Sharepoint - how scary?

[hassafrass]

I am an experienced web developer. Lots of open source experience, I have used and worked with Drupal for many companies, I am also experienced in .NET .

I will be the sole developer on a sharepoint project that will require a custom skin, and custom modules with a set of functionality. Forone of those modules I will need to integrate the Google map API.

I have made some assumptions about Sharepoint based on reading site informatio ( I don't get my hands on it until January) that roles and permissions and content management are part of a core set of functionality. I do not, however understand how to approach Sharepoint as a developer. What tools can I use, what restrictitions should I expect, what gotchas should I know about before hand? How can I prepare myself, to waste the least amount of time going 'what the...'

Thanks for any information - and perhaps general places to look on the internet for such information.

[Jay Mueller]

As a new developer I would recommend starting out with the Developers Portal specific to developing on the MOSS platform. A good place to start would be the Software Development Kit.

For changing the look and feel the site is driven by several CSS style sheets and templates that can be edited using the right designers. Here is break down of the MS based tools for developing on the SharePoint Framework.

SharePoint Designer: FrontPage look and feel and can only do design related customizations. Some very flat and not very robust data customizations can be made.

Visual Studio .Net 2005: Web Part creation, packaging web parts to deploy in your SharePoint environment, code changes are easier I think in this tool.

Developers Portal: msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905503.aspx