Microsoft SharePoint, the business-themed service that lets companies create their own social networks for their employees, has announced a big change for SharePoint authors. A SharePoint page no longer has to have a title area. Instead, this feature has been changed over to a Banner web part in the authoring backend.
In a blog post, Microsoft says this change will now allow SharePoint authors to create pages with some new layouts, including banners that can be added to any column on a page, and even support for a full-width banner section.
The blog post added:
Now, with this flexibility, you can choose to have no banners, one banner, or multiple banners on a SharePoint page. If you decide to remove the title area, you can choose a Banner to restore the title.
Two more Banner layouts are also available for SharePoint pages. One is the Author banner, which puts the emphasis on the creator of a page, including a large image of the author on top. The other new Banner layout is Fade. As the name implies, it takes the main image in the Banner and fades that image slightly from the left to the right side.
If a SharePoint page with these new Banners and layouts is shared via an email message, Microsoft says:
The pre-rollout title areas and Banners will be supported in email. When users send a Page or News as email, the layout will change slightly: the banner image will appear above the banner text.
Microsoft actually started rolling out this change to SharePoint pages at the end of July and it was completed at the end of August. The company still plans to make even more changes and improvements for SharePoint authors in the future including some "enhanced page templates experiences" that will include even more new Banner layouts and more.