Our first SharePoint 2013 App is now for sale in the Microsoft Office store at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/store/home-and-back-buttons-WA103905494.aspx. The SharePoint search center get’s a lot of end user eyeball time, you may be surprised how much of a difference in user experience can be had by adding this little App. Go ahead and give the trial version a whiz, and help get your users stay oriented in your site navigation.

The Home & Back Buttons App fills in the gap in navigation that is present in areas of SharePoint, in particular on the Search Center pages. The lack of navigation options on the standard SharePoint pages means that users are sometimes confused about how to return to the homepage of the portal, or how to return to the previous page they were on.

This App is a Client Web Part which can be added to any SharePoint page with a Web Part Zone. When you add it, two image buttons appear on the page. You can configure the following styling and functionality options of the buttons via the Web Part Properties:

– Home & Back Button Image URL’s
Leave as they are to use default home & back button icon images, or specify a relative or full URL path to your own custom images

– Home & Back Button Text
Specify the text to be displayed inside the buttons, can optionally be blank to just have image-based buttons

– Show/Hide Button Images
Turn the display of the images in the buttons on or off

– Button Style
Apply one of 11 color schemes to the buttons:
Blue (default)
Red
Purple
Green
White
Blue Stripe
Red Stripe
Purple Stripe
Green Stripe
White Stripe
Transparent

– Home Button URL
By default, the home button automatically points to the homepage of your current SharePoint site. You can optionally override this and make the Home button point to any URL of your choice.