manual

52 www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
style the page by using a custom theme. It should be noted that customizing
application.master was not recommended because in the event that something
unfortunate happened to this master page, none of the system settings for a site could
be accessed. Not only does SharePoint Server 2010 add greater flexibility for how to
apply branding to these system pages, it also provides a fail-safe mechanism. If there is
an error in the master page used for pages in the _Layouts, SharePoint will reference the
default.master file so that system pages can still be accessed. Additionally, it is now
possible to use Windows PowerShell to specify a customer master page to system error
pages, login pages, confirmation pages, and other non–site-specific pages. By
combining all of these options, creating a consistent brand across SharePoint is now
easier than ever.
Silverlight
Microsoft Silverlight continues to become more important as a way to provide rich data
to users. SharePoint Server 2010 provides a Web Part that allows users to quickly
integrate their Silverlight applications into SharePoint Server 2010. This makes it easier
for organizations to use SharePoint Server 2010 to store data and use Silverlight to
create dashboards and other applications to provide tools to report and interact with
critical data. The Silverlight Web Part will issue a token to the clients which will then pass
that token to the Silverlight server. The server will then use this token to request data
from the server running SharePoint Server directly. This token passing process will allow
the Silverlight interactivity to remain secure, because SharePoint Server 2010 requires
the token to return data to the Silverlight server, while remaining efficient because the
server running SharePoint Server will not have to proxy the connections.
Conclusion
At its core, the principal uses for SharePoint® Products and Technologies (site
provisioning, Web Parts, collaboration, document management, Web management, and
so on) haven’t changed. What has changed is the amount of out-of-the-box
functionality that can be leveraged within an organization that has implemented this
solution.
From a business perspective, SharePoint Server 2010 solves the need for a centralized
solution that can be used in conjunction with existing software and applications. By
leveraging Microsoft Business Connectivity Services, SharePoint Server 2010 can natively