for SharePoint on Github. It seeks to be an unopinionated and minimal approach to starting to use SASS, responsive mixins, and starter layout/master page (it is due for some upgrades which are forthcoming). It certainly does not include modules like off-canvas or modals, but it provides me the minimum I need to use to start a UI project in SharePoint that allows me to go find the best interaction design options.

As one of Portal Solution’s full time remote employees, I’d like to share some of my experience and things I’ve learned to remain effective while telecommuting. Portal Solutions does allow their employees to work from home on occasion even when they are local, so this would apply on a smaller scale to that work situation as well.

The Pros of Telecommuting

Telecommuting has some advantages that make it a particularly attractive alternative for employees. While the telecommuting situation is most often desired by employees there are benefits to the employer as well.

• Physical commuting ceases to exist. The most amount of commuting I do on a daily basis is from my bedroom into the office, and there are no traffic jams in between.
• There is no dress code. I don’t have to worry about ironing pants or shirts since I work in casual clothes all the time.
• You are close to family. Most jobs pull apart families for at least 40 hours a week, but in this situation that doesn’t exist.
• More flexible than flex time. Telecommuting allows you to work when you want (within reason) as long as you complete your tasks and hourly requirements.
• Less distractions during the day. During a normal work day there are many impromptu meetings and discussions that can interrupt your workflow, and a remote worker often isn’t included in those.
• Cheaper to have employees. If a company is completely a remote workplace then there is no need for physical offices, utilities, etc.

The Cons of Telecommuting

Even though telecommuting appears on the surface to be all positive there are some things to keep in mind.

• No real relationships with co-workers. One of the fun things about work is that your co-workers become your extended family. When you’re remote it’s difficult to build that level of familiarity especially when you miss out on birthday parties, company picnics, etc. Also, sometimes the most productive work happens informally, and it can’t be duplicated working remotely.
• You are close to family. Even though this was listed as a pro it is also a con. Family can often get in the way of productive work if they are not giving you space while you work.
• Chores around the house await. For some reason when you’re working from home the immediacy of needing to clean your apartment/house increases. It’s not fun to work in disheveled environment.
• The need to travel. Some may view this as a pro or con, but telecommuting most often requires of the employee the need to travel whether to the main office or to a client site.
• The blurry line between work and home life. When going into an office it’s much easier to separate your work from home life since they live in different physical locations but not so when telecommuting. Your home is your workplace, and if you’re not careful one can consume the other.

Tips to Stay Productive

While there are pros and cons to working remotely there are some things you can do to stay productive and maintain a good relationship with your employer.

• Stay in constant communication. The responsibility lies with the remote worker to maintain active communication with everyone. You must not let yourself fall between the cracks.
• Be involved when you’re in the office. Whenever I travel to the office I make an extra effort to do activities with my co-workers. This might be meals, hanging out at night, or even getting the opportunity to enjoy those informal conversations.
• Ensure personal accountability. The remote worker is responsible to an even greater degree that their tasks are being done effectively and efficiently. The best way to ensure this is to set up accountability for yourself and not wait on others to do it for you.
• Get into a working mindset. Some remote workers still dress up like they’re going to work to ensure they stay in a work mindset. Do what you need to do to put your attention to work when it’s time to do so.
• Set up work/home boundaries. After you’ve worked your eight or so hours for the day you have to consciously put work down to focus on your home life.

Conclusion

As you can see there are real pros and cons to this lifestyle, but when you take necessary steps to ensure success then both the employee and employer can have a successful experience.

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