News
        
        Microsoft Adding Touch Improvements to SharePoint Online
        
        
        
			- By Kurt Mackie
- November 20, 2013
Microsoft will roll out new touch improvements to SharePoint Online, particularly for SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint Sites, over "the next few weeks," the company said on Tuesday.
 The improvements are just for  Office   365 business, education and government users of Microsoft's SharePoint    Online service, according to this this blog post by Mark Kashman, a senior product manager for    SharePoint. Organizations that have deployed SharePoint Server  2013 on premises aren't getting the rollout.
Microsoft is using a new term to describe the touch  enhancements,   calling them "Touch Design mobile pages." They provide  an "app-like   experience" for accessing documents and team sites using  SharePoint   Online, according to Kashman. 
Users of the improved touch interface see a typical "Metro"  or   Windows Store apps interface on SkyDrive Pro or the My SharePoint   portal. However,  documents accessed from those solutions are   represented in a tile-like fashion  for easier touch access. The   tile-like display of the documents is based on the  new Touch Design   interface that Kashman said was first rolled out in July with  Outlook   Web Apps for the Apple iPhone and iPad.
The Touch Design interface will deliver the new touch-based user    experience across device sizes ranging from 11-inch screens to four-inch    screens. The user experience across those screen sizes will be   "exactly  the same," according to Kashman. 
The new touch improvements will just start working on  devices when   the new SharePoint Online update gets released in the coming weeks.
"The new Touch Design pages will load by default on  most devices,"   Kashman wrote in the blog post. "If you're working on  a Surface or   other Windows tablet, Windows Phone, an iPhone or iPad, or an  Android   phone or tablet, when you land on SkyDrive Pro or Sites, the new Touch    Design interface automatically appears."
The improvements are rolling out to SharePoint Online users,  and   it's not clear from Kashman's post if SharePoint Server 2013 users will   get  them, too. Microsoft has been carrying out more rapid  release cycles for its products, which was announced earlier this year.  Part of that effort involves a "cloud  first"   development approach. Possibly, this touch improvement rollout  for   SharePoint Online may be an example of what to expect from that   engineering  shift, with server improvements arriving later. 
Microsoft has also promised the delivery of traditional service    packs, along with the faster release cycle. However, no information was   shared about  whether the next service pack for SharePoint Server 2013   would include the new touch  interface improvements or not.
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office, Exchange Server and SharePoint Server are planned for arrival "early next year." SP1 will include updates to features, along with Windows 8.1 compatibility improvements and performance improvements. No other details were provided by the announcement.
SharePoint Server 2013 uses a different approach for mobile  device content, called "Design Manager device  channels."   This device channels feature is designed to help optimize the  content   display for various mobile device sizes. It enables smartphones and    tablets to access the same content through the same URL, while scaling   touch  targets for different screen sizes.
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
            
        
        
                
                    About the Author
                    
                
                    
                    Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.