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Bill Simser Profile |
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SharePoint Wednesday CodePlex Roundup #4
Bill Simser
pWhen last we met the Swine Trek, that scientific genius Dr. Strangepork was trying to fix Captain Link Hearthrobs lighter. Oh wait, wrong show. Sorry about that. /p pimg src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bsimser/blog92pigsinspace_60B2F951.jpg" style="border-width: 0px; display: inline;" title="blog-92-pigs-in-space" alt="blog-92-pigs-in-space" mce_src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bsimser/blog92pigsinspace_60B2F951.jpg" border="0" height="301" width="404" /p pThis is actually the last installme [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 31st '09 |
Building a City – Part IV
Bill Simser
pimg src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bsimser/ebbetsrcafigura21ms0_6580E9F9.jpg" style="border: 0px none ; margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; display: inline;" title="ebbetsrcafigura21ms0" alt="ebbetsrcafigura21ms0" mce_src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bsimser/ebbetsrcafigura21ms0_6580E9F9.jpg" align="left" border="0" height="410" width="304" Welcome back to the a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2008/01/14/building-a-city-the-series.aspx" mce_href="http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2 [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 23rd '09 |
Installing PyGTK on Windows x64
Bill Simser
P mce_keep="true"
PIf you’re doing any work with A href="http://www.python.org/" mce_href="http://www.python.org/"Python/A you might need a user interface as Python doesn't provide one. Once such interface is provided by the A href="http://www.gtk.org/" mce_href="http://www.gtk.org/"GIMP Toolkit (GTK)/A in the form of Python bindings called A href="http://www.pygtk.org/" mce_href="http://www.pygtk.org/"PyGTK/A. PyGTK is actually made up of three dependant libraries:/P
UL
LIA href="http://ftp.g [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 21st '09 |
SharePoint Wednesday CodePlex Roundup #3
Bill Simser
pYee-haw! Here we are again for this weeks new SharePoint CodePlex projects. Sit back and relax as I form biased and bitter opinions about the new CodePlex projects from the last week that have some kind of weird but odd connection to that thing we know we love to hate, called SharePoint. /p pimg style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="fight-club-still" border="0" alt="fight-club-still" src="http://weblogs.a [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 17th '09 |
SharePoint Wednesday CodePlex Roundup #2
Bill Simser
pWelcome back to what seems to be a successful launch of a new blog series. I got some great responses from people over a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2009/12/02/sharepoint-wednesday-codeplex-roundup-1.aspx"my first posting/a including private notes from the project owners who enjoyed seeing their projects being discussed. Keep the email flowing and I’ll keep the opinions real./p pThis week was a busy one for a href="http://www.codeplex.com/"CodePlex/a and SharePoint projects w [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 10th '09 |
SharePoint Wednesday CodePlex Roundup #1
Bill Simser
P mce_keep="true"Welcome to anbsp;new blog series I thought might be useful. Each Wednesday I'll post a short review of new SharePoint related projects on CodePlex. These are new projects that a) have been added to CodePlex in the last week and b) have a public file release (I won't include projects that don't have file releases). I was going to call this "Woody's SharePoint Roundup" but that name would be best left to my A class="" href="http://www.thesanitypoint.com/default.aspx" mce_href="htt [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 2nd '09 |
Cloning The SharePoint Toolbar for Custom Web Parts
Bill Simser
pTrying to match the “SharePoint look” is always a challenge for developers. Recently I had to build a web part that would live along side other “stock” SharePoint web parts. I also needed a functional toolbar for the web part and having it on the same page I wanted a seamless look to the toolbar so it looked just like any other part of the solution./p pIn the past I would just create a lot of HTML helpers to spit out the right markup with my values dropped in. I wanted something a littl [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 28th '09 |
Name that WSP - SharePoint Developer Tricks with WSPBuilder
Bill Simser
P mce_keep="true"One of my favorite tools that I highly recommend next to breathing is A class="" href="http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/" mce_href="http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/"WSPBuilder/A. With this tool in your arsenal, no longer do you have to worry about hand crafting manifest files or running cryptic makecab.exe command line tools. Building solution packages for SharePoint can be a super big problem, and for super big problems we turn to WSPBuilder to save the day!/P
P mce_keep="true"WSP [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 26th '09 |
Resources for my SharePoint Services Talk
Bill Simser
pAs promised here are some resources for my recent talk on creating and consuming services in SharePoint that I delivered at a href="http://www.microsoft.com/canada/techdays/"TechDays/a. You’ll be able to get the full slide deck, video, and code later at a href="http://my.techdays.ca"http://my.techdays.ca/a but here are the links from the slide deck and things I mentioned during the talk./p pLinks/p ul lia href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd583131%28office.11%29.aspx"Writing Custo [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 21st '09 |
SharePoint 2010 Setup - Hurry up and Wait Edition
Bill Simser
P mce_keep="true"By now, everyone and his brother are downloading and installing the SharePoint 2010 beta onto their Windows 7 and Vista boxes. Why not? I mean, for the longest time we were stuck with having to spin up a Windows 2003 or 2008 server so now accessibility is here and we can genuinely put it on our machines without hackish workarounds. Of course why you would install a server application on a desktop OS is beyond this blog post and for a discussion over beers at SharePint./P
P mce_k [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 20th '09 |
First Calgary SharePoint User Group Meeting
Bill Simser
pI have the pleasure of speaking at the first Calgary SharePoint User Group meeting next Monday, November 23rd. The planning for a Calgary based SharePoint group has been a long time coming (I’ve been engaged in talks about one at least 4 times over the last few years). Finally it’s a reality./p pimg style="border-right-width: 0px; margin: 0px 35px 0px 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" align="le [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 19th '09 |
Resources for my SharePoint Versioning Talk
Bill Simser
pJust finished up my talk on SharePoint Solution Versioning at a href="http://www.microsoft.com/canada/techdays/"TechDays 2009/a. I hope it went well for everyone (got a tweet from someone thanking me for answering their question before they asked it, now I just need to go out and buy a LottoMAX ticket). Here’s some quick resources on the talk. You’ll be able to get the full slide deck and video later at my.techdays.ca but here’s some links that may be useful if you enjoyed my talk./p pPla [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 17th '09 |
Hiding the New Toolbar Button in SharePoint with jQuery
Bill Simser
pAnother quick little fun thing today. Many times you might want (need) to hide the “New” button on a list toolbar. You know the one I mean?/p pimg style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bsimser/image_03FABEC4.png" width="296" height="130" / /p pWhy would you want to do such a thing? For example on a project I’m building I actually call t [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 12th '09 |
SharePoint Site Roundup #SPC09
Bill Simser
For those of you who watched the intro video at SharePoint Conference 2009 on Monday (you can view the video again here) I’ve put together a roundup of all the sites in the video (in the order they appear). These are all sites built on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (well, sort of, see below). Ferrari.com Continental Airlines (*) Kraft Foods Kroger MTV (*) Viacom AMD Chesapeake Energy easyJet (*) General Mills Citigroup (*) McKesson (Intranet only) accenture (Intranet only) EA (Electronic [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 21st '09 |
SharePoint 2010 What’s New – Ratings #SPC09
Bill Simser
SharePoint 2010 offers a new feature around rating content. Note that this feature is only available in SharePoint Server 2010 and not available in Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 SharePoint Foundation 2010 (yeah, I can’t keep up with the name changes either). Ratings are very generic things that have a lot of flexibility. They allow users to rate content (of any type, Lists, Documents, Pages on a site, and even Content Types) and store that ratings data in the database just like the new socia [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 20th '09 |
SharePoint 2010 What’s New – Lookup Columns #SPC09
Bill Simser
An enhancement that’s been long waiting for SharePoint is around lookup columns. In 2007 you can create a lookup column which essentially “looks up” values from another list. Here’s creating a lookup column in 2007:
Basic stuff. You select the list you want to get information from and the column you want to use as a display value. You can allow multiple values which makes for an interesting setup. Imagine you want to keep an inventory of servers in SharePoint. You might create a list o [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 19th '09 |
The Kimono Is Open, The Veil Is Lifted, The Gags Are Removed... #SPC09
Bill Simser
If you find the title of this blog familiar, it should be. Mike Fitz used it when he posted his first remarks about SharePoint 2007 back on September 14, 2005. Here we are in 2009 with a product releasing in about 6 months. Amazing what a journey it’s been, and things are just starting to heat up. Right now Steve Balmer is probably on-stage in Vegas and 7000 SharePoint nerds are listening to him. Developers, Developers, Developers. I’ll never forget Steve and find him a powerful presence whe [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 19th '09 |
ShareTalk – Soup to Nuts
Bill Simser
My co-worker and BizTalk MVP Kent Weare has been blogging up a storm with his BizTalk and SharePoint integration series of posts on his BizTalk blog. In it, he walks through the entire process of getting BizTalk 2009 talking to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, publishing forms, retrieving information, creating InfoPath forms from BizTalk schemas and more! This is an awesome (and the first that I know of) resource that’s complete on the BizTalk and SharePoint side of things (with some InfoPath [read].
Posted: Sun, Oct 18th '09 |
Temporary Post Used For Theme Detection (ba431ed4-f98d-4cc5-aab3-873085048ae6 - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)
Bill Simser
This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (ad50856c-b1ec-407a-b297-d3b78e35f40e - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7) [read].
Posted: Sun, Oct 18th '09 |
Changing the Home tab in Mutipage Meeting Workspaces with jQuery
Bill Simser
Another simple trick today. Very often people ask about how to change the tab name on sites created with the Multipage Workspace Template. A simple enough request but not something you can do out of the box. Or can you?
Okay, let’s take a step back. Let’s say you want a site with tabs. There’s a built-in template under the Meetings group called Mutiplage Meeting Workspace. It creates a site with tabs and allows you to add new tabs (Web Part Pages) and place whatever Web Parts you want on e [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 12th '09 |
Calculated Time Left columns in SharePoint with jQuery
Bill Simser
A current project I’m working on in SharePoint is an online auction. I’ll post more info about this and maybe some code and web parts later but for now I wanted to share a simple enhancement we did with a little jQuery to display the time left for each item.
Just like eBay, I wanted to display the time remaining on auction items. I figured this would be a calculated field (based on a date the user chose for when the auction for that item ended) but having to calculate date differences based [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 9th '09 |
SharePoint FUD... Spreading Far, Wide and Fast
Bill Simser
The last month or so I've been a casual observer to a bit of a train wreck. It's the train wreck that we collectively know as the SharePoint bashing exercise. I'll admit fully and upfront. I'm a SharePoint MVP and there are times SharePoint (at a micro level) frustrates me enough to go postal on my co-workers. However from a macro level and as a corporate tool, it's a pretty darn good piece of software.
For the past month I've been watching people on Twitter endlessly blather on about how bad Sh [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 29th '09 |
Low impact text changing in SharePoint with jQuery
Bill Simser
Mike Smith over at Tech Training Notes had a nice simple post a few weeks back on changing the default text displayed at the bottom of stock web parts in SharePoint. For example discussion boards show this text when it's blank:
"There are no items to show in this view of the "Test" discussion board. To create a new item, click "New" above.
That's great but what if the "New" link isn't avaiable (if you turn off the full toolbar and put a discussion list on a page this would happen). Or what if [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 23rd '09 |
Local SharePoint on Server 2008 Development
Bill Simser
Sometimes I'm such an idiot I wonder how I get enough neurons firing in the morning to get out of bed. I've built a million virtual setups for SharePoint development (and a million really isn't an exaggeration, at least that's how I feel). They're all the same. Install this, configure that, lather, rinse, repeat.
Setting up a new VM today and for the life of me I couldn't get logged into the site no matter what account I used. You know that challenge/respose dialog you get and you just keep ente [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 3rd '09 |
Edmonton Code Camp Time Again...
Bill Simser
I'll be packing up my troubles and heading up to Edmonton for the day with John "The Pimp" Bristowe for Edmonton Code Camp. The Code Camp takes place on September 19th and runs all day at Grant MacEwan's downtown campus. I'm bringing my SharePoint rig with me and will be doing a little SharePoint dance called Stupid SharePoint Tricks. Here's the description of the session:
What can you do with SharePoint and what shouldn’t you do with it? Let’s take a walk through some of the lesser known fe [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 2nd '09 |
No-code SharePoint Menus
Bill Simser
A few years ago I wrote up an article about creating custom SharePoint-style menu for your own Web Parts. Today on the call with the SharePoint Experts (a fun time!) someone had created a series of Data View Web Parts and wanted some way to navigate between them.
I suggested to build a custom menu, similar to the Views pull down you get in the stock List View page. You know the one I'm talking about?
So here's the snippet to do this. It's actually based on some old stuff I did in the 2003 versi [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 13th '09 |
Spreading some SharePoint Love to EditorPart
Bill Simser
EditorPart. Such a lonely guy in SharePoint land. Back in the 2003 era (remember that?) we had this thing called ToolParts. You would create a class to handle your custom property editors and then hook it back up into your Web Part. Well, times are a changing and in 2007 land we use these things called EditorParts now.
By default when you add a property and expose it for editing by the user, a set of default EditorParts built into SharePoint kick in. These will handle basic types (text, boolean, [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 12th '09 |
Speaking at TechDays 2009, Me
Bill Simser
TechDays, the all-Canadian all-knowing all-seeing Microsoft conference is kicking off in a couple of weeks in Vancouver. To the disappointment of the street walkers of Gastown, I won’t be there. I will however be in Calgary in November. Here are the two talks I’m giving: Developing and Consuming Services for SharePoint The world gets more service-oriented every day, and with that comes the demand to integrate all kinds of services, including those from SharePoint. This session introduces Sh [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 12th '09 |
Happy Birthday CodePlex!
Bill Simser
CodePlex just recently turned 3 years old and celebrated a pretty good success (hitting the 10,000 project mark). I'm very happy that my SharePoint Forums project was one of the first public non-Microsoft projects hosted on CodePlex (before it was called CodePlex).
Here are some impressive stats from the 3 year old:
10,000 projects
Consistent growth over the 3 years in visits, page views, projects and source code
3 million visitors per month
Almost 10 million page views per month
160,000 r [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 23rd '09 |
Boo! SharePoint. Not really.
Bill Simser
I stumbled onto Peter Campbell's well written article about why SharePoint scares him. His points on what bothers him about SharePoint bother me as he tries to compare some parts of SharePoint to say open source CMS systems (he's not specific as to "what" open source portal he compares SharePoint too but one can assume Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke maybe).
It's not clear if Peter has actually ever used SharePoint (either as a developer, admin, or even an end-user). He says that he's been "evaluati [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 13th '09 |
The undocumented “deleteconfigurationobject” parameter
Bill Simser
SharePoint is sometimes a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, surrounded by an enigma. And even more so when you get stuck trying to do something, hoping the system will tell you how, only to stumble onto an undocumented command line switch that does what you need. Enter the super-secret-that-everyone-knows-about “deleteconfigurationobject” parameter in stsadm.exe. Go ahead. Enter this in your console. 1: stsadm -help deleteconfigurationobject
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: sm [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 7th '09 |
Extending SharePoint: Checking if a List exists
Bill Simser
A common problem when working with the SharePoint Object Model is getting a handle to a list. Very often we find ourselves writing this:
.csharpcode {
FONT-SIZE: 9pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Consolas, "Courier New", Courier, Monospace; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff
}
.csharpcode PRE {
FONT-SIZE: 9pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Consolas, "Courier New", Courier, Monospace; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff
}
.csharpcode PRE {
MARGIN: 0em
}
.csharpcode .rem {
COLOR: #008000
}
.csharpcode .kwrd {
COLOR [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 6th '09 |
Fill out a survey, win a chance for a SharePoint Conference 2009 pass
Bill Simser
Yeah, title says all. Mindsharp, Nintex, and Combined Knowledge are sponsoring a Global SharePoint Survey. This is an independent survey that you can fill out to let them know about your experience with adoption and usage of SharePoint from your perspective. The survey is quick (only 15 questions) and most questions are multiple choice. You could probably let your cat or two year old fill it out (I did) but also consider taking a few minutes to put some thought behind it (unlike what I did). In [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 2nd '09 |
TIFF fax images, picture libraries, incorrect thumbnail generation, and SharePoint
Bill Simser
A welcomed feature of SharePoint is the picture library. This is similar to a document library but rather than storing documents, you can store pictures. You can store pictures in a document library too, you just don't get as rich a UX from it as you can with a picture library. Pictures uploaded to a picture library offer a few new features like slideshow views and auto-thumbnail generation. However, TIFF images sometimes have to be treated a little bit differently and this is where the thumbnai [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 18th '09 |
Account Names, SharePoint Setups, Server 2008 and Cheese
Bill Simser
Recently I got a brand, spanking new Dell Latitude E6400 for work outfitted with Server 2008 (you won’t believe how hard that corporate battle was) and 8GB of RAM. We wanted to run Server 2008 as our workstation which would allow us a) the ability to run SharePoint natively and b) the ability to spin up additional/sandbox SharePoint instances using Hyper-V. Of course these machines are also on the corporate domain so running SharePoint locally proves a few challenges. For example you really do [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 7th '09 |
Honey, Where Did I Put My Product Key?
Bill Simser
Microsoft has released this important announcement about the recent releases of Service Pack 2 for MOSS: We take product quality seriously and make every effort to avoid and resolve issues that adversely impact our customers. Unfortunately, we have recently discovered a bug with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it for SharePoint Server 2007. During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as t [read].
Posted: Fri, May 22nd '09 |
Internet Explorer Keyboard? Shortcuts
Bill Simser
I can’t say I’ve ever looked at the Internet Explorer help file (or any help file for that matter) but I turned to it when I wanted to see if there was a keyboard shortcut for switching between tabs. Here’s what I found: Okay, sure. If you’re using the keyboard assist mode you can use some keystroke to simulate a “click” (can’t remember what the keystroke is in that mode) but reading this just makes me wonder if anyone proofs this stuff. Fail. [read].
Posted: Wed, May 13th '09 |
TechEd Day 1 via the BizTalk Blog
Bill Simser
My co-worker buddy Kent Weare (yes, a company where two, count them two MVPs sit side by side and don't beat the crap out of each other) is down at TechEd 2009 this week in Los Angeles. Hopefully he'll be giving a blow-by-blow report on the happenings on down there (as most bloggers are doing, all except me) so I'll live vicariously through him.
He's posted a good recap of the first day here. He talks about MEDV and APPV, two virtualization techniques that are available with Windows 7 and Window [read].
Posted: Wed, May 13th '09 |
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That
Bill Simser
When it comes to SharePoint surveys, there’s a lot to explore. And a lot missing. A survey can be for a variety of reasons. They can be there to collect quantitative information about something (like a census); an opinion poll for an informal collection of thoughts; marketing research; or a basic series of questions to gather information. SharePoint offers some basic functionality for surveys. Like most of SharePoint, it does a lot of things well (some say mediocre) and few things really [read].
Posted: Tue, May 12th '09 |
The Knights who say I'm taking my toys and making my own sandbox
Bill Simser
Yesterday Joel Oleson, ex-MSFT SharePoint dude, posted an entry about a "new order" he wants to form called The SharePoint Knights. I seriously thought this was a joke and had to check my April Fools calendar. "An unique ranking Knight icon to put on your business card... that sets you apart as a Knight who provides a service of SharePoint chivalry". Are you kidding me? Is this really a true SharePoint community or Joel's SharePoint popularity contest?
Jeremy Thake, another blogger, posted a fol [read].
Posted: Tue, May 5th '09 |
She Ought To Be In Pictures
Bill Simser
Shel Silverstein wrote he wanted to be famous by getting his picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone. How about getting a photo spread in Fortune Magazine before you’re two years old? This months Fortune Magazine is running a 12 page photo article called True Obsessions. It’s a series of portraits of people who take their favourite brands seriously. We’re both pleased and proud that our daughter Vista made the article. You can see her two pages of fame starting here. Sharing the spotli [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 30th '09 |
Follow-up: The Girl Next Door (aka Laptop for Nat)
Bill Simser
Okay, second non-tech follow-up as I get caught up here in Real World 1.0 stuff. Last month I wrote a post called The Girl Next Door, about a 7 year old girl named Natalie. She was diagnosed with brain Cancer and the last year has been an uphill struggle for family, finally coming out on top with Nat back at home and going to school now. The post was about finding a way to get the Nat a laptop. With the Cancer, her motor skills have been somewhat diminished and taking notes in school was a chor [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 30th '09 |
Follow-up: Small Person, Big Life
Bill Simser
A couple of weeks ago I posted about Madeline Spohr and her awesome, happy, life. We rallied around and others were picking up the torch to carry on Maddies name in support of the March of Dimes. I did the same with a small token of my appreciation for your support to help the Spohr family by donating a copy of MSDN Premium Subscription with Team Suite to a random donation (every $10 donation got you a chance to win). Sorry for the lapse in follow-up but I did pick a winner on April 20th. In f [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 28th '09 |
Using The Loopback Adapter and SharePoint
Bill Simser
Just a little tip as I've recieved a lot of emails and questions about SharePoint development recently. Most SharePoint development is going to take place in a virtual machine (unless you're running Server 2008 as your desktop, which isn't hard. Check out win2008workstation.com for some great tips on this). A lot of people simply run their virtual machine natively, using the VM client. This is okay but it requires you to be logged into the machine (usually as an administrator) and you have to co [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 20th '09 |
2010 The Year We Make Contact (or the next name of SharePoint)
Bill Simser
It's official now, the next version of SharePoint that we've been babbling about (well, not that much babbling since we're not allowed to babble, but you get the idea) is now officially called "SharePoint Server 2010". Sounds like the title of the next Arthur C. Clarke novel.
The official press pass can be found here. It's April 15 and I was hoping it was the first but no dice.
There has been a long history of "confusion" of products. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) vs Windows SharePo [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 15th '09 |
Small Person, Big Life
Bill Simser
Having a kid is hard. Not the changing diapers, walking around at 2am trying to get them back to sleep, convincing them broccoli is good for them part of it. When you have a kid your perspective changes. And when you hear about things happening to other parents’ children, it really hits home. This last week has been a crazy one here at Nerd Central. On Wednesday Jenn called me at work to ask if we could re-host someone’s site, a blogger who’s daughter passed away, [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 12th '09 |
Paying it Forward
Bill Simser
People are People So why should it be You and I should get along so awfully Technology is mechanical and unforgiving. You tell it certain rules, provide data, and it executes, unknowingly of the human factor surrounding it. It does so automatically and flawlessly. The failure is on the human side. Case in point. My wife called me Wednesday afternoon about a sad thing that happened. [more]. Their current web hosts, bluehost, basically just dropped their service claiming spammers [etc, more info] [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 9th '09 |
Alone in the Dark with Microsoft Desktop Virtualization
Bill Simser
I don’t often get too bitchy with the mother ship, but I have to say that I’m highly disappointed with Microsoft and it’s desktop virtualization strategy. In fact, they really have forced us SharePoint developers to go down very few paths, and most roads lead to VMWare. As a SharePoint developer one of the things you have to contend with is your development environment. As SharePoint only runs on a server (we won’t get into the unsupported Bamboo work around to get it running on Vista) i [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 6th '09 |
How do you know she’s a witch?
Bill Simser
She looks like one! So begins one of my favourite skits in movie history, the witch scene from Monty Python and Holy Grail. The gist of it is: If she weighs the same as a duck then she’s made of wood and therefore… A witch! And what do we do with witches? We teach them Agile! What do witch hunts have to do with software development? Plenty. How do you know you’re really “doing Agile” or following Scrum practices in your project? How do you know if you’re doing the right thing [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 3rd '09 |
BlackBerry App Store, $200 do not pass go, do not upload application.
Bill Simser
I work on a BlackBerry app called DopeWars. It’s a silly little app and isn’t going to make me a world of money (it’s free and open source) but it’s fun and my diversion into the BlackBerry/Java world (as painful as the development environment is there, you think SharePoint is tough?). I keep on planning to write more apps but that unfinished project stack keeps getting bigger and bigger and something's gotta give. So I was all excited when it was announced that BlackBerry would follow i [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 2nd '09 |
MVP Award and the April Fool
Bill Simser
Here We Go Again Well, it’s that time again. For some MVPs (including myself) we’re on the April 1st cycle (also known as the fools cycle). It’s where every year on April 1st we anxiously await to see if Santa Gates will put us on the naughty list for one more year. Yeah, yeah. Bill Gates is no longer in the picture and it’s Ray Ozzie Mr. Gates was never involved in the MVP Program (except maybe as some geeky cheerleader just once) We don’t anxiously await to see if we’re getting r [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 1st '09 |
Windows Vista Rebranding
Bill Simser
I’m pleased and proud to announce a project I’ve been working on at Microsoft for the past 6 months. It’s the rebranding of Vista. Why a rebranding? Basically the powers that be decided that based on negative reaction and poor adoption of the Windows Vista operating system and the enthusiasm with Windows 7 it was the best use of resources to rebrand Vista into something new. A better version of Vista that is out there but not something completely different. This is very much like the highl [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 1st '09 |
Favorite CodePlex SharePoint Projects
Bill Simser
You could visit CodePlex, type in SharePoint in the search box and sort by popularity to get the "top" projects, but here's a list of the top projects picked by the SharePoint MVPs which I find to be a little more value-added than CodePlex's popularity ranking. YMMV.
SharePoint 2007 Features
This is probably the biggest and baddest and bestest project in my list (excluding the obvious below). Scot Hillier has gathered together an awesome collection of useful little deficiencies in SharePoint and [read].
Posted: Sun, Mar 29th '09 |
The Girl Next Door
Bill Simser
It’s funny how life sometimes throws you little curveballs just to see how you deal with things. My daughter, Vista, went in for a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) recently. The MRI might help us understand what is causing some of her developmental problems (she has what are termed ‘global delays’ that affect her movement and speech) as well as perhaps finding the source of her seizures. This was her first MRI, but we’ve been living with tests, specialist appointments, and questions for [read].
Posted: Fri, Mar 27th '09 |
Aging Calculated Fields in SharePoint
Bill Simser
A common question I get and SharePoint challenge is to show the age of something in SharePoint. A typical example is to show the age of a document in days, months, years, etc. Or you might want to keep track of some item (say a coin in a coin collection, or a server in your network). Here we’ll display the age of comic books in a collection in years from the current date. BTW, this isn’t really new as we’ve been doing these tricks for a few years now. I just thought I would share my take o [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 19th '09 |
SharePoint Designer, Free as in Beer
Bill Simser
I caught a couple of blog posts from here and here that had to make me do a double take. I’m not one for relaying gossip, but this information seems to be legit. As of April 1, 2009 SharePoint Designer will be free. Now if you go to the “official” site there’s no mention of it however I’m hearing through the grapevine it’s true. The official site even has a “buy it today” option, so you might want to hold off on that.
Of course April 1st is always a fun time for me and the blog-o [read].
Posted: Sat, Mar 14th '09 |
Stop Blaming Technology and Own Up to Responsibility
Bill Simser
I came across a blog article entitled “SharePoint 2007: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools” which has caused me to shake my head in disbelief (and write this entry). Not necessarily for the article itself as it really wasn’t making much of a statement but rather the retelling of IT horror stories from SharePoint. SharePoint is a lot of things and like a lot of “suites” it does a lot of things pretty good. Some pretty good, some great, some not so great. I liken it to the analogy o [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 12th '09 |
Coffee, Code, or Me?
Bill Simser
The gauntlet has been thrown down. It's duelling laptops as John Bristowe and I square off at the Kawa Expresso Bar in Calgary this Friday and bring you the Cowtown version of Coffee and Code (with a little Ultimate Fighter Championship thrown in for good measure). Last month Joey “Accordion Guy” deVilla, a Microsoft Canada Developer Evangelist, realized his vision. It’s called Coffee and Code and basically you sit around a coffee shop, outfitted with computers and a wireless connection, a [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 10th '09 |
Windows Server 2008 Tidbit #3,627
Bill Simser
Feel free to mock me but I’m just a simple developer, your modern ways frighten and confuse me. If you know me, I’m a command line junkie and I’m all for shortcut typing and trying to maximize the effort my fingers have to go through by typing less (no, this doesn't mean I use 3 character variable names). I’ll rarely type a full path when jumping around in a command prompt and use the tab key and “*” character quite aggressively. In any case, nothing like stumbling over a goofy lit [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 24th '09 |
Setting up Windows Live Writer with weblogs.asp.net
Bill Simser
Just a quick tip on anyone setting up the latest version of Windows Live Writer (14.0.8064.206) and publishing to http://weblogs.asp.net. By default, when you run the wizard it’ll stumble over the the autodetection so you’ll have to select your blog provider manually. Here’s the default selection when choosing Community Server: Note the remote posting URL. The default value is incorrect (probably because weblogs.asp.net is a subdomain). Entering http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/metablog.ashx [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 20th '09 |
Signing Time and Vista
Bill Simser
Scott recently posted an update (his third or fourth on the subject, I've lost count now) on using the Signing Time DVD series to help babies learn to grow. I just wanted to send out a nod to Rachel Coleman and her company, Signing Time, as well. Since Vista was a few months old we've turned her onto Signing Time and she's grown to have a signing vocabulary of over 60 signs in the past year.
Is Vista hard of hearing? Not in the least. In fact she's overly sensitive to sounds and has the hearing [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 19th '09 |
Passion and Pride
Bill Simser
No, you didn't stumbled onto the beginnings of a new Jane Austen novel. It's been a heck of a long time since I blogged and despite being abducted by aliens for the last month, I'm back on the wagon again.
Passion and Pride. These are two key attributes I follow in work. Lately I've been combing the streets for contracts and meeting with all sorts of interesting challlenges, people, and organizations. The one thing that comes up often is the question of values (both in life and work). When I'm t [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 16th '09 |
Goodbye PDA, It's Been Nice Knowing Ya
Bill Simser
I'm ditching my PDA (currently a BlackBerry Curve) and my laptop for note taking and going retro.
For the past few years I've been taking notes in various digital media. Back when I had my Palm, I would do handwritten notes (sometimes trying to fight that silly PalmScript recognizer). When I had a tablet available, I would do the same in OneNote and recently I just fill up OneNote pages with notes and scribbles (all typed in). The biggest issue I have with digital note taking is, while it's fas [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 22nd '08 |
WPF Application Quality Guide, Revision 4 Released
Bill Simser
Microsoft has put together another version (this is rev 4) of their WPF Application Quality Guide, a fairly complete set of tasks and ideas around writing good quality apps using the Windows Presentation Framework. http://windowsclient.net/wpf/white-papers/wpf-app-quality-guide.aspx A few things to note:
I don't subscribe to the sample tests they provide and think they're a bit of a joke so squint your eyes when you read the guide. For example, according to ECMA-355 standards, a new operation [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 19th '08 |
The Anti-Architect
Bill Simser
I'll come out of the closet for a moment as I become a little more jaded in life and bitter this holiday season. I'm an Anti-Architect. I'm all for software architecture as the alternative is let some guy who read "Teach Yourself SharePoint Programming in 24 Hours" unleash onto an Enterprise solution and then have some high priced consultant come in and clean up the mess (or the guy that created the mess *was* a high priced consultant and now you need an even higher one to fix the problem) but w [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 19th '08 |
To Everything There Is A Season
Bill Simser
Where do I begin? There's so much stuff in my head I'm pretty much going to explode and leave little gray bits of matter all over my cubicle this morning.
Free Range
First off, I'm now a Free Range Chicken. As the economy slumps and oil hits a new low, living in an Oil and Gas city has it's merits but it also has it's drawbacks. With a whack of new projects being cut from Petro Canada's budget my major client right now has to let me go. They've given me by the end of the year to finish up work w [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 8th '08 |
This is what happens when you let kernel geeks design the UI
Bill Simser
Stumbled across “Tiny Footprint” mode of the Task Manager today while I’m tracking down a nasty hijacker Smitfraud-C malware bot on my Jenn’s machine. Thought for a minute I was in a different program or OS or something wrong was going on. Turns out if you double-click on the area outside the tabs on Task Manager it throws a hissy fit and jumps into what Microsoft dubs “Tiny Footprint” mode. I don’t know what disturbs me more, the fact that this “mode” exists and is not very kn [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 4th '08 |
Edmonton Code Camp bound this Saturday
Bill Simser
What do 3 geeks do at 4AM in the parking lot of an IKEA in Calgary on a Saturday morning? Plot to overthrow Future Shop in the hopes of obtaining a rare shipment of WiiFits? Maybe. Test the cold-tolerance level of Dell laptops using Canadian Tire car batteries as their only source of power? Could be. Make cheap jokes about doing drag and drop presentations then have t-shirts made up to mock Microsoft employees?
Nah, they get together to drive to Edmonton and attend the Edmonton Code Camp silly.
[read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 27th '08 |
Visual Debian Installation Walkthrough using Virtual PC
Bill Simser
I had to work on some code inside of a “real” *nix system recently so I though I would give everyone a visual walkthrough of setting up the operating system. I need to pave a new image so I figured I would just share with the rest of the class setting up a *nix system from scratch using Virtual PC. You can accomplish the same with VMWare, I just happen to be using Virtual PC for this. For the OS I chose Debian. Actually I have several unix images for this type of work (Linux, NetBSD, etc.) b [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 26th '08 |
Transforming Tree Surgeon using the Adaptive Console Framework
Bill Simser
I'm a command line app junkie as I love working with it. I guess it's my DOS/Linux roots but I find things go faster when you're not dealing with a GUI and a mouse. Command line tools like NAnt and MSBuild have all sorts of options and syntax. Some of it discoverable, some of it not so much. NAnt for example will try to find a buildfile to run and execute it. It also will display the name and version of the app (which is useful in build logs so you know what's going on). There are other things l [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 7th '08 |
New Look?
Bill Simser
Trying out a new look. Changed the theme on the blog and created a custom header. The header is an image captured from Wordle which is a pretty neat tool. Give it a bunch of text or point it at a feed and you get a jumble of words. I pointed it at my own feed as it seemed appropriate and it spit out this. Anyways, hope you like it. I think I needed a change from the Marvin3 theme I've had for the past few years. [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 1st '08 |
NHibernate: Identity columns that are not the primary key
Bill Simser
Sometimes you need a column in your database to automatically increment (like an identity column) in order to provide back to a user say a confirmation number (when an item is added to that table). In NHibernate there's no way to specify this kind of behavior with normal mappings because the column in the Id tag has to be the primary key. Here's a technique we used to do this.
Let's say we have a ticketing system (like TicketMaster) and it's going to give back the user a confirmation number aft [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 30th '08 |
Building an Error Icon in WPF
Bill Simser
When you launch a XBAP application you can sometimes stumble over the XBAP error page which might look something like this:
Here's a WPF user control that you can drop into any application that simulates the error icon you see. It's a simple Canvas control with two Grids and uses Paths and Elipses to define the graphical look.
First create a new WPF User Control in your project or a library. Name it whatever you like, I called mine ErrorIcon. It'll be a type derived from UserControl so go into [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 25th '08 |
Handling Unhandled Exceptions in XBAP Applications
Bill Simser
In your own applications you'll generally want a "catch-all" handler that will take care of unhandled exceptions. In WinForms apps this is done by creating an unhandled exception delegate and (optionally) creating an AppDomain unhandled exception handler. Peter Bromberg has a good article on all of this here and I wrote about the various options for WinForms apps here.
With XBAP (XAML Browser Applications) the rules are slightly different so here's one way to do it.
Take your existing XBAP app [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 25th '08 |
Patterns, Practices, and Prism
Bill Simser
James Kovacs and I had the pleasure of presenting to a well fed crowd of about 150 crazed developers and IT folk at Shaw here in Calgary last night. We did a drive by discussion of Prism. I say drive by because we really just scratched the surface of what Composite Applications are all about (you can only do so much in 40 minutes on the subject) but we crammed in what we could. I hope it was a good intro to everyone and encourage you to head out and get Prism'd and see what the Patterns and Prac [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 22nd '08 |
9 Options, 4 Icons, 1 MessageBox
Bill Simser
You know there are things in life that you never notice or worry about. This is one of them. The MessageBox API in Windows Forms allows you to specify message box icons to display along side your all-important message you're communicating to the user (System Error, Hard Drive Full, Your Cat is Pregnant, that sort of thing). Icons can help add a little punch to an otherwise drab afternoon staring at rows and rows of spreadsheets and overdue time cards. The 9 options you can select from to kick yo [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 9th '08 |
National Do Not Call List for Canada, well... not really
Bill Simser
Today they launch the National Do Not Call list in Canada, a bill that was passed 3 years ago but it's taken this long to build the service (guess they don't practice Agile in their software delivery process). From the looks of the service you might be jumping for joy thinking all those annoying calls at dinner time will stop. Think again.
I went to register my number with the National Do Not Call list but I’m pretty skeptical that it’s of any value. There are a whack of exclusions:
Any r [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 1st '08 |
Terrarium, Terrarium, Terrarium
Bill Simser
I'm presenting a talk around Terrarium development at the Edmonton .NET User Group on September 25th. The talk is focused on upgrading a legacy app (1.1) to 2.0 (and beyond to 3.5 eventually), building and running your own Terrarium (complete with man-eating critters), and the future roadmap.
Here's the session abstract:
Terrarium was created by members of the .NET Framework team in the .NET Framework 1.0 timeframe and was used initially as an internal test application. In Terrarium, you can [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 16th '08 |
TechDays 08 - Mini Me version of TechEd, now with Canadian Content!
Bill Simser
Great news for Canadians! No, we haven't discovered a new source of unlimited clean-burning fuel and Stephen Harper is still our Prime Minister (for now).
Microsoft Canada has put together an awesome road show and it's coming soon. This is very much a mini-TechEd style conference but with a few twists. First off, it's Canadian based and will be hitting the major cities over the next couple of months. Second, some of the content is delivered by local freaks (such as myself) rather than the same [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 13th '08 |
Setting the Publish Status to Include for 3rd Party Files with XBAP deployments
Bill Simser
I was trying to deploy a new WPF app via XBAP today and we were experiencing an odd deployment error.
When we deployed and launched the app we were getting this error:
Startup URI: http://localhost/XbapNHibernateDeploymentSpike/XbapNHibernateDeploymentSpike.xbapApplication Identity: http://localhost/XbapNHibernateDeploymentSpike/XbapNHibernateDeploymentSpike.xbap#XbapNHibernateDeploymentSpike.xbap, Version=1.0.0.5, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8c4ee06d2506bc6f, processorArchitecture=msil/Xb [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 12th '08 |
Goodbye Patrick
Bill Simser
The SharePoint world is one less today. It's with sad news that I have to say but Patrick Tisseghem, a SharePoint MVP that I've known for years, suddenly passed away on Wednesday September 3. He died due to heart failure in Gothenburg, Sweden. I only met Patrick once at the first Summit I attended but he was an awesome and always interesting character. He was a talented guy and was always telling us about his beer trips throughout Europe while he was delivering SharePoint training. He was a won [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 5th '08 |
WPF for Business Applications, ready for the average user?
Bill Simser
We're starting a new project and naturally we looked at leveraging the latest .NET framework features (auto properties, extension methods, lamdas, LINQ, etc.). The question of user interface came up and we had some decisions to make.
This specific project we looked at building one client web front-end (for the majority of the users) and a SmartClient for a smaller contigent that requires a little more real-time feel along with more rich features the web client might not be able to do (without a [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 21st '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 3 - The Sharing Circle
Bill Simser
ALT.NET Canada wrapped up in the grand ballroom at the University Sunday afternoon. It was a great end to an awesome weekend. As with Open Spaces Technology there's a closing, and Doc introduced the Sharing Circle to everyone (some of Open Spaces Technology is rooted in Native American traditions). Everyone had something to say about the experience (you're not obligated to say anything) so it's a great way to see how our little gathering affected everyone. Enjoy! [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 18th '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 3 - Frameworks Fishbowl
Bill Simser
We had a lively discussion with everyone on day 3 around what frameworks you would use (Microsoft or otherwise) and how to decide. Some of the converstations get a little heated thanks to various individuals and the original fishbowl morphs as more chairs are added in the middle (as opposed to being taken away). Should be an enjoyable watch.
BTW, I screwed up editing this thing (thanks Windows Movie Maker, you know how I feel about you) so the beginning starts about halfway through (around the 2 [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 18th '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 3 - Coupling and Decoupling your Applications
Bill Simser
Here we are at day 3 at ALT.NET Canada. This session was hosted by Donald Belcham and focused around discussing techniques and designs to decouple your solutions. As with most of the sessions this weekend, the conversation went to other places like deployment tools and techniques, coding to interfaces, and talks around how to introduce these techniques to your teams. Enjoy the vid: [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 18th '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!
Bill Simser
Saturday at ALT.NET Canada kicked off with a talk on the build process. The discussion was centered around build files and asks the question if NAnt has outlived it's usefulness, or are we putting too much into our build files? Lots of discussions of alternatives (Boo, Ruby, etc.) and products. The second half of the conversation shifted more to the deploy side, but as you'll see it's all related. Great stuff to start off the day. Here's the vid: [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 17th '08 |
What videos would you like to see?
Bill Simser
Tomorrow is the last day of ALT.NET Canada and there are some great topics lined up. So I thought I would throw it out there for you guys to pick what sessions I video capture. What do you want to see? I can only be at one in each time slot, let me know what you think would be a good one to capture. Here are the choices: 10:00 Is convention over configuration important to .NET developers? Introducing good decoupling practices to a team. SOA. Are people still heading in this direction? 11:30 [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 17th '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - DDD and more D
Bill Simser
Today was DDD day at ALT.NET Canada as we had several sessions on Domain Driven Design. There was a chalk talk hosted by Greg Young, a talk on Distributed Domain Driven Design (DDDD) that I initiated, and a Birds of a Feather style chat towards the end of the day (including the topic of "where the f**k do you put business logic"). It was a healthy discussion that went to a lot of great places. Here's the video for the chalk talk: [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 17th '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 1 - The Marketplace
Bill Simser
Here's the schedule of sessions for this weekend at ALT.NET Canada that the group came up with Friday night (aka The Marketplace)
Saturday
10:00
11:30
2:30
4:00
Which Presentation Technology do you use? What are web technologies going to be in 2012?
Telecommuting - Who wants to wear pants to work?
What approaches to use for occasionally connected applications?
Volunteering our software development skills to more than just open source software.
Building extensible frameworks leveraging f [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 16th '08 |
ALT.NET Canada - Day 1 - Immersion
Bill Simser
It's the first day in Calgary and the launch of our first (and hopefully not last) Open Spaces event on ALT.NET (Canada style!). We're pleased as punch to have Steven "Doc" List up here facilitating the weekend and generally keeping us nerds in check. It was a great turnout tonight with a full house and lots of great participation, questions, and discussions. I didn't get a chance to write down this weekends sessions but they were pretty cool, ranging from DDD to build files, who needs them? I [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 16th '08 |
What can you expect from ALT.NET Canada this weekend?
Bill Simser
Plenty... (image courtesy of Greg Young, laughter courtesy of John Bristowe). [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 13th '08 |
Off the grid
Bill Simser
I’m taking a bit of some downtime in the British Columbia for the next week so no blog or project updates. I’ll be on email/twitter/facebook intermittently via my CrackBerry (wherever there’s reception) otherwise I’ll be back sometime next week with new and exciting adventures in the digital land. [read].
Posted: Sun, Jul 20th '08 |
Public Terrarium Server Available
Bill Simser
I’ve put my own server up and running for you to connect to with the new Terrarium Client and upload your critters to. It’s available at http://www.terrariumserver.com (and will be the default new server in the next build). To configure your Terrarium Client to talk to the new server, on the main screen find the icon (2nd one in) that will take you to the settings screen: Click on this and you’ll see this dialog: Enter in the values you see above (http://www.terrariumserver.com) [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 17th '08 |
Terrarium for Vista, whoops…
Bill Simser
My bad. I don’t run Vista. Really. I don’t like it, it’s glacially slow, and doesn’t give me anything as a developer (except more flashy looking Explorer screens and maybe a Start menu I can search). So I’m an XP boy, however that was a bad mistake on my part with the release of Terrarium. Vista users were getting an exception message and it was pretty quick to see that it was a DirectX problem. The problem was a) Vista doesn’t support DirectX 7 which Terrarium requires and b) Bil is [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 17th '08 |
Reintroducing Terrarium, now with 2.0 goodness!
Bill Simser
To skip to the chase… http://www.codeplex.com/terrarium2 Origins A long time ago, on a development team far, far, away, some bright dude (or dudette) came up with the idea of Terrarium. Terrarium was a .NET 1.x game/learning tool that was aimed at getting people interested in .NET and building cool stuff. In Terrarium, you can create herbivores, carnivores, or plants and then introduce them into a peer-to-peer, networked ecosystem where they complete for survival. Terrarium demonstrates some [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 16th '08 |
You know you've been playing too much LEGO Indiana Jones when...
Bill Simser
It's a great game, but don't let it take over your life
You jump around the house hoping to trigger the door open to that last golden artifact
You instinctively target anything that looks like it could produce studs while walking around campus/work
You don't go too far away from your spouse in the fear you may reappear somewhere else unexpected
You start targeting everything with a hook in it with your bullwhip and try to pull it down
You don't worry too much about getting hurt since you' [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 15th '08 |
Microsoft StyleCop, Totalitarian Rules
Bill Simser
I got turned onto a fairly new tool by a friend and was interested in checking it out. It's called Microsoft StyleCop and done in the style of FxCop but rather than analyzing assemblies it looks at code for formatting and style rules.
The original use was within Microsoft for keeping code across all teams consistent. Imagine having to deal with hundreds of developers moving around an organization like Microsoft where there are dozens of major teams (Windows, Office, Visual Studio, Games, etc.) [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 4th '08 |
Tree Surgeon 2.0 Released
Bill Simser
We’ve released version 2.0 of Tree Surgeon. This is the first major release since I took the project over from Mike Roberts. This release adds the following features: 2005 and 2008 support in addition to the original 2003 support Ability to choose the unit test framework generated (NUnit or MbUnit) Updated tool resources to latest versions NAnt build scripts will use the appropriate .NET versions (1.1, 2.0 and 3.5) Minor bug fixes Improved User Interface Please download the latest project [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 1st '08 |
Tree Surgeon is Looking for a Logo
Bill Simser
A new release of Tree Surgeon is forthcoming and I’m looking to the community to see if someone with some time and artistic skills on their hands would be interested in putting together a logo to kick things up a notch. Tree Surgeon is a .NET development tree generator. Just give it the name of your project, and it will set up a development tree for you in seconds. The UI for Tree Surgeon is pretty simple and it doesn’t need to be extravagant (you run it once to create a new solution tree an [read].
Posted: Sat, Jun 28th '08 |
Testing Castle Windsor Mappings Part Deux
Bill Simser
In my original post on testing Windsor Container mappings, I posted a spec to run whenever you are using Castle Windsor in your project. It basically ran through your configuration file and ensured all the mappings worked. This was meant to be a safety net to catch a rename or namespace move in the domain (which wouldn't update the configuration file).
It worked pretty good and has helped us catch silly errors but we were getting pain with mappings on classes like this:
public partial class Fin [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 27th '08 |
ADO.NET Enity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Bill Simser
Over the past year or two, I've been a casual observer into the Entity Framework coming out of Microsoft. Being an ALT.NET guy, the world tends to revolve around NHibernate for me so I've already got an excellent OR/M tool in my toolset. One of the big issues with EF that we've recognized is the general direction Microsoft has taken with it, following a data centric model rather than an object one. One of the first principles I picked up when I started doing OO programming (back in the SmallTalk [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 23rd '08 |
Creating a Native Win32 Splash Screen
Bill Simser
Splash screens are all the rage. They’re cool, they’re fun, and they can be a pain to program right. I though I would share a native Win32 splash solution with you on the rainy night in June (well, it is June here and it is raining from where I am, YMMV). This is slightly different from your typical splash screen as it’s done using the Win32 API calls and it’s fired off before the .NET Forms engine even gets started. As a result it’s quick and snappy and doesn’t intrude on your norm [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 11th '08 |
WinForms Dummy Question
Bill Simser
This has got to be one of the dumbest posts I've done but for the life of me and my co-horts we can't figure it out.
We have a TextBox sitting on a UserControl sitting on a Panel sitting in a Form.
$10 to the first person to tell me how to set the focus to the TextBox.
We've tried:
txtBox.Focus();
ActiveControl = txtBox;
txtBox.Select();
Nothing works. WTF? This has *got* to be a simple thing right? [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 10th '08 |
The First Spec You Should Write When Using Castle
Bill Simser
Thought this might be useful. On a new project where you're using the Castle Windsor container for Dependency Injection, this is a handy spec to have:
[TestFixture]public class When_starting_the_application : Spec{ [Test] public void verify_Castle_Windsor_mappings_are_correct() { IWindsorContainer container = new WindsorContainer("castle.xml"); foreach (IHandler handler in container.Kernel.GetAssignableHandlers(typeof(object))) { container.Resolve(handle [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 4th '08 |
Plumbers @ Work, Catching up with the Kovacs
Bill Simser
James "The Godfather" Kovacs has been a busy beaver. We've been recording our podcast show, Plumbers @ Work, but post-editing the show has been dreadfully slow. James has pulled his rabbit out of his hat and posted not 1, not 2, but 3 podcasts online! So if you're looking to catch up with the plumbers then this is your chance. It was James and myself for the first episode, then James and John for the second two shows. Plumbers at Work - Episode 14 - Do You Have Change for a Ningy? Plumbers at W [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 2nd '08 |
Day-to-day with Subversion
Bill Simser
How many times have you said "What version is in production?" or "Can we rebuild production to fix a bug and release an update?" Better yet my favourite: "We're working on Feature Y so we can't fix the bug for Feature X. Doing so would mean we deploy part of Feature X and Y with the patch!" These are typical problems with source control, patching, and keeping your working flowing. Often it's hard to keep track of what's being worked on vs. what was already deployed. Sometimes you end up deplo [read].
Posted: Tue, May 6th '08 |
Can you small wht the code is craking?
Bill Simser
D'Arcy posted a link to a new MSDN contest called Crack the Code. Basically use your uber sluething developer skillz to... oh I don't know. I guess it's a guess the numbers game or something. They post clues and you "crack" them with your amazing developer knowledge. Justice will probably struggle with filling out the registration form but if you can get past that, you're golden. Hey, a $4000 Future Shop gift card isn't bad but the contest doesn't seem to work for me. For example, it told me I [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 30th '08 |
Invalid SharePoint URL Character Cheat Sheet
Bill Simser
A few days ago I posted some code to clean out invalid characters in SharePoint URLs. Someone suggested using the SPEncode.IsLegalCharInUrl method to do this. While this might be easy if you're in SharePoint land, I don't like having a dependency on SharePoint assemblies for this sort of thing and want it in my own validation code (besides, the hoops SPEncode.IsLegalCharInUrl goes through, you can't unit test it, trust me). After some digging I determined the list of valid and invalid characters [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 30th '08 |
Test Detector Dialog From Hell
Bill Simser
Got an interesting problem today. A client was using an application in a test environment. Problem was that he didn't realize it was test and entered production data values. Sometime later, the QA group needed to flush the environment. So whammy, there goes production data (we don't back up test data for obvious reasons). This created a problem with the user who claimed they didn't realize they were in a test environment. In fact, we distinctively set the caption on the application to include th [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 25th '08 |
Cleaning invalid characters from SharePoint
Bill Simser
I stumbled onto one of those "gotchas" you get with SharePoint. We were creating new document libraries based on user names in a domain. A change came in and we had to support multiple domains so a document library name would need a domain identifier (since you could have two of the same user names in two different domains). During acceptance testing we found that document libraries created with dashes in the names (as we were creating them using [domain]-[username] pattern) would strip the dash [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 25th '08 |
If ALT.NET were the movie Aliens...
Bill Simser
Dave Laribee would be Bishop.
Ayende Rahien would be the bad ass Powerloader Ripley uses at the end of the movie to kick the Alien Queen's butt!
Scott Bellware would be a male version of Vasquez.
The strangest things spew forth from Twitter. Idea by Chad Myers. Feel free to continue in comments or whatever... [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 22nd '08 |
altnetpedia.com
Bill Simser
Looks like pr0n spam bots have airlifted in and wreaked havoc on the altnetpedia site. Our highly trained monkeys are looking to restore things back to normal so please chill in the lounge for awhile as we startup the silo. Thanks.
Update: Thanks to the uber-super-sleuthing skills of James "the Enforcer" Kovacs, the site is back online. We now return you to your regularily scheduled programming. [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 22nd '08 |
stackoverflow.HelloWorld(new stackoverflow.HelloWorld())
Bill Simser
What happens when you get Jeff Atwood together with Joel Splosky and give them a microphone? You get a podcast where two guys chatter about life, the universe, and computers. The inaugural episode of the new podcast is alive and kicking on a new site and covers pretty much everything. Vista; Mac; FogBuz; Microsoft is evil (really? I didn't know); 9600 baud modems; iPhone; MSN; Google; Browsers; Coke vs. Pepsi; Vista; Wikis; Hardware; The Origin of the Species. You name it, it's there and deliver [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 22nd '08 |
SharePoint A To Z - The Blog Series
Bill Simser
I'm embarking on a series of blog posts on SharePoint, that wonderful and whacky platform by Microsoft we all love to hate. In the series, I'll grab a single feature, tool, technology, or concept aligned to a letter in the alphabet (hence the SharePoint A To Z titles) and write a post on it.
Each post will be anywhere from 5-10 pages long and they'll be a whopping 26 of them, one for every letter in the English alphabet. Not sure how long it'll take to finish the series but bookmark this page a [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 21st '08 |
Continuous Integration Feature Matrix
Bill Simser
This is just a post to direct people to the CI Feature Matrix that ThoughtWorks maintains. If you're up in the air about choosing a CI system, then this is the page for you. They maintain an unbiased view (their words, not mine) of all the CI systems out there (and there are a lot of them). So if you're wondering or looking for something, check it out. Note: TW says the page is unbiased and I believe them, however when anyone puts together a matrix like this sometimes they tend to include feat [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 21st '08 |
UI Exception Handling vs. AppDomain Exceptions
Bill Simser
I'm building an uber-exception handling system for all of our apps at work (basically handle unexpected exceptions and post them to out bug tracker, JIRA) and wanted to clear up some confusion on the differences between unhandled exceptions. As an FYI, this information is just for WinForm apps. By default if you create a new WinForm app any unhandled exceptions are tossed into a dialog box like this: Perhaps while you're debugging you've seen this: That's the built-in exception assistant Vis [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 18th '08 |
3 Geeks in an Elevator
Bill Simser
Recently at the MVP Summit, Scott Cate was stuck in an elevator for a short stint (last night actually as he told the world his ordeal via Twitter). Elsewhere in the universe, a video surfaced of Nicholas White who was trapped in a New York elevator back in 1999. For 41 hours. Being stuck in an elevator is one thing, being stuck there for 3 days without the ability to pee is a whole 'nuther world.
It piqued my curiosity though. If you were trapped in an elevator for 41 hours who would you want t [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 16th '08 |
First Looks: Mingle 2.0
Bill Simser
I have Mingle 2.0 upgraded in our test environment and have been going through the new features, upgrade woes, and some remarks from the peanut gallery. Here's the rundown on this Agile planning tool.
Upgrading
Upgrading was a bit of a pain. To do the test I backed up our Mingle db and restored it to sandbox database on the same MySQL instance and installed a clean copy of Mingle 1.1. Then upgraded 2.0 over top of it (once the 1.1 was working with the new db).
Mingle didn't know what port I or [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 15th '08 |
Being Agile is our favorite thing
Bill Simser
When ThoughtWorkers watch too many Julie Andrews movies: [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 14th '08 |
Unit Test Projects or Not?
Bill Simser
It's funny how the world works. A butterfly flaps it's wings in Brazil, and a tornado forms in Texas 1,000 miles away. Phil Haack posted a poll about unit test project structure and asked the very question we've come to on our current project. Should unit tests belong in their own project or as part of the system? I was going to post a comment on Phil's entry, but figured I would drag my explanation and description out to a full post here. In the past I've *always* created a separate test projec [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 9th '08 |
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