I am not an apologist for SharePoint however do feel that the tenor of the direction of this thread puts the blame in the wrong place. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves" (and the software company evangelists and/or agencies that deploy the software). SharePoint (2007-2010) is like any other Microsoft software that comes featured laden with the idea that the company will determine which features best address the issues within the corpus. OOB is suboptimal and meant to be; the point of enterprise software like bespoke clothing, is tailoring to the enterprise.
I have worked for agencies that have done no configuration for SP search, one of the most configurable and sophisticated search engines available. Most clients have serious search issues and SP can address most of those if a user-centered approach is applied. This means having a search IA/UX involved from the outset.
The biggest issue that I've found is that the enterprise assumes that the agency will configure search. The agency promises to do so and assumes that the UX professional will do it. The UX professional does not know enough about search and so assumes the developer will do it. The developers spend their time scraping knuckles trying to get the system set up, doesn't have the information to custom configure search and...no one told them they were responsible for delivering the Google experience without Google.
The most successful path is one that analyses stakeholder/user behavior, frustrations and expectations, maps specific features to these, configures specifically to enterprise constraints and culture, measures and refines. Yes it takes time, yes it involves some custom development and yes, your mileage will vary. Like any content management system, getting it up and running is no walk in the park. SharePoint is no different.
I am sorry that you had a bad experience with SharePoint. It can be a very good product. And, it is not too late to get the search working right for you, your colleagues and your collections. Like Jessica Rabbit, SharePoint
2007/2010 is not bad. It is just drawn that way by an incomplete deployment strategy.
marianne
p.s. Julie, I am surprised by your link issue as it seem antithetical to common UX practice that would discourage using color to distinguish links for user types due to a large contingent that are color blind. Perhaps SharePoint was saving you from this or I misunderstood what you were trying to achieve.
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