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Front Page News
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Here’s a good tip for elevating privileges in SharePoint. http://blogs.devhorizon.com/blogs/reza_on_blogging/archive/2007/07/12/484.aspx For those who doesn’t want to click on that link (like myself when I searching for this post again), here’s the code. //Don't dispose the following two objects. Sharepoint will take care of their disposal when page is completely rendered. SPWeb webInUserContext = SPContext.Current.Web; SPSite SiteInUserContext = SPContext.Current.Site; Guid webGuid = webInUserContext.ID; Guid siteGuid = SiteInUserContext.ID; SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate() { // get the site in impersonated context ...
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Now that the holidays are over (which weren't particularly fun for me this year, due to a persistent bout with sinusitis), it's time to get back to the posting. And to start things off, let me offer any of you who might be thinking about going to DevTeach Vancouver at the beginning of June (8th to the 12th). Jean-Rene Roy, the organizer of the conference, has offered 50% off the registration cost to the first 30 people who register with the following code: DEVT50OFFVAN . Also, the registration need to be done prior to Feb 10th. If you've never been to a DevTeach conference, you don't know what you're missing. This is easily the top .NET developer-focused conference in Canada. They get big name speakers presenting on the latest and greatest of technologies. As well, the setup for the conference is such that the speakers are much more accessible than any other conference I've been to. So not...
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I’m sure we’re going to look back at 2009 and say “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ and it will no doubt be interesting. Here’s my predictions…. Social Networking Everywhere Although online social networking companies are already struggling with diminished valuations, in 2009 we’ll see social networks break out of their silos and become essential platform elements that see their way into other online applications such as travel, e-commerce, job-posting boards, online dating services, CRM services, web based email systems, etc. Blogging is also changing, slowing down in fact. Micro-blogging with status update-esque features in FaceBook, Windows Live, and of course the explosion of Twitter will take on even larger roles. It’s as true today as it was back in 1964 when fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan wrote “The Medium Is The Message”. The Death of Optical Media Okay, so you’ll...
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If you notice, the master page file in SharePoint Designer is checked out (from the check symbol at the side). It’s supposed to show me “Check In” and “Undo Check Out” and all that. Where is it? It is under your “Edit” toolbar, “Check In”. So when it doesn’t display, you know where to go....
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To customize SharePoint “Sign In” link, we need to modify or duplicate Welcome.ascx in your Control Templates directory. Here’s a good post specifying how to hide your sign in link. Hide the Sign In link for the anonymous access user in anonymous access enabled site - Bend the Welcome.ascx - SharePoint MOSS You can play around with Welcome.ascx and come up with your custom style sign in....
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We have recently encountered a problem with some of the SharePoint (WSS or MOSS) features not working properly in Windows Vista: When users attempt to display a document library in the Explorer view within the web application that uses Kerberos authentication, nothing happens: Explorer view never comes up and no errors displayed either Or, when users attempt to display a document library within the web application that uses NTLM authentication, they get "Your client does not support opening this list with Windows Explorer" error; When users attempt to create list from Excel spreadsheet they get "Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed" error After a lot of research and many unsuccessful attempts to fix these problems using various solutions found on the web, I have finally able to find a workaround that have worked on Windows Vista 32-bit. Solutions that did not work in our situation:...
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Here’s a great blog post with the compilation of great tools if you’re a web developer. Top 29 Free UX Tools and Extensions I ran a few of the test on our website, and boy are there a few optimizations we could have done, especially for the JavaScript within the pages to improve performance. And also some quirks xhtml and css errors which will just make things nice and more standardised....
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[via Wouter Van Vugt ] WSS3 Workflow Tools helps developers create better WSS 3.0 workflows by providing a development framework and by integrating into the Visual Studio development environment. The primary focus for this first release is on making it easier to create ASP.NET workflow forms. The first release consists of: Base classes for all workflow form types UserControl framework, quite similar to what InfoPath is providing in MOSS Visual designers for InputForm, InputFormSection, InputFormControl and ButtonSection Visual Studio templates for VS2005 / VS2008, for all forms and controls Easy to use installer Check it out at http://www.codeplex.com/wss3workflow . Technorati Tags: [ SharePoint ], [ WSS ], [ Workflow ]...
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MSDN RampUp - SharePoint for Developers and mssharepointdeveloper.com Both these sites have articles, webcasts and hands-on labs designed to help .NET developers to learn the key points of SharePoint development. A variety of materials with different learning styles help you get started doing SharePoint 2007 development. The Great SharePoint Adventure - WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 for Developers If you want more than the quick boost provided by the resources above, you can get a broader and deeper picture by taking our five-day course. It's about 70% instructor demos and labs and you get to take all the code back to the office with you for reference....
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I’ll be speaking tomorrow night at the Metro Toronto .NET UG tomorrow night. Entity Framework: What You Need to Know Barry Gervin , ObjectSharp Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 6:00pm New Location! Palmerston Library Theatre (lower level), 560 Palmerston Avenue, Toronto (2 blocks west of Bloor & Bathurst) Is this the last data access technology we’ll ever need from MS – or just another one along the way? What is the Entity Framework and what is the difference between EDM, and LINQ to Entities. What’s different between LINQ to SQL? This session will give you the background on the Entity Framework and help you understand the MS data access strategy and how to apply it in practice. We’ll look at what’s available today, how best to apply it in the real world coupled with other complimentary technologies such as ADO.NET Data Services and Enterprise Library’s Validation Application Block. And best...
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I'm a big fan of Billy Hollis. He just seems to really get what's going on in the .NET development world and the issues that today's developers are facing. I just finished listening to a Deep Fried Bytes podcast where Billy spoke with hosts Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff about the flood of new technology coming from Microsoft and how developers are dealing with it. It's definitely worth a listen. http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-13-staying-sane-in-today-rsquo-s-software-development-world-with-billy-hollis/...
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As a part of our continuing commitment to the server/service improvements and never-ending technological progress, we have moved ObjectSharp blogs to the new (better, faster, and prettier) server. ObjectSharp has always demonstrated a leadership in adopting cutting-edge technologies, so moving our blogs to the emerging cloud services only makes sense for us. For now, we use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Windows , at least until Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services mature. More updates and upgrades coming soon. Stay tuned… Please update your favorites and RSS feeds with the new URL: http://blogs.objectsharp.com...
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As mentioned in the title, the @Created date field (or site column, depending on your terminology), the date of document creation, which is by default available to all pages and documents, is not replicated when you create a site variation. It is however *linked* to the original document from the original site itself. So if you ever decide to turn off site variation, you’ll lose the @Created date field on your site variation, and there’s absolutely no way to get it back, or at least I haven’t found a way to get it back without hacking it through code. So be careful when you decide to create a site variation. This “feature” caught us all by surprise, especially when variation was turned off and still wanted the persisted site. One suggestion to get around it is to create another field and set the computed value to today’s date. I’ll blog more on how we solve this problem when we actually do...
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In the excitement of PDC, it slipped my mind to let everyone know that the book on which I was a co-author was actually shipped at the beginning of October. The title is the terse, yet incredibly descriptive MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (PRO-Certification) . There is a bidding war for the movie rights and I'm hoping that George Clooney plays me in the adaptation. :) For those of you wondering how the actual release might have slipped my mind, the reason is that I'm not involved in the steps that takes place at the end of the publishing process. Most of the book was written in the first half of the year. Since July, I have been reviewing chapters and responding to editor notes. But since the middle of August my tasks have been done. And, I'm afraid, when it comes to book writing, once I'm done, I mentally...
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I've been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell since I read The Tipping Point. And after following that up with Blick, it is clear that Mr. Gladwell is a fascinating author on subjects that are quite interesting, even when it falls outside my normal range of reading material (that being mostly geeky ). Apparently on Tuesday, a new book of his entitled Outliers: The Story of Success is coming out. That in itself is enough to pique my interest. However, it turns out that, as part of his book tour, Mr. Gladwell is speaking in Toronto on Dec 1 at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Business. And the price of the tickets (only $31 and which you can get here ) includes a copy of the book. I'm signed up already and if you have found his books interesting, here is a chance to hear him in person....
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I have been working on configuring high availability for SharePoint servers (MOSS or WSS), and for a little while I wasn't able to figure out the way to modify the URL for SharePoint Central Administration site. So, basically you extend the Central Administration web application (using GUI or psconfig command) to run on multiple servers, and when you click on SharePoint Central Administration icon you're still redirected to a specific SharePoint server instead of been redirected to the Load Balancing URL. Anyway, as it turns out the URL has to be changed via registry on all SharePoint servers. Weird?! To change the URL for SharePoint Central Administration URL: Open Registry editor Backup the registry before making any changes!!! Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS and change the value of CentralAdministrationURL to whatever you want to...
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To change a port number that SharePoint Central Administration site is running on: Open Command Prompt Go to BIN folder in SharePoint install directory (by default, it would be "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN") To get the port number that Central Administration site is currently running on, type stsadm.exe -o getadminport To change a port number that SharePoint Central Administration site is using, type stsadm.exe -o setadminport -port <portnumber>...
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I subscribe to Google Alerts. I have an alert set up to look for the word ObjectSharp . This has worked great over the years, pointing out blogs and articles where people have made reference to ObjectSharp . This morning I received an Alert that made me laugh. I started reading a news article titled: Here's how and where 'cutters' can get help Perhaps its someone talking about our training, I thought to myself. As I began to read the article it made no sense. Then I found the source of the Alert. :) You understand, it made me laugh because of the mix up , not that the article is funny. The Article is very serious and I hope these people get some help....
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It's true. We were looking at using Dundas charts for a client project. One of our associates mentioned that Dundas sold the rights to their Data Visualization packages to Microsoft last year and have added them as a separate installation for .Net framework 3.5 SP1. Read more about it here . What do I need and where do I get it? .Net 3.5 SP1 Chart Docs Chart Controls For some help using them check out Chart Forums and Chart Samples...
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The client I’m currently working with needed a charting control that would allow us to create something similar to a Gantt chart. Unfortunately the control suite we were using wasn’t quite up to the task. Fortunately a fellow Objectsharpee (and former Dundas employee) told me that Microsoft was going to be putting the Dundas controls they had purchased into the framework, even better was that it had been released just the week previous. I’ve never used Dundas controls previous to this, so I’m not 100% clear what the feature set differences are, or if there are any. The MS Chart control did everything we needed and it was dead simple to do. All you need to do is download and install the small installer and have .Net 3.5 SP1 already installed. Chart Docs Chart Controls Chart Forums – Note: Not a lot of information in the forums as of this posting, but the Dundas...
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The October Team Foundation Power Tools drop includes three new features: TFS Power Shell Extensions TFS Windows Shell Extensions Team Members Tool The only one I care about is the Powershell extensions. Keith Hill has a great post with some examples. I already had a script that made some .NET assembly calls to get me the latest good build off of TFS. I converted that script to use the new snapin, and posted it below. I’m sure some of this is not best practices, feel free to let me know if you have a cleaner implementation. (Get-TfsServer -Name myTfsServer).GetService(Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client .IBuildServer]).QueryBuilds(" myProjectName ", " myBuildName ") | where { $_.BuildDefinition.LastGoodBuildUri -eq $_.Uri } | select DropLocation Two lines in my profile.ps1: [void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client") [void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client"...
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Note to self – Before developing on SharePoint, always enable debugging on the development machine to see a “little” more verbose error messages. Edit the web.config and change the following: < SafeMode MaxControls ="200" CallStack ="false" ... > <!-- Becomes --> < SafeMode MaxControls ="200" CallStack ="true" ... > < customErrors mode ="On" /> <!-- Becomes --> < customErrors mode ="Off" /> < compilation batch ="false" debug ="false" > <!-- Becomes --> < compilation batch ="true" debug ="true" >...
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Note to self - If using any external assemblies that try to access Microsoft.Sharepoint assemblies, remember to change the trust level to full in the web.config. <trust level="Full" originUrl="" /> This is only used during development. When it comes to production, install assembly into the GAC with gacutil /i to allow external assemblies access to Microsoft.Sharepoint assemblies....
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For a sophisticated web application, SharePoint (WSS or MOSS) is missing a feature as simple as Deny access (Deny Read, Deny Write, Deny All). To deny access to the SharePoint for single user or a group of users, you modify Policy for Web Application in SharePoint Central Administration: Open SharePoint Central Administration Click on Application Management Then, under Application security, click on Policy for Web Application Select correct web application in the drop down Click on Add Users Select web application and the zone. Click Next Enter the username or security group. Select Deny Write or Deny All and click on Finish Note : This will deny access to the whole web application in SharePoint! There is no way to deny access to a specific SharePoint item (site, list, document library and so on) Hopefully Microsoft will fix this weakness in the next service pack or so…...
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Have you heard the news? Every attendee to DevTeach Montreal will get Visual Studio 2008 Pro, Expression Web 2 and Tech-Ed DEV set in their bag! DevTeach believes that all developers need the right tool to be productive. Therefore you will get, free software, when you register to DevTeach or SQLTeach. Yes that right! They are giving over a $1000 worth of software when you register to DevTeach. You will find in your conference bag a version of Visual Studio 2008 Professional, ExpressionTM Web 2 and the Tech-Ed Conference DVD Set. Now that is a good deal? DevTeach and SQLTeach are really the training you can’t get any other way. Register now. ...
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