Click here to find out the detailed feature breakdown for each of the Sharepoint 2010 editions (Foundation, Standard and Enterprise)

One of the major deficiencies in SharePoint 2007 was the difficulty involved in making sites comply with accessibility standards.

SharePoint 2010 has made significant improvements in this area including standards compliance, keyboard support, tab support, reduced use of tables etc.

There is a useful article on some of the specific improvements that can be found on http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/03/09/accessibility-and-sharepoint-2010.aspx

I'm sure there will be specific areas that still require some customisation to get to the level of support expected for accessibility standards but the amount of work to acheive this will be significantly reduced!

In my Infopath form (below) I have added a dropdown column which is bound to the customer column in the SharePoint list.  In this example I have selected Customer A.  The second dropdown for contacts pulls back the data from the contact field in the Sharepoint list but is filtered by the chosen company.Previously this wasn’t a supported feature in browser based forms.

Back to other Controls & Rule management next...

As per Infopath 2007 when you first launch the designer you have a selection of form templates to select from (see below)

However, there is also a new feature which allows you to build the form using pre-defined Page Layouts and Section Layouts (see below).  This will certainly speed up the building at least of fairly standard forms.You will also notice the now standard Office ribbon menu has now been adopted for Infopath JPart 2 to follow shortly will explain more about the new controls that are available and the improved management of data rules. 

In addition to the launches of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 I'm also looking forward to the new version of Infopath - which funnily enough will be called Infopath 2010.

Infopath is a great tool for designing and deploying feature rich forms which ehlp to automate business processes, particularly when integrated with SharePoint.

Infopath 2010 will be offering a range of new controls, improved rule handling, quick form publishing (yes!) and the ability to edit Sharepoint List forms.  For more detail have a look on the Infopath Team Blog here

Very much looking forward to being able to use Infopath 2010 as soon as possible!

The release of Sharepoint 2010 is on the horizon and the community are starting to get excited about the potetnial new functionality coming along.

Have a look here for some sneak peak information and videos of what is coming through

Schools, teachers and students can now access and download Microsoft development software Free of Charge!

This is via the Dreamspark Program:

The software available includes:

As part of their ongoing commitment to delivering Sharepoint based solutions into the NHS, Novotronix are working closely with the Microsoft Healthcare team.

One of the key areas of Microsoft's initiative is the development of the NHS CUI MOSS guidance and solutions enablers.  The solutions enablers are a suite of Sharepoint sites, lists and templates for things such as Policies & Procedures, Meeting Management and ScoreCarding.  These solutions enablers complement the wider offerings that Novotronix already offer clients within the NHS.

More details & a full list of the solution enablers can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/nhs/content/articles/microsoft-healthcare-partners-trained-in-nhs-cui-moss-guidance-and-solution.aspx  

Today, Microsoft and HiSoftware are pleased to announce the release of the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0.  The AKS v2.0 provides an accessible development framework and significantly reduces the level of effort and knowledge needed by customers and partners to improve the accessibility of SharePoint based sites and applications.

See http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/03/09/announcing-the-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-aks-v2-0.aspx for further details... 

Its only fairly recently that I've started to feel that I can get anything useful from Twitter (and even now it is a case of filtering out the masses of irrelevant stuff).  I find that it is one of the most useful ways of picking up nuggets of information relating to our industry.

I've put in a bit more effort recenty to my Tweet and will hopefully use it to post out a few littel bits of useful snippits relating to Sharepoint, Infopath and other such related stuff.  Obviously I'd add in the odd bit of generally useless info about what I'm up to personally as well.

If you want to follow my Tweet go to http://www.twitter.com/steveej1