SharePoint "V3.0" Features

UI / UX
• Built-in breadcrumb trails, Quicklaunch on every page, Tree-view navigation of sites built-in
• Pages will derive from “master pages“, meaning that you could re-skin an entire SharePoint site by modifying just one template file
• More professional out of the box themes
• FrontPage can directly edit each site's CSS file(s)
• Workflow built-in all over SharePoint, with tight integration with Outlook 12 tasks, FrontPage-based workflow creation, some browser-based workflow creation
• Individual documents can have document-specific workflows
• Item-level security on lists and libraries
• FrontPage has evolved further into a SharePoint designer tool (I read that as: the only SharePoint designer tool), and apparently, ghosted/unghosted pages won't be a problem any longer
• Recycle bin with user and administrator restore features for document libraries and list items
• InfoPath forms can be filled out with only a browser when published as (to?) a SharePoint site (even with FireFox)
• Customizable and extensible search (and search API), including “did you mean“-type search term corrections (Update: It appears this is an SPS vNext feature)
• Lists can be viewed on mobile devices
• The UI is “security sensitive“, meaning that you won't see the button to add an item unless you have the rights to add an item
• Lists support multi-value lookups
• Gantt charts for “Project Tasks“ list type
• Alerts are considerably more powerful, support more filters/RSS integration
• AJAX (Atlas) used generously throughout UI for a better cross-browser experience
• “Welcome menu“ for users (login/logout/change user/edit profile/etc links in one place)
• Apparently, unghosted pages will be cached better, and will remain attached to their “Master Page“, negating much of the performance/caching problem there is today (that didn't seem all that earth shattering, actually)
• Document policies (retention period, archiving rules, audit logs)
• Folders supported in any list (not sure why that was even on their radar)
• Version history can be configured to keep last n records
• Sites' UI can be localized without deploying a new site (multilingual UI)
Integration
• All lists and libraries have RSS feeds, and each list's feed can be customized to include whatever fields you'd like
• Event list RSS feeds include iCal files as enclosures
• Each site has a master “aggregating“ RSS feed
• Outlook 12 can perform 2-way online/offline syncronization of the following list types:
o Contacts
o Events
o Tasks
o Discussion Lists
o Document Libraries (!)
• Discussion lists can create their own e-mail alias in Active Directory, allowing you to e-mail that alias to automatically archive that e-mail (and its attachments) to a SharePoint discussion list
• ALL lists and libraries have version history capability, and only “diffs“ are stored (differences from one change to the next)
• Access treats SharePoint sites as honest-to-goodness data sources
Developer and Administrator-oriented news
• Existing web parts will “just work“ in the new SharePoint web part page framework
• Site definitions/templates will ship in the box for blogs and wikis (blogs can be built directly on your “My Site“!)
• All lists and libraries will have synchronous event handlers (not sure how these work with other interfaces to SharePoint data, like OM, WEBDAV, SOAP, etc., if the event handler has to raise an exception)
• List/library version history is exposed programmatically by way of the OM
• Multiple “content types” (sets of metadata, or “metadata templates“, if you will) for document libraries and lists, that include view information, workflows, bound events.
• FrontPage can edit workflows
• Business Data Catalog (datasource catalog on steroids, apparently) -- What's new is that you can use members of this catalog as fields in lists; in other words, a list can have a lookup that's bound to a SQL Server table, a web service, or any other source that exists in the Business Data Catalog
• XML Schema Documents (XSDs) will be made available for many of the CAML-based ghosted template/config files
• The “STSFLTR“ ISAPI filter is gone, SharePoint sites are “native“ ASP.NET 2.0 sites.
• You'll still need to use the SmartPart (or something of its ilk) to use ASP.NET 2.0 web parts on your SharePoint sites
• Form templates are better defined in XML (they're there now, just without any real easy way to modify them)
• Less XML-based configuration, more UI-based “features“ that can be turned on/off or modified to webs, sites, IIS virtual servers or entire server farms with one click
• SPTimer is given a boost, allowing you to write your own plugins that get executed at their own defined schedules/criteria/etc
• UI toolbars/menus/etc can easily be modified, with those modifications also “security sensitive“
• SPDataSource class, SharePoint sites exposed using IDataSource (sweet)
• SPGridView, a SharePoint-look-alike DataGrid (with sort/filter/group/etc baked right in)
• SPDataQuery class, which uses CAML (set as a property, why not a param to a method?) does cross-site searches, easily binds to SPGridViews or other ASP.NET databound controls
• SharePoint Web Parts' base class is a Web Control (still no designer, though; you'll need to use SmartPart for that)
• v2.0 -> v3.0 is considered an “upgrade“, not a “migration“
• Security providers supported, no more AD authentication requirements (forms-based security, anyone?)
• “Feature Definitions“ (which sounds an awful lot like existing definition configuration types, but expanded a bit) allow you to enable/disable kits of functionality, i.e. a “Feature Definition“ that contains lists, web parts, event handlers, content types (those metadata “templates“ mentioned in another part of this post)
• Custom column indexes in lists
• Trusted event handlers can easily impersonate identities
• Policies can be set for content expiration based on values/metadata/workflow status for documents, and content can be moved to recycle bin (or, one would assume, deleted or archived) based on the selected metric