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Waldek Mastykarz Profile |
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Easier using widgets in SharePoint 2010 with the Mavention Widget Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous article I explained why using widgets in SharePoint 2010 is inconvenient and showed what you can do to make it easier using the standard functionality. In this article I’ll show you how you can simplify working with widgets even further using the Mavention Widget Sandboxed Web Part.
Mavention Widget Web Part
The Mavention Widget Web Part is a Sandboxed Web Part which allows you to include in the page any snippet of HTML without any restrictions. Although from the functionality p [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 27th '12 |
Inconvenient using widgets in SharePoint for end users
Waldek Mastykarz
It’s a common approach to use widgets to enrich web solutions. Unfortunately using widgets with SharePoint 2010 has a number of challenges. Find out why using widgets with SharePoint is inconvenient and how you can simplify it.
Widgets – they’re everywhere
In the last few years many web services started providing widgets so that their services can be integrated with websites. After all, who haven’t heard about the twitter search widget, the facebook like button, or about embedding a YouT [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 27th '12 |
Better content targeting with Mavention Negated Audiences
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the frequent challenges when working with Audiences is the inability to provide alternative content to users outside the Audiences to which the content is targeted. Find out how to prevent pages from getting blank with Mavention Negated Audiences.
SharePoint 2010 Audiences 101
The Audiences capability provided with SharePoint 2010 allows you to target content to specific groups of users. By leveraging Audiences you can not only unclutter the user interface but also make the solution more [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 24th '12 |
Granting permissions to the User Profile Service Application using PowerShell
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous article I explained how access permissions to the User Profile Service Application are required if you want to programmatically configure Navigation of a Publishing Site in SharePoint 2010. In the article I showed you how you can configure grant required permissions manually. There are however scenarios when you might need to configure those permissions in a structured and repeatable way. Find out how to grant permissions to the User Profile Service Application using PowerShell.
I [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 20th '12 |
Programmatically configuring menu items in SharePoint 2010 revisited
Waldek Mastykarz
A while ago I wrote about how you can programmatically configure menu items in SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell. Unfortunately it turns out that it doesn’t always the way you would expect it to. Find out how to get the script working in your SharePoint environment.
Being able to programmatically configure menu items is an quite important part of structured and repeatable deployment. Particularly if you’re building and deploying frequently, configuring navigation can save you quite some time [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 20th '12 |
Why automatic creation of variation sites and pages can be harmful
Waldek Mastykarz
When working with Variations, using the option to automatically create variation pages is very tempting. Unfortunately, if used improperly, it can have negative impact on the search ranking of your website.
Variations as approach for supporting multilingual sites
A common approach to implement multilingual solutions on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform is to use Variations. Although Variations can be used for other purposes as well, delivering content in multiple languages is probably the m [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 17th '12 |
Why automatic creation of variation sites and pages can be harmful
Waldek Mastykarz
When working with Variations, using the option to automatically create variation pages is very tempting. Unfortunately, if used improperly, it can have negative impact on the search ranking of your website.
Variations as approach for supporting multilingual sites
A common approach to implement multilingual solutions on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform is to use Variations. Although Variations can be used for other purposes as well, delivering content in multiple languages is probably the m [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 17th '12 |
Correctly implementing Ribbon in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 introduces a new User Experience designed to make it easier for users to accomplish their tasks. One of the biggest improvements is the contextual Ribbon, which increases discoverability op options by displaying only options relevant to the current context. The main idea behind the Ribbon is that it’s always available and within reach. This applies not only to Office client applications but also to SharePoint.
Positioning the Ribbon
Following Microsoft’s guidelines, the Ribbo [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 13th '12 |
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Development Cookbook–book review
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I had the opportunity of reviewing a brand new book for SharePoint developers – the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Development Cookbook written by fellow SharePoint MVP Ed Musters.
What I expected
Following the title I expected a cookbook: a collection of recipes that illustrate common good practices in developing SharePoint solutions. There are many books about development on the SharePoint platform so I expected this cookbook to be different and offer the reader some added value. An idea [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 10th '12 |
SharePoint Server MVP 2012
Waldek Mastykarz
I have just received an e-mail from Microsoft saying that I have been reawarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for SharePoint Server title for another year.
Herewith I would like to thank everyone in the SharePoint community for inspiration and their continuous feedback on my work. Thank you! [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 1st '12 |
Preventing authenticated visitors from browsing system pages
Waldek Mastykarz
When building an Internet-facing website on the SharePoint 2010 platform, the last thing you want is to have your visitors browse your system pages. To prevent this from happening, SharePoint 2010 has the ViewFormPagesLockdown Feature. But what if your visitors are authenticated?
SharePoint 2010 For Internet Sites
SharePoint 2010 is a rich platform for building Internet-facing websites. Using its capabilities, you can create mini-sites for supporting marketing campaigns as well as large company [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 20th '11 |
Cross-selling content on your SharePoint website with Mavention Suggested Content
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous article I discussed why cross-selling content on your website might help you get more of your content to your visitors. I also promised to show you a simple solution for presenting content suggestions on your website built with SharePoint 2010. Here it is: Mavention Suggested Content.
What is Mavention Suggested Content?
Mavention Suggested Content is a solution for SharePoint 2010 that allows you to present content suggestions to your visitors.
After deploying the Solution Packa [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 16th '11 |
Cross-selling content on your website
Waldek Mastykarz
Every single e-commerce website out there uses cross-selling to expand their reach and help visitors get familiar with as many products as possible. So why not we apply the same idea to the content on our websites?
Getting more of your content to people
How can I help my visitors become familiar with as many products as I offer? – this question has been around for quite some time now. If you’re offering a single service, it’s not a question you would be quickly asking yourself. However, if [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 16th '11 |
Paging long articles with Mavention Paged Rich HTML Field
Waldek Mastykarz
Publishing long articles on the web can be very user-unfriendly. Not only such article pages load slowly, due to large HTML, but it also may be challenging to make user stay on one page for such a long time. This is exactly why breaking long articles into smaller pieces is considered a good practice. Find out how to easily page long articles with the Mavention Paged Rich HTML Field.
Mavention Paged Rich HTML Field is an extended version of the standard RichHtmlField control provided with SharePo [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 14th '11 |
Products Configuration Wizard failed and you have no clue why
Waldek Mastykarz
When upgrading your SharePoint 2010 environment to a Service Pack or a Cumulative Update there is a chance that the update process fails. Although the error message contains a link to a log file it is of a little help leaving you without a single clue what went wrong. There is however one more place where you can take a look to know exactly what caused the upgrade process to fail.
Products Configuration Wizard diagnostic log is not really helpful
Every time you upgrade your SharePoint environmen [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 2nd '11 |
Create SharePoint 2010 publishing content easier with Windows Live Writer
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 has rich capabilities for creating and managing different types of content. Publishing scenarios have however different requirements than for example collaboration solutions. Find out how you can improve the content creation process by using client tools such as Microsoft Word or Windows Live Writer.
SharePoint 2010 – a powerful platform
SharePoint 2010 is a rich platform for creating web-based solutions targeting different scenarios: from collaboration to Internet-facing websi [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 29th '11 |
Quick minifying JavaScript and CSS files with Mavention Assets Minifier
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I showed you how you can automate minifying JavaScript and CSS files in Visual Studio 2010. There are however situations, when you might want to quickly minify a file outside Visual Studio. Find out how to minify CSS and JavaScript files in 3 simple steps with Mavention Assets Minifier.
Mavention Assets Minifier is a Windows tool that allows you to quickly minify CSS and JavaScript files.
Using Mavention Assets Minifier you can minify a CSS or a JavaScript file in 3 simple steps.
1. Se [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 27th '11 |
Using minified CSS and JavaScript files everywhere in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous post I showed you how you can automate minifying JavaScript and CSS files in Visual Studio 2010. As I also mentioned, SharePoint has limited support for using minified files. But just because something is not available out of the box doesn't mean it's not possible. Find out how to leverage the extensibility capabilities of the SharePoint 2010 platform and support using minified CSS and JavaScript files everywhere.
Minified files and the ScriptLink control
Using minified [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 20th '11 |
Minifying JavaScript and CSS files made easy with Mavention SharePoint Assets Minifier
Waldek Mastykarz
Minifying asset files is a known performance optimization technique. By removing all optional characters you can decrease the size of CSS and JavaScript files and make them download faster. Depending on how big your solution is this process might get tedious when done manually and this is exactly where Mavention SharePoint Assets Minifier can help you out.
With great power comes great responsibility
When building web-based solutions writing your own CSS and JavaScript files is something you cann [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 20th '11 |
Using different login pages on different Site Collections in a single Web Application
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 makes it easy for you to host multiple Site Collections within a single Web Application. In terms of Internet-facing websites this capability is extremely powerful when it comes to hosting mini-sites. And although they all might use the same credential store, they might need a login page using their own branding. Find out how to configure different login page for every Site Collection in a single Web Application.
Delivering personal experiences on the web
SharePoint 2010 is a pow [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 19th '11 |
Optimizing the process of deploying SharePoint Packages to minimize the impact on farm’s availability
Waldek Mastykarz
If you have deployed SharePoint Packages in the past, you know, that, unless you have a second farm, deploying SharePoint Packages means outage to your Web Applications. There are however a few things that you can control to minimize the impact on the availability of your websites.
The deployment process is a black box
The process of deploying SharePoint Packages might seem to you like a blackbox. Not surprisingly: you build a SharePoint Package, add it to your SharePoint farm and finally deploy [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 7th '11 |
Provisioning Publishing Pages using PowerShell
Waldek Mastykarz
A while ago I presented you the Mavention Export Page extension that allows you to export preconfigured Publishing Pages so that they can be provisioned using Features. If, however, creating Features is too much overhead to you and you are more of a PowerShell guy, you might wonder how to provision exported Publishing Pages using PowerShell.
Deploying Publishing Pages with SharePoint Packages
Deploying your solution with some preconfigured Publishing Pages is not only of great value when using a [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 6th '11 |
Configuring SSL in SharePoint 2010 development environment
Waldek Mastykarz
Once in a while, when working with SharePoint solutions you need to test them on sites using SSL just to be sure that everything is working just as intended. Although I have previously wrote about how to configure SSL for SharePoint development environments, SSL configuration in IIS7 has changed slightly. Find out how to configure SSL on SharePoint 2010 development environments.
When working with SSL in development environments there are two scenarios: you are either creating a new Web Applicati [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 1st '11 |
Controlling the list of available Web Parts with Web Part Adder
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the common requirements when building SharePoint solutions is to control the list of available Web Parts. Find out how to do this using the new Web Part Adder control available in SharePoint 2010.
Inconvenient Web Part Gallery
Web Parts are one of the most common building blocks for SharePoint solutions. With time, as you add new functionality to your solution, the number of available Web Parts grows. And although theoretically you are providing your users with what they have been asking [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 28th '11 |
Publishing Rich HTML without any limitations in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with rich content editing capabilities. However the set of allowed HTML tags is limited. Find out how to avoid the limitations in editing rich content in SharePoint 2010.
When working with Internet-facing websites, rich content allows us to make difference and to add interaction and semantics to static pages. Out of the box SharePoint 2010 ships with a Rich Text Editor (RTE) that allows us to enrich our content with HTML markup. Thanks to its interaction with the Ribbon con [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 26th '11 |
Inconvenient Content Query Web Part slots and CQWP’s extensibility
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 Content Query Web Parts ships with the Slots capability which simplifies working with custom Item Styles. Unfortunately it turns out that Slots may be broken when working with extended CQWPs. So what is the problem exactly and, what’s more important, how can you solve it?
Slots – and it’s not about Vegas
Slots are one of the great improvements of the Content Query Web Part in SharePoint 2010. Using slots you can decouple your custom Item Styles (presentation layer) from the [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 23rd '11 |
Removing unwanted properties from imported Document Library contents with XSLT
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous post I showed you how you can import contents of a Document Library into your SharePoint Project for repeatable deployment. In this article I will show you how to remove all unwanted properties from the generated Element Manifest and keep it tidy.
While showing you the newest extension for the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools that I made, I mentioned that during the import it includes all properties in the generated Element Manifest.
This is by design to give you the [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 20th '11 |
Importing documents to Document Libraries with Mavention Import Document Library Contents
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I showed you how you can import Lists and their data into your SharePoint Project using the Mavention Import List Instance extension. As you can imagine supporting list data is only half of the story, so to complete it another extension became available. Find out how to import documents from Document Libraries into your SharePoint project using Mavention Import Document Library Contents.
Last week we discussed how test data can help you test your SharePoint solutions and how you can imp [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 20th '11 |
Processing items with Work Item Timer Jobs in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Once in a while you find yourself in a situation where you have to process some items in SharePoint. Using Timer Jobs in only a half of the answer. Find out how to process items using Work Item Timer Jobs in SharePoint 2010.
Processing items in SharePoint 2010
One of the things we have probably all done at least once during our SharePoint developer career was to create a solution for processing a number of items, such as ratings, subscriptions, some kind of requests, etc. We have all learned tha [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 16th '11 |
Provisioning List Instance data using PowerShell
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I showed you how you can import List Instances and their data to your SharePoint Project so that you can reuse test data during the development process. If however creating test Features is too much work for you and you are more of a PowerShell guy this article might be just the right thing for you. Find out how to provision List Instance data using PowerShell.
Reusing test data
Importing List Instance data into your project allows you to reuse your test data during the whole developmen [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 13th '11 |
Removing unwanted fields from imported List Instances using XSLT
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous article I showed you how you can import List Instances and their data using the Mavention Import List Instance extension. In this article I will show you how to clean the imported List Instance by removing unnecessary fields.
Previously you have seen how you can import List Instances including the data using the Mavention Import List Instance extension. With a single mouse click the extension imported the selected List including all its data into your SharePoint Project. As I ment [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 13th '11 |
Import List Instances and their data with Mavention Import List Instance
Waldek Mastykarz
When working with custom Lists you find yourself often redeploying the List and creating some test data to verify that everything is working correctly. Entering sample data may be fun to do once but becomes rather boring after a few times. Find out how to reuse your sample data in the development process using Mavention Import List Instance.
SharePoint Lists and test data
SharePoint Lists are a great place for storing data in SharePoint. They are very flexible, highly customizable and out of the [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 13th '11 |
Cleaning drop folder of Microsoft assemblies when building SharePoint Projects – TFS Build 2010 tip #2
Waldek Mastykarz
When building SharePoint Projects using TFS Build 2010 many of standard available Microsoft assemblies are copied to the drop folder. This not only clutters your drop folder but also takes a lot of space on your disk. Find out how to remove all assemblies other than yours when building SharePoint Projects using TFS Build 2010.
Cluttered drop folder – the inconvenience
Each time you build a SharePoint Project using TFS Build 2010 it will copy along with your binaries a number of Microsoft assem [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 31st '11 |
Packaging dependent SharePoint projects – TFS Build 2010 tip #1
Waldek Mastykarz
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools make it extremely easy to separate your solution into logical units and yet package them in a single SharePoint Package (WSP). Although building dependent SharePoint projects using Visual Studio 2010 is straight forward, building using TFS Build 2010 produces slightly different output. Find out how to build dependent SharePoint projects using TFS Build 2010 the right way.
Packaging SharePoint assets using Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 29th '11 |
Rating content for anonymous users with Mavention Anonymous Rating
Waldek Mastykarz
Allowing users to rate your content is a great way of capturing feedback. SharePoint 2010 ships with the rating capability, which unfortunately at this moment doesn’t support rating by anonymous users. And this is exactly where Mavention Anonymous Rating comes in. Find out how to allow anonymous visitors to rate your content with Mavention Anonymous Rating.
Feedback through rating
When creating a solution you can never be sure about its success. Capturing feedback from your audience is an impo [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 23rd '11 |
Checking which Delegate Controls are activated on your site
Waldek Mastykarz
Delegate Controls allow you to provide users with pluggable functionality which they can use to extend their existing solution without modifying the existing code. Unfortunately once enabled it’s difficult to track which Delegate Controls are used where on your site. Find out how to check which Delegate Controls are activated on your site using PowerShell.
Delegate Controls 101
Delegate Controls are a great piece of engineering – no doubt about it. Using this capability you can easily extend [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 16th '11 |
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Applications on Windows Phone 7–book review
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I had the opportunity of reviewing a new book on developing Windows Phone 7 applications that interact with SharePoint 2010 – Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Applications on Windows Phone 7.
What I expected
I’ve done some Windows Phone 7 development previously. I have experimented with MVVM and with different WP7 controls but none of my apps communicated with SharePoint so reading this book seemed to me like an opportunity to pick up some more knowledge of how to get the most o [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 15th '11 |
Automatically copying assemblies and symbols of dependent projects
Waldek Mastykarz
Using the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools you can package your SharePoint components into WSPs with just a few mouse clicks. And although it allows you to get productive and focus on the real work, this process has some limitations like not copying dependent assemblies to the output directory.
The inconvenience
Imagine the following scenario. You’re working on a SharePoint Solution that consists of three Visual Studio Projects: Contoso, Contoso.Controls and Contoso.WebTemplat [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 15th '11 |
Inconvenient Excel REST Services and anonymous users
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with Excel REST Services that allow us to request pieces of Excel Sheets using a URL. Unfortunately things get pretty complicated when you try to make Excel REST Services available to your anonymous visitors. Find out how to deal with Excel REST Services and anonymous users.
The Inconvenience
Excel REST Services in SharePoint 2010 are a very convenient way of creating rich dashboard and pages. Using nothing but the URL you can include dynamic content from an Excel Sheet loc [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 10th '11 |
Multi-page forms with the SharePoint Scenario framework
Waldek Mastykarz
Splitting long forms into multiple pages is a great idea from the usability point of view. The downside is that it requires you to create some sort of mechanism of persisting the data between the pages. The good news is that SharePoint 2010 provides you with a framework for that particular purpose. Find out how to create multi-page forms with the SharePoint Scenario framework.
WhatIs: SharePoint Scenario framework
SharePoint Scenario framework is one of many hidden gems of the SharePoint 2010 pl [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 10th '11 |
Web Parts in content with Master Pages without the form tag? No problem!
Waldek Mastykarz
Removing the form runat=server tag from the Master Page is one of the ways to optimize Internet-facing websites built on the SharePoint 2010 platform. Unfortunately it also means losing some functionality such as Web Parts in content. Find out how to combine minimal Master Page markup with Web Parts in content.
Web Parts in content
SharePoint 2010 allows us to add Web Parts in content. Using this new capability we can create richer experiences without quirky workarounds. It allows us to combine [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 7th '11 |
Prefetching SharePoint search results
Waldek Mastykarz
Prefetching content allows users to access it more quickly what improves the user experience. Find out how to prefetch SharePoint search results and cut down your users’ waiting time.
Prefetching content
Whenever the user is searching for something the odds are high that he will visit at least the first search result. Depending on the quality of search results he might find just the thing he was looking for or he might go back and try another result. By prefetching content in the background yo [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 3rd '11 |
Inconvenient caching dynamically generated files in BLOB cache
Waldek Mastykarz
Caching files using BLOB cache is a great performance improvement in SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management solutions. Unfortunately it turns out, that if your files are dynamically created, they are not being cached by BLOB cache. So is creating a custom caching solution the only option to have a good performing solution?
Optimizing SharePoint for performance – caching
The SharePoint 2010 platform provides you with a number of caching mechanisms. Depending on if you want to cache objects in [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 3rd '11 |
When to use which Web Part template?
Waldek Mastykarz
If you have used the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools you have probably noticed that there are multiple SharePoint Project Item Templates to create Web Parts from. Find out which of them make the most sense in what scenarios.
The Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools are the new tools for SharePoint developers that simplify the process of creating SharePoint solutions and improve developer productivity. The tools provide a number of templates for various SharePoint assets am [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 29th '11 |
Easier implementing custom user experiences in SharePoint 2010 with Sandboxed User Controls
Waldek Mastykarz
Custom Controls are invaluable when working with Web Content Management solutions on the SharePoint 2010 platform. Unfortunately they are pretty inconvenient to use with large portions of HTML markup. Find out how to create better controls in SharePoint 2010.
Web Content Management solutions are different than other types of SharePoint solutions. One of the main differences is the amount of custom development that WCM solutions require. Because the user experience of a public-facing website is n [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 29th '11 |
Temporary Post Used For Theme Detection (9b104e7f-7980-4067-b7d0-1e5719140b84 – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)
Waldek Mastykarz
This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (dbfe3b17-8637-4464-8d68-cb4b336d437f – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7) [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 27th '11 |
Programmatically configuring menu items in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Using structured and repeatable deployment in SharePoint 2010 solutions allows you to deliver your solution in a predictable fashion and save some time. With the SharePoint 2010 API you can script the deployment process to deliver your solution already preconfigured. Unfortunately there are some limitations in the SharePoint API that make it impossible to configure some pieces of the solution, like configuring the menu items. It turns out that it is possible after all. Find out how to programmat [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 19th '11 |
Using SPContext.Current is no guarantee for great performance
Waldek Mastykarz
It is a common best practice, while working with the SharePoint server API, to always use context objects whenever possible. Because they have been already instantiated by SharePoint itself, reusing context data doesn’t cause additional calls to the database and allows you to create good performing solutions. However, just because you use SPContext.Current in your code, doesn’t mean your solution is built properly.
An easy example of how things can go wrong
Imagine the following scenario. Yo [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 16th '11 |
Mavention SharePoint 2010 Site Checker Windows Phone 7 app available now
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, here at Mavention, we published Mavention SharePoint 2010 Site Checker – a set of automated tests that allows you to scan your Internet facing website built on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform for common issues. Just now Mavention SharePoint 2010 Site Checker has become available as a Windows Phone 7 app.
The Mavention SharePoint 2010 Site Checker Windows Phone 7 app allows you to easily request a site check. After starting the app all you need to do is to fill in the URL of t [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 15th '11 |
Easier maintaining Web Parts with Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools
Waldek Mastykarz
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools simplify working with SharePoint 2010 projects. By introducing SharePoint Project Items (SPIs) the tools hide the internals of creating SharePoint packages and allow you to focus on the real work. However, when you start moving SPIs around, things might get complicated and break. Find out how to prevent yourself from spending hours on fixing stuff using the standard functionality of the new developer tools.
The things that change the most
When you ch [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 7th '11 |
Easy inserting symbols in SharePoint 2010 with Mavention Insert Symbol
Waldek Mastykarz
When working with content there are often situations when you need to insert a symbol such as a copyright or a trademark sign in content. If you are editing content directly in SharePoint there is no easy way for you to insert such symbol. You have to copy the symbol from another place and paste it in SharePoint. If this scenario sounds familiar to you, then the Mavention Insert Symbol solution is just the right thing for you. Find out how to insert symbols in content in SharePoint 2010 the easy [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 3rd '11 |
Enable Developer Dashboard for anonymous users
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 contains Developer Dashboard which can be invaluable in optimizing custom solutions for performance. By default the Developer Dashboard is visible only to authenticated users, but sometimes you might want to show it to anonymous users as well. Sounds insane? Find out why you would want it and how to do it.
Monitoring page performance with Developer Dashboard
Developer Dashboard in SharePoint 2010 is a great way of monitoring the performance of custom solutions. Using no more than [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 2nd '11 |
DIWUG event Windows Phone 7 app available now
Waldek Mastykarz
If you are a member of the Dutch Information Worker User Group (DIWUG) community and you have a Windows Phone 7 this app is a must have: the DIWUG app!
The DIWUG event app allows you to view the information about the upcoming DIWUG event.
First, after starting the app, you can quickly see the general information about the event:
From there you can browse the agenda:
If the DIWUG event sounds interesting enough to you, you can register for the event.
At this moment it is possible to register o [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 1st '11 |
Removing Web Parts tables in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
In MOSS 2007 solutions one of the fixes to get cleaner and more accessible HTML markup was to remove Web Part tables using Control Adapters. Because SharePoint 2010 allows us to insert Web Parts in content there is more to this challenge. Find out what has changed and how to deal with it in SharePoint 2010.
How things were: MOSS 2007
If you’ve worked on an Internet-facing website using the MOSS 2007 platform a Web Part Zone Control Adapter for removing tables from Web Parts for anonymous users [read].
Posted: Tue, May 31st '11 |
Check the quality of your SharePoint 2010 Internet-facing website with Mavention SharePoint 2010 Site Checker
Waldek Mastykarz
How good is your Internet-facing website built on the SharePoint 2010 platform?
You can build great Internet-facing websites using the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform – no doubt about it. The challenging part is that the SharePoint platform is complex and that building for the Internet is different from building for intranets.
For the last few weeks we have been working here at Mavention on an automated tool that would help us check the quality of Internet-facing websites that we are buildi [read].
Posted: Tue, May 31st '11 |
Working easier with custom CAS policies
Waldek Mastykarz
Working with custom CAS policies is not trivial. Many developers find it challenging to figure out what permissions their code should have, so instead deploying safely to Web Application (BIN) they choose to deploy their assemblies to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) granting their code full trust. There is however one trick that makes it very easy to find out what permissions you should grant to your code. Find out how to craft your custom CAS policies the easy way.
CAS 101
CAS policies have bee [read].
Posted: Fri, May 20th '11 |
Easier working with SharePoint Project Items with Mavention SPI References
Waldek Mastykarz
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools improve the development process on the SharePoint 2010 platform. By simplifying the packaging process they allow you to focus on the development rather than the packaging plumbing. Unfortunately, when working with larger solutions, it might get challenging for you to track which SharePoint Project Items are used where. Find out how to easier track the references to SharePoint Project Items with Mavention SPI References.
Getting efficient with Visual [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 29th '11 |
Extending all SharePoint Project Item Types – Extending Visual Studio SharePoint Developer Tools tip #10
Waldek Mastykarz
When extending standard functionality of SharePoint Project Item Types in Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools there are scenarios when you might want your extensions to be available on all types of SharePoint Project Items. Find out how to make your custom functionality available to all SharePoint Project Item Types.
Creating custom SPI Types extensions 101 and why it’s challenging
Imagine the following scenario: you’re working on a new extension for the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoi [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 27th '11 |
Creating better RSS feeds with SharePoint 2010 Content Query Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part (CQWP) allows you to easily create RSS feeds for your content. With SharePoint 2010 it became even easier as you can use slots to map your fields to RSS fields. There are however a few things you should keep in mind to get the most out of an RSS feed created using the CQWP. Find out how to create a proper RSS feed with the SharePoint 2010 Content Query Web Part.
RSS is not dead!
RSS feeds are a great way of delivering information to your audience. Despite of the growth of [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 22nd '11 |
Extending the SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Quick Access Toolbar
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 includes the Ribbon which makes it easier for users to work with the rich functionality of the SharePoint platform. The Ribbon in SharePoint 2010 also includes a rich extensibility framework which makes it possible for custom solutions to make their functionality available to users. Using the Ribbon extensibility framework you can add all kinds of controls to the Ribbon but is it also possible to extend the Quick Access Toolbar?
Ribbon in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 include [read].
Posted: Sat, Apr 16th '11 |
Building Visual Studio 2010 extensions in one project – Extending Visual Studio SharePoint Developer Tools tip #9
Waldek Mastykarz
When building extensions for Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools, VSIX project by default does only the packaging. Your extension’s code has to be included in a separate assembly. Did you know however that all you need is a simple trick to build your extension using a single project?
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools – more than just tools
Visual Studio 2010 ships with the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools which simplify development on the SharePoint 201 [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 8th '11 |
Easy hiding content in debug mode with the SiteModeTrimmedControl
Waldek Mastykarz
While working on an Internet-facing website at some point you might include some code which should be executed only when in production. Probably the most common example of such code are web analytics tracking codes. The last thing you want is to make web analytics count a visit every time you hit F5 on your development machine. Find out how to deal with it other than disabling the Internet connection on your development machine.
See me not
Conditionally showing content on a development machine i [read].
Posted: Sat, Apr 2nd '11 |
Hierarchical titles vs. paged overviews
Waldek Mastykarz
Every page should have a unique title. Unique titles can help you not only optimize your content for search engines but also improve the user experience. Hierarchical titles can help you make your page titles more usable but there is more to it if you’re using paged overviews. Find out how to generate unique titles for pages that use paged overviews in SharePoint 2010.
Hierarchical page title is a good title
Not that long ago I wrote about generating hierarchical titles in SharePoint 2010. I s [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 1st '11 |
Ask The Expert @ DevDays 2011
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just got a confirmation from Microsoft that I will on the SharePoint Ask the Expert booth @ DevDays 2011. Haven’t heard about DevDays?
[From techdays.nl] DevDays is de grootste Microsoft conferentie voor software development en softwarearchitectuur in Nederland
DevDays bestaat al 14 jaar en duizenden professionals komen elk jaar weer om in twee dagen volledig op de hoogte te raken van alle actuele ontwikkelingen op hun vakgebied. Azure, cloud, desktop/client, SQL Server, Visual Studio, [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 31st '11 |
SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management challenges made easy–slides available
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday I was presenting on the first SharePoint Saturday in Holland about challenges in building Web Content Management solutions on the SharePoint 2010 platform. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, the slides from my presentation are available on the SharePoint Saturday Holland site.
It was without a doubt a great experience to see so many attendees spending their weekend on networking and learning more about SharePoint. I’d like to hereby thank the organization and sponsors fo [read].
Posted: Sun, Mar 27th '11 |
Inconvenient SharePoint 2010 mobile redirect
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with support for mobile devices. Unfortunately it doesn’t work with anonymous users what makes it unsuitable for Internet-facing websites. The real challenge is that there is no easy way of turning it off. While there are some workarounds they are far from ideal. Find out how to properly make SharePoint 2010 support mobile devices on Internet-facing websites.
The Mobile Experience
In the last few years more and more people started using mobile devices to browse the Web. N [read].
Posted: Sat, Mar 26th '11 |
SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management challenges made easy
Waldek Mastykarz
Building Internet-facing websites on the SharePoint platform is different than building intranet solutions. Although in both cases you’re using SharePoint as the framework, building public websites introduces some new challenges.
This Saturday, March 26 I will be presenting on what the most common challenges in building Internet-facing websites on the SharePoint 2010 platforms are and how to deal with them. Sounds interesting? Come see my presentation (SPDEV04) at SharePoint Saturday NL.
Techn [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 22nd '11 |
Sample code: Asynchronously checking if a Ribbon command is available
Waldek Mastykarz
While extending SharePoint 2010 Ribbon with new functionality one of the common things you do is to check whether a command should be enabled or not. Since the checking function expects you to return a value it can get tricky if your custom checking operation is asynchronous. Find out how to asynchronously check if a Ribbon command is available.
Last year fellow SharePoint MVP – Andrew Connell posted a great tip about how you can asynchronously check if a command should be available or not. Ac [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 21st '11 |
Generating robots.txt files with Mavention Robots.txt
Waldek Mastykarz
Robots.txt files are a way to tell Web Robots which part of your site they should skip while scanning it. Although it’s not an official standard using robots.txt is a common approach used for Internet-facing websites to exclude pieces of your website from crawling. Find out how you can easily create and manage the robots.txt file with Mavention Robots.txt.
What is Mavention Robots.txt?
Mavention Robots.txt is a solution that allows you to easily manage the contents of the robots.txt file on yo [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 20th '11 |
How we did it: mavention.nl – Part 5: Mavention RSS
Waldek Mastykarz
A part of building an Internet-facing website is notifying your visitors about new content. Using RSS/Atom feeds is a common way to deliver new content to your audience. Find out how we created RSS for our brand new website without a single line of custom code!
One of the things that made it for the first release of our website was an RSS feed that would deliver the most recent content on our website to our readers. Based on the content that we would include in the first release, we wanted to pr [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 18th '11 |
How we did it: mavention.nl – Part 4: Optimizing for the Web
Waldek Mastykarz
Building Internet-facing websites on the SharePoint platform requires you not only to understand how SharePoint works but also to know what the Web is about and how things work there. In this part of the How we did it series about our brand new website I will show you some things that we implemented to make our website a better Web citizen.
Intranet vs. Internet
Developing Internet-facing websites is different than building intranet solutions. When building a solution for an intranet you know yo [read].
Posted: Sat, Feb 12th '11 |
Mavention Meta Fields v1.1: no jQuery release
Waldek Mastykarz
A while ago I’ve released Mavention Meta Fields: a solution that makes it easy to add meta tags to Publishing Pages in SharePoint 2010. Shortly after the release it turned out that the dependency on jQuery was causing some problems in integrating the solution with existing environments using different versions of jQuery.
After having received some feedback I decided to provide a quick fix: a version of the Mavention Meta Fields v1.1 solution without jQuery. Functionality-wise it’s exactly th [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 11th '11 |
Better SharePoint 2010 ‘Page not found (404)’ page with the Mavention Page Not Found Widget
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I wrote an article about how you can create a proper ‘Page not found (404)’ page in SharePoint 2010. Using a custom HTTP Module and just a few lines of code we created a better experience for both your visitors and search engines. Today I will show you how you can improve it even further by adding search suggestions.
404 pages: why they suck and what can we do about it
Nobody likes landing on a 404 page. A 404 page tells us we did something wrong. Additionally in many cases 404 page [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 7th '11 |
Configuring SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor to allow ‘Paste plaintext’ only
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I wrote an article how you can configure the SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor (RTE) to better support consistent content authoring. Shortly after I published the article, I got a question how to force the RTE to allow the content editors to paste content only as plain text removing all formatting. From the consistency point of view this is a great deal especially if RTE is not your primary text editor and you’re pasting the content from another text editor. So how do you confi [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 1st '11 |
How we did it: mavention.nl – Part 3: Search Engine Optimization
Waldek Mastykarz
A few days after we launched our new website I used my favorite search engine to do a search on one of my fellow-Mavens. I was really surprised to see that in just a few days the first result came from our brand new website! So what is it exactly that we did that gave us such great results in such a short time?
Search Engine Optimization is not a sauce
When we started defining requirements for our new website one of the things on the top of the list was getting high search results for our conten [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 29th '11 |
“The name ‘InitializeControl’ does not exist in the current context” – Visual Web Part (Sandboxed) bug and how to fix it
Waldek Mastykarz
A while ago Microsoft provided us with Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools – a set of productivity extensions for the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools. One of the improvements shipped with the Power Tools is the Visual Web Part (Sandboxed) that – as the name says it – allows you to both benefit of the great design capabilities of Visual Web Part while still being able to deploy it to Sandbox. Unfortunately if your Sandboxed Visual Web Part will get too large things won [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 26th '11 |
How we did it: mavention.nl – Part 2a: Dealing with minified files
Waldek Mastykarz
In the previous part of the How we did it series about our new website I told you about how we optimized our website for performance. One of the optimization techniques that we applied was minifying asset files such as CSS and JavaScript. While minification allows you to decrease the size of files it has one serious disadvantage: it often makes them unreadable. So how did we deal with it?
Minification 101
Minification is a well known process of decreasing the size of files. Depending on the type [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 23rd '11 |
Spaarne Ziekenhuis Case Study has been published
Waldek Mastykarz
Last year we created a brand new website for Spaarne Ziekenhuis – a full-service medical center here in the Netherlands. For the last few months we’ve been working together with Spaarne and Microsoft to publish a Case Study around the solution. Today the Case Study has been published and is available on the Microsoft Case Studies website at http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/default.aspx.
It was a great pleasure and a wonderful experience to work together with Microsoft and Spaarne on this [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 19th '11 |
How we did it: mavention.nl – Part 2: Performance
Waldek Mastykarz
In the previous part of the How we did it series about our new website I told you how we implemented the branding in SharePoint 2010. In this part I will share with you some information about how we optimized our website for performance.
No magic wand for performance optimization
There is no magic button you can flip to optimize an Internet-facing website, or any other solution for that matter, for performance. The approach and solution varies per scenario and depends on many different factors s [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 18th '11 |
How we did it: mavention.nl – Part 1: Branding
Waldek Mastykarz
In case you haven’t noticed, recently we launched our new website. In the upcoming series of How we did it articles I will give you a glance under the hood and tell you how we built our site. In this first part I will tell you how we did the branding of our new website.
Branding SharePoint 2010 Internet-facing websites – the dilemma
SharePoint 2010 is a platform for developing web applications. Out of the box it ships with a rich set of functionality that can be used as building blocks for y [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 18th '11 |
Fool-proof consistent content authoring in SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous article I showed you how you can configure the SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor to help you do content authoring in a consistent fashion. We discussed what a Rich Text Editor should and should not allow to support consistent user experience within a website and how it can be done in SharePoint 2010. Although the configuration options of the Rich Text Editor in SharePoint 2010 allow you to achieve some neat results, it isn’t fool proof and this is exactly what we will discuss in [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 15th '11 |
Consistent content authoring in SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor
Waldek Mastykarz
Many content authors struggle with the same challenge: how to guarantee consistent content presentation across the whole website. This challenge is not SharePoint specific. No matter which Content Management System you’re using, the odds are high that sooner or later you will face it. And it’s not really surprising. Consistency is after all a trade-off: how much flexibility and functionality are you willing to give in for the control over the content presentation. Find out what you need to k [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 14th '11 |
New Mavention website is live
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday evening our new website went live. Proudly presenting Mavention 2.0!
After weeks of work yesterday evening our new website went live and can be viewed at http://www.mavention.nl. Working on the site has been a great adventure. Not only we set the expectations bar really high for ourselves but it’s also been a side project which made it sometimes difficult to justify how much time you should spend on it and where to get that time from. Nevertheless, we managed to get it done and since [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 10th '11 |
SharePoint redirects revisited: using 301 instead of 302 (without code!)
Waldek Mastykarz
Nearly a year ago I wrote an article about why you should be using permanent redirects (301) instead of temporary redirects (302) which are SharePoint defaults. Back then I presented a custom HTTP Module as a possible solution. Since then things changed a little: we have SharePoint 2010, which still has the same challenge, and we have IIS7 which allows us to get things done without a single line of code.
Using permanent redirects instead of temporary is important from the search engines optimiza [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 4th '11 |
SharePoint 2010 ‘Page not found (404)’ page the way it should be
Waldek Mastykarz
More and more frequently SharePoint is being used as the platform for Internet-facing websites. Not surprisingly the latest version of SharePoint is greatly improved making it event better solution for creating public websites. Although Microsoft did a great job in the Web Content Management area of SharePoint there are still a few shortcomings, one of which are custom ‘Page not found (404)’ pages. Find out how to do things right when moving your website to the SharePoint platform.
See no ev [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 3rd '11 |
SharePoint Server MVP 2011
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just got an e-mail from Microsoft saying that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for another year for my contributions to the SharePoint community.
I’d like to thank all of you who were inspiring me, challenging me with new ideas and were continuously providing feedback on my work.
Thank you! [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 2nd '11 |
Automatically publishing files provisioned with Sandboxed Solutions
Waldek Mastykarz
Sandboxed Solutions are a new capability of SharePoint 2010 that make it possible to run custom code in a safe manner. The Sandbox isolation has unfortunately some trade offs and consequences, one of which is the fact the every file you provision with a Sandboxed Solution is checked out by default. Find out how you can work around this default behavior and automatically check in all your files without too much manual effort.
If you’ve worked with Sandboxed Solutions the following screen might [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 21st '10 |
Dynamically loading JavaScript from within Sandbox
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the Sandbox capability that allows you to isolate custom code and run it in a safe manner. And while it offers you some great possibilities it also has some limitations as pointed recently by Wictor. One of such limitations is no access to the Page.ClientScript which is being used to register JavaScript scripts from within Web Parts. Find out how you can work around this limitation using standard capabilities of the SharePoint 2010 framework.
When the Manager is gone
O [read].
Posted: Sat, Dec 18th '10 |
Productive development of SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management solutions with CKS:DEV
Waldek Mastykarz
Developing Web Content Management (WCM) solutions on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 platform was really challenging. And I’m not talking here about taking care of delivering web standards compliant XHTML, implementing accessibility or making the website lightning fast. I’m talking about the development process itself: from creating the very first custom Site Column to deploying the Solution. There were several tools, none of which fully integrated with Visual Studio or pr [read].
Posted: Sat, Dec 11th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 UI Tip: non-obtrusive progress messages
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with a new User Interface framework that allows you to easily create rich user experiences. While developing custom solutions one of the challenges is to communicate long-running operations with the user: after all there is nothing more annoying than a non-responsive UI. Find out how the new UI framework of SharePoint 2010 supports communicating the progress notifications to users.
Communication through Notification
The first approach for communicating the progress of long- [read].
Posted: Sat, Dec 11th '10 |
Disable inserting Web Parts in the SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with a brand new Rich Text Editor which has a dozen of new capabilities. One of those capabilities allows you to insert Web Parts in content which can help you add some rich functionality to your content. And while it sounds pretty cool there are scenarios when you might want to turn inserting Web Parts in content off. In this article you can read about how you can disable inserting Web Parts in the SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor.
SharePoint 2010 ships with a Rich Text Ed [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 9th '10 |
Inconvenient ASP.NET cookies
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I’ve been working on a SharePoint solution that was persisting some state information. Originally this solution was relying on Session State but because of some extra configuration complexity that using Session State with SharePoint requires we decided to replace the Session State with cookies. Although both approaches are not exactly the same they were both sufficient in the scope of the solution. And although you might expect no rocket science when working with ASP.NET cookies there [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 22nd '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Application Pages and Modal Dialogs the easy way
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the new Modal Dialog framework that allows you to display dialog windows in an unobtrusive and user friendly way. This is extremely important when creating user friendly solutions as it allows users to preserve their context while providing some additional information. While the new modal dialog framework is definitely a great idea, there is one thing missing in the implementation: support for communicating with custom application pages.
Custom Application Pages the 20 [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 17th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Page Components in Sandboxed Solutions
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the new Ribbon framework that allows you to easily extend the Ribbon with new functionality. All Ribbon extensions consist of the UI and behavior, which in simple scenarios can be specified declaratively but in more advanced scenarios would rely on a Page Component. Most samples, that show using Page Components, suggest registering them using Delegate Controls. Unfortunately this makes it impossible to use Page Component in Sandboxed Solutions which don’t support Del [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 17th '10 |
Inconvenient Content Query Web Part and provisioning it to the right place
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part is one of the most frequently used Web Parts available out of the box with SharePoint Server 2010. Thanks to its flexibility, great performance and rich configuration possibilities it’s a great solution for aggregating content. Because the presentation layer of the CQWP is based on XSLT, the possibilities are virtually unlimited, but as soon as you start using custom XSLT stylesheets some strange things start to happen.
The problem
If you have worked with the Content Que [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 14th '10 |
Inconvenient programmatically uploading files to the Document Library in Meeting Workspace
Waldek Mastykarz
There are scenarios when you might to programmatically copy or upload a file to the Document Library in a Meeting Workspace. And while it doesn’t seem like rocket science at the first glance, there is one detail to keep in mind.
The anatomy of a Meeting Workspace
Meeting Workspace looks at the first glance like yet another Site Definition. It has an ONet file and a few configurations and depending on the selected flavor a few lists are being provisioned alongside with the site. If you analyze [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 12th '10 |
Mavention Walkin(g) Fridge day #1
Waldek Mastykarz
Today is the first Walkin(g) Fridge day here at Mavention.
The Walkin(g) Fridge day 101
The Walkin(g) Fridge day is a new initiative here at Mavention. The idea is that, once every three months, every Maven gets a day that he can determine all by himself what he will be doing that day. No idea is bad or wrong as long as the Maven is convinced that it will help Mavention in some way. The only condition is that after the Walkin(g) Fridge day, every Maven must present what he has done to other Mave [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 11th '10 |
Inconvenient User Tasks Web Part and how to make it display all tasks
Waldek Mastykarz
The out of the box available User Tasks Web Part allows you to show tasks assigned to the current user. This Web Part is a great building block for end users since it doesn’t require any configuration whatsoever. All you have to do is to add it to a page and it will automatically display all tasks assigned to the current user. Unfortunately by default the User Tasks Web Part displays only tasks assigned to the current user located in tasks lists in the current Site.
The scenario
Imagine you’ [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 9th '10 |
Mavention Activate Selected Features v1.1
Waldek Mastykarz
Mavention Activate Selected Features is a custom extension for the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools that allows you to select which Features should be activated when deploying the Solution in Visual Studio.
I’ve just published a new version of the Mavention Activate Selected Features extension with a bugfix for the issue that occurred while trying to open the dialog with new SharePoint projects.
If you have Internet connection in your development environment you should get the [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 5th '10 |
View installed Site Definitions using PowerShell
Waldek Mastykarz
A while ago I wrote about a little tool I’ve made that help you discover the ID’s of all Site Definitions installed on the server. SharePoint requires you to provide unique ID’s for custom Site Definitions and using a tool is definitely easier than manually browsing through all the WebTemp files and noting which ID’s are already used. But who wants a tool if you can do the same with PowerShell?
A brief glance in the past
The tool I wrote about back then was a custom STSADM command. While [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 3rd '10 |
Easy SharePoint 2010 JavaScript intellisense with Mavention SharePoint JSOM IntelliSense Snippets
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the new JavaScript Object Model (JSOM) that allows you to create rich solutions without a single line of server-side code. Using the new JSOM you can create pretty powerful solutions especially when combined with libraries like jQuery. One downside of working with the SharePoint 2010 is the lack of intellisense. This can however be easily fixed. But do we really have to memorize the syntax and the location of all the files we need?
What’s wrong with the SharePoint 20 [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 30th '10 |
Where is my Reusable Content? (Mavention Track Reusable Content Usage)
Waldek Mastykarz
The Reusable Content capability of SharePoint 2010 allows you to approach content management from a content-centric perspective. This is a great concept since it allows you to reuse pieces of content rather than copying it and managing at many different places manually. And although the idea of it is great the standard experience provided with SharePoint 2010 leaves some room for improvement. First of all creating blocks of reusable content isn’t as easy as you would want it to. On top of that [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 27th '10 |
Easy creating Reusable Content with Mavention Create Reusable Content
Waldek Mastykarz
Reusable Content is probably one of the few underestimated features in SharePoint 2010. Not surprisingly: the default samples give you not the best impression of what you could use it for – same as its management interface, and using it in a real life scenario is rather inconvenient. And it’s a shame, because Reusable Content allows you to move away from page-centric content management and make a step towards content-centric content management. And this is exactly where Mavention Create Reus [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 8th '10 |
Mavention Meta Fields v1.1: now with better support for Content Types
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I’ve released the Mavention Meta Fields SharePoint 2010 solution that allows you to easily add meta tags to Publishing Pages. While the first version was a great improvement of the user experience for managing meta tags of Publishing Pages, it had a minor flaw when using multiple Content Types in a single Pages Library with different sets of meta tags fields. This issue has been fixed in this release.
As noticed by MOSSBuddy the first version of Mavention Meta Fields had a minor flaw. [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 8th '10 |
Creating user friendly deep links with Mavention Highlight Deep Link
Waldek Mastykarz
In my last article I wrote about how deep links can help you point to specific pieces of the page making it easier to discover the right content. I showed you how SharePoint supports creating deep links out of the box and how you can enrich the default experience using the Mavention Deep Links solution. While writing that article I noticed one thing: deep links are not as discoverable as you would want them to. So what’s exactly the problem and what to do about it?
Where’s my deep link?
Deep [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 6th '10 |
Easy creating deep links with Mavention Deep Links
Waldek Mastykarz
Hyperlinks are the very base of the Web as we know it. They link relevant information to each other making it easier for the visitors to find the resources they are looking for. By linking different resources to each other content authors can create more complete resources. One of the challenges in linking to other pages is the relevance: sometimes instead of linking to a whole article you might want to point to a specific part of it. And this is exactly where deep links become very handy. Find [read].
Posted: Sun, Oct 3rd '10 |
Inconvenient Content Query Web Part and server-relative URLs
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part is probably the best solution for creating dynamic content rollups in SharePoint 2010. It’s lightning fast and because it’s using XSLT it allows you to easily change layout without touching your data. And although changing the presentation in Content Query Web Part is a matter of a few mouse clicks, it gets quite inconvenient when you start using custom XSLT files.
What’s wrong with Content Query Web Part?
Imagine the following scenario: you’re working on a SharePo [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 27th '10 |
Programmatically adding Web Parts to Rich Content in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the great ability of adding Web Parts to content areas. This allows you to easily extend your content with dynamic elements providing your users with richer experience. Similarly to using Web Parts with Web Part Zones you should include Web Parts in Rich Content in your structured and repeatable deployment. There are however a few differences in how you provision Web Parts to Rich Content and knowing how it all works can make your life easier.
Programmatically adding W [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 27th '10 |
No-code content targeting in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
No-code SharePoint solutions became very popular in the last two years. Having virtually no deployment boundaries they are ideal for power users to enhance their sites with new dynamic functionality. While SharePoint 2007 already allowed us to do some great stuff with no-code solutions, thanks to the JavaScript Object Model provided with SharePoint 2010 we can make even richer solution without a single line of server-side code. And while retrieving information from SharePoint is pretty cool, bei [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 21st '10 |
4 ways to use short URLs with SharePoint Server 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Many customers who use SharePoint Server 2010 for their Internet-facing website, ask for a mechanism that would allow them to use short URLs like http://www.awt.com/edinburgh instead of http://www.awt.com/destinationguides/uk/scotland/edinburgh/. SharePoint 2010 doesn’t have such mechanism out of the box and if you know SharePoint at least a little, you know that there is always more than one way to get something done. So what are the possibilities and which one of them is the best to use?
Sho [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 20th '10 |
Easy access to SharePoint Central Administration for developers
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the places you visit on regular as a SharePoint developer is Central Administration. From there you can deploy Solutions, create Web Applications and Site Collections and Manage Service Applications. And although most developer spend a fair amount of time in Central Administration it’s quite surprising that the only way to get there is either by memorizing a random port or using the shortcut from the Start menu. But there is a better way.
When installing SharePoint on their development [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 18th '10 |
Better conditional content for anonymous users with LoginView
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the SPSecurityTrimmedControl that allows you to conditionally display content to users based on their permissions. On top of that it gives you the ability to display content to anonymous/authenticated users only which unfortunately doesn’t work. And although you might want start off and develop something of your own, it turns out that for all this time there was a solution for this just around the corner.
Conditional content for anonymous users: what for?
There are m [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 18th '10 |
DIWUG (Sep 27) – SharePoint 2010: Ask the Expert
Waldek Mastykarz
As you might have heard there is a great SharePoint event coming up. September 28 and 29 Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Connections Autumn are being held in The Hague, The Netherlands. The evening before that, on September 27 there will be a great Dutch Information Worker User Group (DIWUG) event sponsored by Mavention and AvePoint. First of all there will be a presentation by Tony Lanni the VP of Corporate Development and Media at AvePoint and then after the break there will be an Ask the Expert pan [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 15th '10 |
Programmatically granting permissions to claims
Waldek Mastykarz
Programmatically granting permissions in SharePoint 2007 wasn’t that very complicated. You could grant permissions either to a User or a Group and in order to do that all you needed was a reference to that User/Group. As you might have heard SharePoint 2010 supports claims based identity what allows you to grant permissions using the identity of the user rather than a specific way of authentication. If you’ve looked through the public SharePoint 2010 API you might have noticed that there is [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 13th '10 |
Inconvenient SPWebConfigModification development with Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools
Waldek Mastykarz
The new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools simplify the process of developing SharePoint 2010 Solutions. By encapsulating much of the plumbing of the packaging and deployment process they enable developers to create SharePoint 2010 Solutions easier and faster. Unfortunately in some scenario this simplification comes with a price and working with SPWebConfigModifications is one of such scenarios.
The not-so-simple SPWebConfigModification
SharePoint 2010 ships with the SPWebConfigModifi [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 12th '10 |
Content targeting for anonymous users with SharePoint Server 2010 (part 2 of 2)
Waldek Mastykarz
In the first part of this article we discussed how ASP.NET Profiles can help us extend SharePoint Server 2010 Audiences capabilities with targeting content to anonymous users. We discussed what ASP.NET Profiles are, how they work and how they can be configured with SharePoint Server 2010. In this part of the article we will extend the SharePoint Server 2010 Audiences so that they can make use of the data stored in ASP.NET Profiles.
How does content targeting in SharePoint Server 2010 work?
Share [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 12th '10 |
Content targeting for anonymous users with SharePoint Server 2010 (part 1 of 2)
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint Server 2010 ships with the content targeting capability based on Audiences. Using this mechanism you can conditionally display content to groups of users based on their profiles. One shortcoming of this approach is that it needs user profiles which are not available on Internet-facing websites for anonymous users. However, using nothing more than the standard capabilities of the SharePoint framework and ASP.NET you can easily extend the standard content targeting mechanism to support [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 11th '10 |
Counting words with Mavention Word Count
Waldek Mastykarz
Often when editing text, especially if you are a professional writer, you need some statistic information about the text you’re editing, like how many paragraphs or words you have already typed. While most desktop text editors, such as Microsoft Word 2010, provide you with such information, many Content Management Systems don’t offer such functionality. SharePoint Server 2010 is not an exception here. So if SharePoint is the platform for professional publishing it should contain this little [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 9th '10 |
Easy installing SharePoint 2010 Solutions with PowerShell
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2007 shipped with the STSADM command-line tool which was meant to be used for all kind of administration tasks like installing and deploying Solutions. Although the STSADM is still available in SharePoint 2010 for backwards compatibility the recommended way is to use PowerShell instead. SharePoint 2010 ships with a great number of PowerShell cmdlets which simplify the process of administering your SharePoint Farm. And although PowerShell is way more powerful than STSADM, it adds some [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 9th '10 |
Better SharePoint Server 2010 Audiences with Mavention Audienced Preview
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint Server 2010 ships with Audiences: a mechanism that allows you to target content to specific group of users. Audiences are a great capability: either if it’s from the e-commerce point of view of bringing the right products to the attention of the audience that is the most willing of buying it or if it helps you to unclutter the user interface by presenting just the right information. But how do you manage all that dynamic content?
SharePoint Server 2010 Audiences: what’s the big de [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 9th '10 |
Inconvenient SharePoint 2010 Incoming Links
Waldek Mastykarz
Managing links on a website can be really challenging. There can be numerous pages linking to each other, and if new content is being added on regular it’s just the matter of time when things go wrong and broken links start appearing in your content. A good Content Management System (CMS) provides you with a mechanism for tracking both incoming and outgoing links and SharePoint 2010 is no exception here. Using the Incoming Links report it allows you to track links within the Site Collection. H [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 6th '10 |
Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration (book review)
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with native support for Silverlight what makes creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA) easier and faster. And although Silverlight has been around for a couple of years now, there is more to developing Silverlight RIAs on SharePoint 2010. While you could use the classic – web-services-based approach, SharePoint 2010 ships with the Silverlight Object Model which makes it easy to work with data from SharePoint in Silverlight applications.
The Microsoft Silverlight 4 and S [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 5th '10 |
Ask the Expert @ SharePoint Connections 2010 Autumn
Waldek Mastykarz
Who would’ve thought: two SharePoint conferences in the Netherlands in one year! Proudly presenting: Microsoft SharePoint Connections 2010 Autumn.
Earlier this year there was the SharePoint Connections 2010 conference that was the unofficial launch of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 in Europe and based on the great feedback that Microsoft and Penton Media got, they decided to organize a second SharePoint conference here in the Netherlands.
SharePoint 2010 has been on the market for a few months now [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 1st '10 |
Easy editing meta tags for Publishing Pages with Mavention Meta Fields
Waldek Mastykarz
Including meta tags for pages on Internet-facing websites is very important. Additional information included in meta tags makes it easier for search engines to find and classify the content. Still many websites either don’t use meta tags at all or don’t provide content editors with a simple mechanism for managing the meta tags making managing the meta tags a one-time process. In many situations meta tags are not even a part of the information architecture for Internet-facing websites and are [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 29th '10 |
Simple SharePoint 2010 Replaceable Parameters with Mavention Replaceable Parameters Snippets
Waldek Mastykarz
The new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools ship with Replaceable Parameters which allow you to provide values for SharePoint solution items whose actual values are not known at the design time. And while the Replaceable Parameters are without a doubt a great improvement in the development process, there is one problem with them: there are quite a few of them and looking up the right one might get you out of element when developing. And this is exactly where Mavention Replaceable Param [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 28th '10 |
Publishing Pages in multiple locations with Mavention Virtual Pages
Waldek Mastykarz
Many popular Web Content Management Systems allow you to reuse content across the site. Once published you can then include (fragments of) the page in other places on your website, providing a seamless experience to your visitors. And if you ever need to change something, you can do it in one place and those changes will be automatically pushed to all other locations. Reusing content is probably one of the most desired capabilities in WCM, so it’s pretty surprising that it isn’t available ou [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 26th '10 |
Programmatically provisioning Variations in SharePoint Server 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Last year I wrote an article about programmatically provisioning Variation Hierarchies in SharePoint 2007. The point of that article was that there was really no way you could provision Variations in repeatable way in a supported fashion and had to use reflection to get the job done. The situation in SharePoint 2010 has changed a little. The process of creating Variations has been made more reliable my moving it completely to a Timer Job. So a new approach, requires new code, and here it is.
Pro [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 21st '10 |
Programmatically determining which Claims Authentication Type has been used to login with Claims Based Authentication
Waldek Mastykarz
Claims Based Authentication introduced with SharePoint 2010 allows you to login to a SharePoint site using multiple Authentication Providers. In some scenario you might need to determine which Claims Authentication Type has been used to login in order to conditionally show some content. Find out how this can be done using the new Claims API provided with SharePoint 2010.
Determining the Claims Authentication Type used for logging in is very simple using the Claims API provided with SharePoint 20 [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 18th '10 |
Programmatically converting login name to claim and vice versa
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 introduced Claims Based Authentication. One of the consequences of this is the fact that in order to use Forms Based Authentication (FBA) you need to configure your Web Application to use Claims instead of Classic Authentication. One of the many changes that you notice while working with claims are different login names: while in SharePoint 2007 you used something like myprovider:myuser, SharePoint 2010 makes the claims-soup of it: i:0#.f|myprovider|myuser. And while this is some [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 17th '10 |
Programmatically creating Sites and Site Collections from a Custom Web Template
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the great improvements in SharePoint 2010 are Web Templates. Mirjam van Olst wrote recently a great article about why using light-weight Web Templates is a better approach than using full blown Site Definitions. While using Web Templates for creating sites and Site Collections is pretty straight-forward things get complicated when you need to create the Site Collection programmatically.
The solution
Let’s start with looking at a working code sample that allows you to create a Site Colle [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 12th '10 |
A little note to self about custom Membership and Role Providers and SharePoint 2010 Claims
Waldek Mastykarz
Table of Contents
Creating custom Membership and Role Providers
Registering custom Membership and Role Providers with SharePoint 2010 Claims
Resources
Creating custom Membership and Role Providers
You can create a custom Membership provider by inheriting from the System.Web.Security.MembershipProvider class. For a custom Role Provider you need to inherit from the System.Web.Security.RoleProvider class.
A custom Membership Provider has to implement at least the following methods in order to [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 11th '10 |
Inconvenient SharePoint 2010 Content Query Web Part and Anonymous Access
Waldek Mastykarz
Since the release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) has served us very well as probably the best content aggregation solution available on the SharePoint platform. And while I’ve been using it heavily for Web Content Management solutions for the last three years with great success, I got really surprised when I found out that the CQWP provided with SharePoint 2010 doesn’t work with anonymous access!
What???
Just recently Paul Galvin has stumbled upo [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 9th '10 |
Mavention Scan Page Headings
Waldek Mastykarz
Proper usage of headings is very important on the web. It helps you structure your content making it more readable, it makes it easier for visually challenged readers to navigate through the content and helps you optimize your content for search engines. And while it’s so important, it’s quite surprising that there is no standard mechanism available within SharePoint that would allow you to quickly verify that your page has a valid headings structure. However thanks to the great extensibilit [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 9th '10 |
Mavention Scan Page for Broken Links
Waldek Mastykarz
Hyperlinks are a great feature of web publishing. Using hyperlinks you can easily link from one page to another providing the reader with information from different, and often also independent, sources. However as soon as you include a hyperlink in your content, the external content becomes a part of your page: not physically, but virtually. People reading your page expect your links to work because they assume that you wanted to provide them some additional information relevant to the page they [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 7th '10 |
Mavention Insert Table of Contents
Waldek Mastykarz
Earlier this year Yoast wrote an interesting article about how including a Table of Contents (TOC) for longer articles can help you drive traffic to your content from search engines. While there are some plugins available for other Content Management Systems, that help you with generating TOC for your pages, if your website is hosted on SharePoint, you still have to insert the Table of Contents manually. At least you had to, because now you can do this automatically using the Mavention Insert Ta [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 4th '10 |
Mavention XML Sitemap for SharePoint 2010 Server
Waldek Mastykarz
About two years ago I created a Feature for SharePoint 2007 which allowed you to generate an XML Sitemap for your site. XML Sitemaps are a standard way to notify search engines about the content on your website. And while you might consider creating an XML Sitemap for your website manually for a small site, having to manage a few hundred pages makes it quickly a pretty tedious process. Being able to do that automatically would be a great improvement and so I’ve made the XML Sitemap Feature v1. [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 4th '10 |
Waldek Mastykarz is Microsoft Certified Professional Developer SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Last May I’ve taken the beta versions of the two SharePoint 2010 Developer exams: 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development and 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications. Today I received an e-mail saying that I successfully passed both exams and received the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer SharePoint 2010 status.
It was the first time that I participated in beta examination so I didn’t really know what to expect when I signed [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 13th '10 |
CKS:DEV soon with even more support for Content Types and Site Columns
Waldek Mastykarz
Defining custom Site Columns and Content Types is the very basis of almost every SharePoint project. Using Site Columns and Content Types you can define the information architecture of your Solution. And although this process is something that is very important and something you do very often, it is surprising how little support there is for it from the development point of view that would allow you to do it in a productive manner. CKS:DEV has already had some support around Content Types and Si [read].
Posted: Sun, Jul 11th '10 |
CKS:DEV now with support for Importing Site Columns
Waldek Mastykarz
Creating custom Site Columns is something you do in almost every single SharePoint Solution. Unfortunately even in spite of great SDK documentation and intellisense for SharePoint XML files, it’s still a tedious process to create new columns directly in the XML. Using the SharePoint web UI is way easier but then again: how would you get that out of SharePoint and put into your Solution? There is an answer to that question and it is: use CKS:DEV!
In case you missed the tweets, we’ve recently [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 2nd '10 |
Dynamically resizing images with Mavention Smart Images
Waldek Mastykarz
A picture is worth a thousand words. In many situations images help illustrate and explain thoughts. Without images the Web would be boring and colorless. And while we all are convinced about the power of image and how it enhances telling a story, it is surprising how complex it is to get it right on the Web. Many large images on your website make it download and display slowly. No matter how great the content is, the odds are high that your visitor will not take the time to wait for it. Large i [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 22nd '10 |
Inconvenient Reusable Content List
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the great capabilities of SharePoint Server is the ability of including reusable content: standard snippets of HTML which you can use in different places over and over again without having to copy & paste it. The great thing about Reusable Content is that you have the option to insert a reference instead of the copy of the content so that if the content snippet ever changes, you won’t have to manually check every single page in your site to ensure that the content is correct: ShareP [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 14th '10 |
Inconvenient Pages List Name
Waldek Mastykarz
While working on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Web Content Management (WCM) Solutions you might have relied on the fact that the name of the Pages Library was always Pages. Well almost always, because in some languages, like German, it was translated along with the Title. Given that fact, changed the way we had to deal with the Pages Library in code. Instead of hard coding the URL part of the Pages Library, all of a sudden we had to retrieve it dynamically, just because someone [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 14th '10 |
Creating multilingual Site Definitions with Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Development Tools
Waldek Mastykarz
When working on SharePoint Solutions one of the common requirements is delivering multilingual solutions. Depending on your scenario you might either need to localize a single Web Part or a complete Solution. Thinking of multiple languages you have to take into account not only the development but also the packaging process for all the different assets in your Solution. One of such assets, where implementing support for multiple languages in SharePoint 2010 might seem complex at first sight, are [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 14th '10 |
Did you know: configuring Solution Dependencies in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
When SharePoint 2007 shipped with the Features and Solutions framework we thought we had it all sorted out. We were able to package our work and deploy it in a structured and repeatable manner. Using Feature Activation Dependencies we were able to ensure that all the functionality that our components require are available prior to provision our custom functionality. And while Feature Dependencies are definitely a great concept they are unfortunately incomplete. If all the different pieces come f [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 11th '10 |
Did you know: provisioning AppGlobalResources in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Developing localized solutions on the SharePoint 2007 platform wasn’t as straight-forward as we wanted it to be. First of all you had to make your code support globalization and then you had to provision the localized Resource files to your Web Application. As SharePoint 2007 didn’t provide any mechanism to do that, you had to use custom Timer Jobs to get this done correctly. Luckily this situation has changed with SharePoint 2010 which introduces the new App_GlobalResourceFile element in th [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 11th '10 |
Did you know: using Developer Dashboard for monitoring performance of your solutions
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with Developer Dashboard which allows you to see how well different pieces of SharePoint are performing. And while it’s extremely useful by itself, it becomes even more important when used to measure the performance of your custom code!
Logging the performance of your custom code to Developer Dashboard is really easy. All you have to do is to wrap a block of your code in a using clause and that’s it:
protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
using (new SPMonitore [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 7th '10 |
Web standards Accessibility – SharePoint Server 2010 deck available
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday we had a great evening here at Mavention talking about web standards and accessibility on the SharePoint platform.
Paul did the kick off talking about the differences between web standards and accessibility and why they are important if you are developing an Internet-facing website. The key takeaway was the importance of accessibility for Internet environments where you never know who will visit your website and which browser, operating system and device he will be using. Implementing [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 4th '10 |
Mavention Insert Lorem ipsum
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, during my SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management session at DIWUG, I demoed new editing capabilities of SharePoint 2010. During the demo I used a custom feature to quickly insert dummy text. As I got quite a few questions about it, I decided to publish the solution. Proudly presenting: Mavention Insert Lorem Ipsum.
Mavention Insert Lorem Ipsum is a Sandbox Solution that allows you to quickly insert five paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum text. Upon activation the Features adds a new button to t [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 2nd '10 |
Did you know: extending Solution Manifest with intellisense
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with a great developer story. The new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools provide great experience and allow you to be productive while working on SharePoint Solutions. And while these tools ships with rich functionality they obviously don’t cover all new capabilities of SharePoint 2010. In some situations you might need to manually modify some of the SharePoint artifacts like for example when specifying dependencies for your Solution.
As you might have noticed [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 1st '10 |
Logging to ULS in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the pieces of developing custom components is logging information. No matter if it’s for diagnostic purposes or when an error occurs, logging allows you to track the health of your custom component. When developing custom components for SharePoint 2007 we hadn’t much choice. Although SharePoint 2007 shipped with the Unified Logging Service, we couldn’t use it. The SharePoint SDK was pretty clear about it: although some methods were publicly available, ULS was for internal use only a [read].
Posted: Fri, May 28th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management – The Developer Story deck available
Waldek Mastykarz
My deck from the DIWUG event on May 25 is available on-line. So if you either couldn’t make it to the event or want to have the content for future reference, you can get it from SlideShare.
Check out: DIWUG deck: SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management – The Developer Story
Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,WCM,DIWUG [read].
Posted: Thu, May 27th '10 |
DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine #2 available for download
Waldek Mastykarz
Dutch Information Worker User Group SharePoint eMagazine #2 has just been published and is available for download. This second issue contains some great articles about Web Content Management in SharePoint 2010, Community Kit for SharePoint: Development Tools Edition (CKS:DEV) and more. Get your copy of the FREE DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine #2 now!
Technorati Tags: DIWUG,SharePoint,SharePoint 2010 [read].
Posted: Thu, May 27th '10 |
DIWUG (May 25) – SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management – The Developer Story
Waldek Mastykarz
Tomorrow (May 25) I will be presenting at the Dutch Information Worker User Group (DIWUG) about developer improvements in SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management. We will be not only looking at what’s new in SharePoint 2010 WCM but I will also share with you some tips on how you can get the most of your WCM solutions on the SharePoint 2010 platform.
Additionally Marianne van Wanrooij (SharePoint MVP) will be presenting improvements in the UI of SharePoint 2010. She will walk you through the new [read].
Posted: Mon, May 24th '10 |
Code Access Security policy template for Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with the Sandbox: a new concept that allows you to deploy solutions with limited trust. Still there are many scenarios to think of when you might need to deploy your work to the Web Application’s BIN directory. When doing that, you need to define for your assembly a CAS policy, which specifies what your code should and should not be allowed to do. While the contents of the policy always depend on your code, I have noticed that there are a few entries that are common for a [read].
Posted: Mon, May 24th '10 |
Creating HTML e-mail messages for Microsoft Outlook 2007/2010 – resources
Waldek Mastykarz
Should you ever need to create an HTML e-mail/stationery that is being correctly displayed in Microsoft Outlook 2007/2010 there are two very useful documents on MSDN that can help you getting things done:
Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007 (Part 2 of 2)
These documents describe HTML and CSS properties supported by both Word and Outlook. Since both applications don’t support the full HTML [read].
Posted: Sat, May 8th '10 |
Inconvenient creating list instances using Feature Receivers
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I’ve been working with a Feature responsible for provisioning a list instance based on the Asset Library List Template (new in SharePoint 2010). In spite of the fact that everything seemed to be okay on my side (everything defined in the right place, the Asset Library Feature activated, and so on), I kept getting error that the Asset Library List Template does not exist. Finding the answer to this riddle was just a matter of… timing.
Scenario
Let me give you some more information on [read].
Posted: Wed, May 5th '10 |
Preventing newly added project items from being automatically added to Features
Waldek Mastykarz
The new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Development Tools not only simplify working with SharePoint Solutions but are also a great productivity booster. By encapsulating the internal working of packaging SharePoint artifacts developers can focus on the development process instead of keeping the track of what should go where. One of the productivity features of the new developer tools is automatically adding project items to Features: each time you add a new SharePoint Project Item (SPI) to your pr [read].
Posted: Wed, May 5th '10 |
Activating selected Features during the deployment of a package in Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools
Waldek Mastykarz
By default the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools activate all Features from the package that is being deployed. While this is a great productivity feature when you need to quickly deploy something, it might be not the thing that you want while working with larger projects. The alternative available out of the box is not activating Features at all. Where does that takes us? I wrote about it previously. In my previous post I also suggested you could use Post-deployment Commands to [read].
Posted: Wed, May 5th '10 |
The No Activation Deployment Configuration: use it or not?
Waldek Mastykarz
If you have worked with the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools you probably know that one part of the cool pieces of the new tools is the ability to specify the steps executed while deploying SharePoint Solution Packages on your development machine. These Deployment Configurations are fully configurable: you can either use one of the two existing configurations or create a new one that fully suits your needs. By default two Deployment Configurations are available Default and No ac [read].
Posted: Wed, May 5th '10 |
Making controls in a Silverlight/WPF User Control private
Waldek Mastykarz
By default, when you create a User Control in Silverlight or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) all child controls are publicly available. This is not only bad for reusability of the control but also from the design point of view as you should always try to encapsulate the internals of your control and only make available to the outside world functionality that makes sense to them. Additionally encapsulating properties allows you to validate the input what makes your control less error prone. [read].
Posted: Wed, May 5th '10 |
Inconvenient Silverlight Object Model vs. anonymous users
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with Silverlight Object Model that simplifies working with SharePoint data within Silverlight components. Thanks to the new object model you no longer have to create and deploy custom services to retrieve data from SharePoint. Out of the box the Silverlight Object Model encapsulates calling standard SharePoint WCF Services which makes it extremely easy for you as a developer to create Silverlight components that communicate with SharePoint. Although working with the Silverl [read].
Posted: Tue, May 4th '10 |
Inconvenient Content Query Web Part slots
Waldek Mastykarz
We all know Content Query Web Part (CQWP) – probably the greatest Web Part provided with SharePoint Server that allows you to build dynamic content aggregations in a matter of minutes. CQWP is known not only for its great performance but also for its flexibility and extensibility capabilities. In SharePoint Server 2010 Content Query Web Part introduces even more functionality among which the slots – a cool feature that allows you to create semantic and reusable templates. And while creating [read].
Posted: Sat, May 1st '10 |
Inconvenient good page title with SharePoint Server Web Content Management (revisited)
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the things that matter when optimizing an Internet-facing website for search engines is the page title. Next to the level one header (H1) and the URL, the page title is one of the most important elements of your page that allows search engine to find your page. A good page title consists of at least the title of the current page and the title of the website. Additionally, if the site is quite large you can add the name of the section. And although it doesn’t sound like rocket science it [read].
Posted: Sat, May 1st '10 |
You created a Content Type and it doesn’t inherit columns from the parent Content Type (Publishing Tip #1)
Waldek Mastykarz
Imagine the following scenario: you created a new Content Type in SharePoint 2010. You built the Content Type ID correctly and even included the FieldRefs element. Still, after you provisioned your Content Type it doesn’t contain any fields:
Content Types inheritance works a little different in SharePoint 2010 than it did in SharePoint 2007. SharePoint 2010 introduces the Inherits attribute. From the SharePoint SDK:
Inherits – Optional Boolean. The value of this attribute determines wh [read].
Posted: Sat, May 1st '10 |
Page Layouts vs. Body id revisited and solved
Waldek Mastykarz
Right after I posted my last article on using Page Layouts for dynamic body ids and issues that you stumble on, I got one more idea on how you might leverage Page Layouts for setting dynamic body ids and still deliver a great performing solution.
In my last post I discussed how accessing the PublishingPage.Layout property requires you to login, which makes it very inconvenient when working with Internet-facing websites. Elevating Privileges allows you to work around this issue but it introduces [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 20th '10 |
Error while deploying a WSP with CAS using the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools (and fix too)
Waldek Mastykarz
If you’re working with SharePoint 2010 solutions that deploy assemblies to BIN the right way (with CAS policies that is), you might have noticed that an error occurs during the deployment of the WSP to SharePoint with the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools.
Basically it is impossible to deploy the WSP to SharePoint and benefit of all the new cool functionality that the new development tools provide.
The great news is, that the team responsible for the tools found this error as [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 20th '10 |
MSO_ContentDiv – Web Part Properties right where you want them
Waldek Mastykarz
While creating custom branding for SharePoint it is not only important that it looks all right, but also that it’s fully functional and that users don’t loose any of the standard functionality provided with the platform. While most elements can be easily positioned within Master Page and Page Layout some are positioned more “indirectly”. Knowing how SharePoint does the positioning can help you deliver a great User Experience.
As you might have heard I recently started working on a brand [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 20th '10 |
Inconvenient body id for anonymous users
Waldek Mastykarz
A few weeks ago I presented you a solution for creating dynamic layouts with nothing more than some CSS definitions and a dynamic body id. Using exactly the same HTML markup you can create a different layout of your page elements what makes it an extremely efficient and easy to maintain solution. While the concept is pretty straight-forward, applying it in practice to a real-life SharePoint Server Web Content Management solution has one drawback that you should keep in mind.
Anatomy of body id r [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 20th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Linq doesn’t support anonymous users
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with support for Linq. The great thing about it is, that Linq simplifies the process of querying lists and working with the retrieved items. Instead of objects, which you get if you’re using CAML, Linq retrieves for you strongly typed objects what makes it extremely easy to work with. And although it seems really perfect there are a few things that you need to keep in mind before you refactor your code to use SharePoint Linq instead of CAML.
It’s for the Server API only [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 20th '10 |
Create SharePoint breadcrumbs with Mavention Simple SiteMapPath
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the challenges while developing Internet-facing websites built on the SharePoint platform was rendering semantic breadcrumbs. Out of the box Office SharePoint Server 2007 was using for that purpose the ASP.NET SiteMapPath control. And while it looked okay visually, internally the whole control was rendered as non-semantic spans. SharePoint 2010 ships with a new control for rendering breadcrumbs called ListSiteMapPath. And while this control uses semantic markup and renders the breadcrumbs [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 11th '10 |
Mavention Export Page
Waldek Mastykarz
Mavention Export Page is a custom extension for the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools that allows you to export preconfigured Publishing Pages to XML which can be then used for provisioning pages with Site Definitions.
Upon installation the Mavention Export Page extension adds Pages folder to every site.
Important The Pages folder is being added to Publishing Sites only. If you open a Site which is not a Publishing Site you will not see the Pages folder.
In the Pages folder you [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 6th '10 |
Mavention Instant Page Create
Waldek Mastykarz
Do you still remember how many clicks did you need in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a new Publishing Page? First you had to pick the New Page option from the Site Actions menu. Then you had to provide some information about the page and then finally, after pressing the OK button, you were redirected to the newly created page. SharePoint Server 2010 simplifies that process, but did you know that you can push it even further, and create new Publishing Pages with a single mouse [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 4th '10 |
Mavention Simple Menu
Waldek Mastykarz
Did you know that SharePoint 2010 ships with a brand new menu control, which allows you to render the menu as an unordered list (UL)? Using that control makes branding your menus extremely simple! Unfortunately this control is available only with SharePoint 2010. If you’re still working with Office SharePoint Server 2007 projects, you have to either brand the tables rendered by the standard SharePoint menu or create a custom control that would generate semantic markup. But wait: code no more! [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 1st '10 |
My first day at Mavention
Waldek Mastykarz
Today was my first day on the new job. Today was the day when I became SharePoint Consultant at Mavention.
Who is Mavention?
The name Mavention is derived from the word maven, "a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others." We are an independent company with an entrepreneurial spirit. Mavention aims for real results for our clients. We do this with passion for both our customers and profession. As one of the few organizations in the Netherlands we have the Mic [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 1st '10 |
My last day at Imtech
Waldek Mastykarz
After more than three years working at Imtech ICT Integrated Solutions as a Software Engineer it's time for me for a change. Today is my last day at Imtech.
I came to Imtech a little more than three years ago as an intern. My first assignment was to create a generic toolkit for migrating content from one Content Management System to another. This was back in the days when all I knew was PHP and developing software was mostly for fun. Right after I was done with my first assignment at Imte [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 31st '10 |
Rich Text Editor control in SharePoint 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I was presenting for a group of colleagues at Imtech ICT Integrated Solutions about new publishing features in SharePoint 2010. One of the questions that I got was: how can we leverage the Rich Text Editor for anonymous users on Internet-facing websites?
The Scenario
Imagine the following scenario: on your Internet-facing website you want enable your anonymous visitors to post comments or short messages. You want them to be able to use some simple formatting for their messages, but as y [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 30th '10 |
Conditionally show content the easy way
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday I showed you a neat way to hide/show some content based on authentication level and/or the page mode. The cool thing about it was that whenever the control was hidden, the child controls didn’t get instantiated at all preventing you from any kind of performance penalty. Today, when I read the article myself, it struck me: you could extract a piece of the control that I showed you yesterday and make of it a base class for all kind of conditionally visible content like content visible [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 15th '10 |
Inconvenient SPSecurityTrimmedControl revisited
Waldek Mastykarz
About a year ago I wrote about the inconvenience of the SPSecurityTrimmedControl: a great idea within the SharePoint framework that unfortunately doesn’t work the way it should. Now, as we’re about to get a new release of SharePoint, I decided to check if things have changed.
What makes SPSecurityTrimmedControl so cool?
In case you didn’t know SharePoint, both 2007 and 2010, ships with a control that allows you to conditionally display/hide pieces of your site: the Microsoft.SharePoint.Web [read].
Posted: Sun, Mar 14th '10 |
Webdesigners vs. SharePoint: the body id
Waldek Mastykarz
Body id is a cool webdesign trick that allows designers to easily alter the layout of a page using nothing more than a single property and some CSS styling. Using the body id you can define one HTML page structure for the whole site and then, by changing the single value of the body id attribute, you can create new experiences by styling the different pieces of the page in a totally different way. While it sounds very easy and it is very easy with HTML, this trick can get very challenging when u [read].
Posted: Sat, Mar 13th '10 |
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools vs. Modules with many files
Waldek Mastykarz
Visual Studio 2010 ships with new SharePoint Developer Tools that simplify the process of developing solutions for the SharePoint platform. Using nothing more than the standard functionality provided with the tools you can rapidly create custom solution by focusing on the real work instead of the plumbing….
If you ever worked with Web Content Management solutions or just highly branded collaboration solutions, you know that at some point you have to include the branding in your solution packag [read].
Posted: Sat, Mar 13th '10 |
Imtech Content Query Web Part v14 now with EXSLT
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I published a new extended version of the Content Query Web Part. I extended the SharePoint 2010 version of CQWP with support for paging the results which is one of the things that our customers ask for very often. But that’s not the end of the extensibility possibilities of the CQWP. In this version I extended the Imtech Content Query Web Part even further by adding additional capabilities which make working with the CQWP even easier. Introducing: Imtech Content Query Web Part v14.2! [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 22nd '10 |
Visual Studio Gallery launches SharePoint Tools category
Waldek Mastykarz
The popularity of SharePoint as a developer platform is growing every day. In fact it’s getting so important that the Visual Studio Gallery has just recently launched a separate category for SharePoint Tools. Check it out:
Using the new SharePoint Tools category will hopefully make it easier for you to find out about new tools that will help you do your job. And if you write extensions for the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools yourself, go on and add them to the SharePoint To [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 22nd '10 |
Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate is available!
Waldek Mastykarz
In case you haven’t noticed, Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate has been published to MSDN yesterday. Although it hasn’t been that long since the last release, the RC is improved… a lot!
The first difference that I saw, was the installation size. In Beta 2 my configuration was around 3.7GB, in RC it increased to 4.2GB! Still, the Release Candidate makes it worth every MB, because it’s lightning fast! The Add reference window is “just there” and the whole IDE just feels very very re [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 10th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Content Query Web Part with paging
Waldek Mastykarz
One of the coolest and probably most frequently used Web Parts in SharePoint 2007 was the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) – a great control that allowed you to display content aggregations to the users. Although it was pretty awesome, it had some serious drawbacks like for example the lack of a paging mechanism – something that almost every single Web Content Management project that I worked on required. Three years later in SharePoint 2010 the CQWP got a facelift and shipped with some serious [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 1st '10 |
Showing transient messages using the SharePoint 2010 Notification Area – SharePoint 2010 UI tip #2
Waldek Mastykarz
Delivering a great User Experience for a custom application developed on the SharePoint application is really easy using the new SharePoint 2010 UI API. One of the new possibilities is to leverage the Notification Area to communicate the progress of an operation to the users to make using your applications more intuitive and responsive.
Notification… what?
Notification Area is one of the few new concepts introduced in SharePoint 2010 User Interface. It has been designed to deliver transient me [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 31st '10 |
Showing persistent messages using the SharePoint 2010 Status bar: SharePoint 2010 UI tip #1
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2010 ships with a brand new framework for delivering compelling user experiences for custom applications created using the SharePoint platform. One of the pieces of the UI framework is the Status bar which can be used to display persistent messages to the users.
Working with the SharePoint 2010 Status bar is very easy. Its functionality is exposed through the SP.UI.Status namespace (defined in the 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\SP.js file) in SharePoint 2010 JavaScript API.
Displaying new mess [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 30th '10 |
Overloading functions in JavaScript
Waldek Mastykarz
If you are a SharePoint developer, or do some general .NET development, you probably work with overloading methods. Using the same name you can define multiple variants of the same method by specifying a different set of parameters. As SharePoint 2010 contains a large piece of very powerful API in the JavaScript: both for communicating with the SharePoint platform (also known as the SharePoint Client Object Model) and manipulating the UI, the odds are high that you will sooner or later start usi [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 30th '10 |
Filling forms using data from EntityPicker aka EntityPicker with Callback
Waldek Mastykarz
Windows SharePoint Services v3 ships with many controls that simplify entering data. One of such controls is the EntityPicker which allows users to search for data and then select the desired record(s). Not only is the EntityPicker very intuitive but also highly extensible. Did you know that you can extend the EntityPicker to make it fill the list form using the data from the entity that you picked?
Imagine the following requirement: you have a document library that allows users to write letters [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 25th '10 |
Visual Studio temporary projects
Waldek Mastykarz
Does ConsoleApplication87 sounds familiar to you? If so, I’ve got some great news for you – a tip that will help you keep your disk clean of all the test code that you check out.
Imagine: you’re in the middle of the development process working on SharePoint code. Then you would like to check out some code before including it in the solution and rebuilding the whole thing. You fire up a new instance of Visual Studio and create a test project. Visual Studio spins for a second and comes up wi [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 20th '10 |
Community Kit for SharePoint: Development Tools Edition
Waldek Mastykarz
For the last few months I've been working with the new Visual Studio SharePoint development tools. The results? A few extensions that make developing SharePoint 2010 solutions a little easier.
I was not the only one who created and published extensions for the Visual Studio SharePoint development tools. First there was the SPVSX toolkit by Matt Smith, Wesley Hackett and Todd Bleeker. Then, just a few weeks ago, Wouter van Vugt published his cool toolkit on-line. At some point we all noticed [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 20th '10 |
Web Content Management in SharePoint Server 2010
Waldek Mastykarz
For a while now I’ve been thinking about what should I write about in the very first post about SharePoint 2010. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you probably know, that I’m passionate about Web Content Management (WCM) in SharePoint. For three years now I’ve been working with SharePoint WCM. Although it’s sometimes challenging, it’s great to build WCM solutions on the SharePoint platform. And now SharePoint 2010 offers an even richer foundations for custom Web Content [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 20th '09 |
Meet me @ Tech·Ed Europe 2009
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just got confirmation from Microsoft: I will be at the Technical Learning Center (TLC) booth at Tech·Ed Europe 2009. Together with some fellow MVPs I will be answering all your SharePoint questions.
Looking forward to see you at Tech·Ed 2009!
Technorati Tags: TechEd 2009 [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 5th '09 |
Extending Lookup Fields with “Add new item” option
Waldek Mastykarz
How many times were you working with Lookup Fields and just when you were about to pick a value, you found out that it’s not there. How many clicks did you have to make to get to the Lookup List, add the new Lookup Item, get back to where you were first and add your item? While it sounds trivial, it’s the only way things can be done in out of the box SharePoint. You could of course create a whole new Custom Field Type which would contain an “Add new item” link, but there is an easier way [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 3rd '09 |
Custom Field Type: Site Reference (part 1)
Waldek Mastykarz
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a project that strongly relied on meta data. The project is all about finding the right information in a strongly fragmented collaboration environment. One of the parts of the project was publishing news messages related to specific collaboration areas.
The background
The project I mentioned is an Intranet environment meant to support the organization’s collaboration process. It consists of many different areas like Topics, Projects, Departments, e [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 22nd '09 |
PowerShell for developers
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday I wrote my first PowerShell script. During that process I’ve discovered quite a few things – new to me being a .NET developer.
Load your assemblies on time
All the assemblies required by the script must be loaded before the script is executed. Consider the following script for example:
param(
[string]$Url = $(Read-Host -prompt "Site (Collection) Url"),
[bool]$Recursive = $false
)
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")
function Get-SPFolder
{
[read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 1st '09 |
From /Press-Releases/Pages/Press-Release.aspx to /Press-Releases/Press-Release – make friendly URL’s for your SharePoint site in 4 steps with IIS7 URL Rewrite module
Waldek Mastykarz
We all know Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Web Content Management (WCM) solutions for their Pages URL’s. Purist web designers/developers hate SharePoint not only for the fact that it’s injecting something into URL’s but mostly for the inability of changing anything about it. And while many people think that SharePoint and semantic URL’s just don’t play along, it turns out that there is a solution – one that doesn’t involve a single line of custom code.
It’s almost [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 27th '09 |
Generate your own SPBuiltInFieldId class
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint ships with the SPBuiltInFieldId class which allows you to access the ID’s of all the out-of-the-box available fields using intellisense. This is very important in scenarios when your solution heavy relies on custom development and working with list items. The SPBuiltInFieldId class makes working with Content Types and Columns easier: instead of typing the names you can use the Properties of the SPBuiltInFieldId and get to all the standard SharePoint fields using intellisense.
Whil [read].
Posted: Fri, Aug 21st '09 |
Visual Studio T4 template for SharePoint Feature Definition (Feature.xml)
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I wrote an article about automating the generation of the DDF files used to package SharePoint Solutions. In my example I used a custom Visual Studio T4 template to generate the DDF file. As a scenario I used a Web Content Management (WCM) solution, which contained a lot of assets to be provisioned to SharePoint. While working with WCM solutions generating and maintaining the DDF files is not the only challenge. As all the different assets are being provisioned using Features you also h [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 16th '09 |
Programmatically creating Wiki Pages
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I had to prepare a demo for one of our customers. Next to the regular things like provisioning sites and lists I had to provision a Wiki Pages Library with some demo pages in it. Although you might expect a Wiki Library to be a regular list it is not and programmatically creating Wiki Pages is slightly different than creating regular items.
As the name says Wiki Pages Library is a Library. If you look at its BaseType property, it says that a Wiki Pages Library is a Document Library. Tha [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 15th '09 |
Visual Studio T4 template for SharePoint Solution (DDF)
Waldek Mastykarz
Packaging solutions built on the SharePoint platform into WSP packages has proven to be the way to deploy your work in a structured and repeatable manner. While there are many different tools available which can support you in packaging your work, there are scenarios when they are not sufficient. As some of the tools are open source you could modify them to fit your requirements but did you know that Visual Studio can help you with creating WSP files?
The tools
SharePoint package – a WSP file [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 12th '09 |
Leveraging ASP.NET User Controls in SharePoint development
Waldek Mastykarz
In the last Web Content Management (WCM) project built on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 I’ve worked on, we’ve used a couple of new tools and development approaches. One of such things was leveraging the power of ASP.NET UserControls for developing Page Layouts and Web Parts – approach promoted by fellow SharePoint MVP Chris O’Brien.
The idea 101
Chris described the whole idea in his top 5 WCM tips article. Basically it’s pretty simple: create a User Control for [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 4th '09 |
Inconvenient Content Query Web Part vs. Lookup fields with multiple values
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part has been around for a while now and has proven to be a great performing and a very flexible content aggregation solution. In spite of its power it has some shortcomings like for example lack of support for Lookup fields with multiple values.
Almost every Web Content Management (WCM) solution I built on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 required using one or more Lookup fields. Comparing to other alternatives like a Choice field, a Lookup field allows us [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 17th '09 |
Waldek Mastykarz is now Microsoft Certified Professional Developer
Waldek Mastykarz
For the last couple of weeks I spent some extra time on learning. I have decided to organize my knowledge and experience and fill in all the gaps.
It’s not bad to learn things through working with them. Theoretical knowledge is not as valuable and useful as real-life experience in my opinion. The downside is however, that if the only thing you’re doing is learning through practice, the odds are high that you will miss some things and not fully benefit of everything that’s already there.
Fo [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 8th '09 |
Inconvenient Page Title <title> element
Waldek Mastykarz
During my last Web Content Management (WCM) project built on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 I noticed that SharePoint was rendering two elements on all pages:
The first title element was the one defined by me in the Master Page. That title element correctly displayed the title of the page using a custom control:
For some reason SharePoint was automatically adding the second – empty title element during the rendering process of the page.
Having two title elements in [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 7th '09 |
Inconvenient PublishingScheduleControl
Waldek Mastykarz
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 ships with a rich Web Content Management (WCM) System functionality. Among lots of functionality which simplifies managing content on websites, MOSS 2007 allows you to schedule the publication of your Publishing Pages. The process is as simple as enabling versioning, approval and items scheduling on the Pages Library and editing the desired publication and expiration dates on the Publishing Page. Could you imagine that even something as simple as th [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 25th '09 |
Performance of various methods to retrieve one list item
Waldek Mastykarz
A while ago I did some research on performance of various approaches for aggregating data in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Back then I have found some interesting results. In the project I’m working on at the moment, I got a slightly different challenge: what is the best way to retrieve one particular list item?
What I already knew
From the previous trials that I did I knew, that using PortalSiteMapProvider is the fastest way to perform data aggregation on MOSS 2007. Whether you wil [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 22nd '09 |
SharePoint RTE breaks in IE8 when in editing mode
Waldek Mastykarz
Since a couple of days I’m working on a brand new Web Content Management solution on MOSS 2007. For the first time I’ve started off using Internet Explorer 8. Considering the changes the IE team has made to the DOM rendering I wasn’t surprised when I saw that some of the SharePoint functionality doesn’t work properly in IE8.
When ’null’ is null goes wrong
For the last couple of days I’ve been developing pieces for the brand new MOSS 2007 WCM solution for one of our customers. I’v [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 21st '09 |
Templates-based menu control for SharePoint
Waldek Mastykarz
Sometimes doing the simplest things turns out to be unnecessary difficult. This is true with SharePoint development in particular. For example: have you ever tried creating a menu control based on a standard Site Map Provider which would render a nested unordered list (UL) and nothing else? I have, and finally have a solution that I’m happy about: a templates-based menu control.
SharePoint and menus
If you ever looked at the out-of-the-box available Master Pages provided with MOSS 2007 you kno [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 9th '09 |
WCF and SharePoint: context != context
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I got interested in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services and SharePoint. I’ve heard some great stories about how WCF can improve the architecture of your solutions. On the other hand I’ve heard some complaints about how complex the integration with SharePoint is. To keep it short: reason enough to check it out myself.
Hello World
To be honest I haven’t worked with WCF services yet. Somehow the new technology passed me and I didn’t even give it a chance. Recently I stu [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 7th '09 |
5 Great SharePoint sessions you can’t miss
Waldek Mastykarz
Upcoming SDN Event, on June 26 in Houten, the Netherlands, there will be five great SharePoint sessions you cannot miss:
SharePoint Mythbusters: Debunking common SharePoint Farm Misconceptions - Spencer Harbar This interactive session will dive into common SharePoint Farm Myths and discuss common misconceptions around Global Deployments, Farm Topologies, Shared Service Providers, High Availability, Security and more. Alongside best practices for each “myth”, the SharePoint “magic numbers [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 3rd '09 |
SharePoint BLOB caching issue solved
Waldek Mastykarz
A couple of weeks ago Chris O’Brien – fellow MVP wrote an article on the research of the SharePoint BLOB cache he has done. During that research he has experienced some issues with some of the files not being cached properly on the client causing the browser to request the file every single time. As I’m working with Web Content Management solutions on SharePoint a lot, it definitely took my attention.
After spending a few days on it, trying almost every possible solution I thought I’d fo [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 1st '09 |
DevDays ‘09 Recap
Waldek Mastykarz
DevDays ‘09 was an amazing event: nice venue, great content and a lot of great people.
It all started with the PreConf DeepDive: Wouter van Vugt of Code Counsel delivered some great content about SharePoint. He started with an easy to follow introduction on the SharePoint platform and slowly moved towards some more advanced topics. He shared with us some of his development best practices and his cool Entity Pickers code (available on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc8893 [read].
Posted: Sat, May 30th '09 |
DevDays ‘09 day 1
Waldek Mastykarz
Today I attended the DevDays ‘09 PreConference – DeepDive. It was a great day full of SharePoint content provided by Wouter van Vugt of Code Counsel. Wouter did absolutely a great job delivering the content. It was a great mix of introduction content, some great undocumented stuff, and bad jokes Wouter-style.
Wouter did a great job presenting his development tools, walking us through his Entity Pickers code and of course covering the ‘How I did it’ on his brand new site that just recentl [read].
Posted: Wed, May 27th '09 |
Using PageAsyncTask to improve the performance of your website
Waldek Mastykarz
Once in a while I like to get back to “old stuff”. It allows me to look once again at the things I’ve already done but then from another perspective: between now and then I’ve done a few projects, I’ve read a couple articles/books and spoken to some people. So it’s not surprising that quite often I find some new insights about the subjects I thought were closed. One of such topics was using the PageAsyncTask class to improve the performance of your website.
PageAsyncTask 101
PageAsyn [read].
Posted: Sat, May 23rd '09 |
Ask the Expert @ DevDays ‘09
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just got a confirmation from Microsoft: Ton Stegeman (MOSS MVP) and I will be on the Ask the Expert booth @ DevDays ‘09. We’ll be there to answer all your SharePoint questions. Looking forward to meet you. See you at the DevDays ‘09!
Technorati Tags: DevDays09,SharePoint,SharePoint 2007,MOSS 2007,WSS 3.0 [read].
Posted: Mon, May 18th '09 |
SharePoint productivity templates for CodeSmith
Waldek Mastykarz
For quite some time I have been busy with trying to increase my productivity while working on SharePoint solutions. In the last two years I helped design a couple of tools and developed a few of them myself: all that to simplify the most common tasks and be able to focus on the solution-specific things. Recently I have focused on code generation: based on the information already present either in SharePoint or in your solution generate source code. You can see a part of the results of my efforts [read].
Posted: Sun, May 17th '09 |
Tijdelijk bericht dat wordt gebruikt om het thema te bepalen. (009ff809-c94a-4ccd-ab6a-7f28abff05ed - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)
Waldek Mastykarz
Dit is een tijdelijk bericht dat niet is verwijderd. Verwijder het handmatig. (fc08eef7-c4a2-43f1-b2c4-84631b4db816 - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7) [read].
Posted: Fri, May 8th '09 |
Inconvenient opening sites – SPSite.OpenWeb()
Waldek Mastykarz
While working with SharePoint I have stumbled upon quite some inconveniences. Most of the time they were in methods that you don’t use that often, and when you do, you expect them to do something else than they actually do. I probably haven’t worked on a single SharePoint project where I wasn’t instantiating sites. So I was quite surprised when I found out that even something as simple as SPSite.OpenWeb doesn’t always do what you would it expect it to.
Recently I got the task to design a [read].
Posted: Sun, May 3rd '09 |
DIWUG meeting upcoming Thursday (May 7)
Waldek Mastykarz
Upcoming Thursday (May 7) there will be a Dutch Information Worker User Group (DIWUG) meeting. Two very promising sessions are on the agenda.
First of all Sandra de Ridder of Macaw will discuss the SharePoint User eXperience (UX). She will cover different aspects of the default SharePoint UX and will give us some tips on how the user experience of SharePoint solutions could be improved.
During the second session Maurice Bakker and Jaap Mollema of TamTam will take us for a trip to the world of fu [read].
Posted: Sun, May 3rd '09 |
Generating tag cloud using the Content Query Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
By now you should know how powerful the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) provided with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is. If you’ve been following this blog for a while it should be really difficult to surprise you with cool new things you could do with nothing more than the standard CQWP. And yet, I think I make a good chance here: did you know that you can use the standard Content Query Web Part to create a tag cloud?
Tag Clouds and SharePoint
Tag Clouds provide an alternative w [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 24th '09 |
Generating short description using the Content Query Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
Probably every Web Content Management (WCM) solution out there uses some kind of content aggregation. No matter whether it’s showing the 5 most recent press releases, new job offers or upcoming events: presenting content roll-up to the visitors allows them to get to your content more easily.
If you’re building a WCM solution on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 you are very likely to use the standard Content Query Web Part (CQWP) for that purpose. CQWP is a great performi [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 21st '09 |
Inconvenient programmatically provisioning Web Part instances
Waldek Mastykarz
Back in October last year I started working with programmatically provisioning Web Part instances. The challenging part was that the assemblies containing the Web Parts’ code were located in the bin directory of the target Web Application. The custom STSADM command I was using for that purpose wasn’t able to resolve the Web Part type. Back then I have found a way to deal with it which I though was a working solution. Unfortunately: just last week I have stumbled upon the same situation: agai [read].
Posted: Sat, Apr 18th '09 |
Inconvenient programmatically working with SharePoint users (SPWeb.EnsureUser)
Waldek Mastykarz
According to the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 SDK the SPWeb.EnsureUser(String) method is all you need while programmatically working with users. Using nothing more than the login name it checks for you whether the particular user exists in the current web and adds it if required. Within a single line of code it retrieves for you a proper reference to a user no matter the membership/role provider. While it’s really that simple while working in the scope of your SharePoint Web Applicatio [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 16th '09 |
Imtech SharePoint Gems: SPUrlExpressionBuilder
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while working on a SharePoint solution I have rediscovered the SPUrlExpressionBuilder class – one of the many hidden gems of SharePoint 2007. After some research it turned out to be more than the URL tokenizer we know from WSSv3.
SPUrlExpressionBuilder
SPUrlExpressionBuilder aka SPUrl is an Expression Builder shipped with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. It allows you to build dynamic URL’s using ~-prefixed tokens, like ~Site and ~SiteCollection. Most of you probably [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 14th '09 |
Export Publishing Pages to Features – Imtech OCD Export Page v1.0.0.0
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I have found that you could actually provision Publishing Pages using the declarative markup of Features. Right after that discovery I have found that you could benefit of that functionality in quite a few scenario’s, like provisioning test content wrapped in Features. The biggest downside against provisioning Publishing Pages would be having to generate the XML manually. To simplify the process I have decided to create a tool which would export the existing Publishing Pages to Featur [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 8th '09 |
Inconvenient Control Adapters
Waldek Mastykarz
Control Adapters are a great way to modify the presentation layer of any control out there: no matter whether it’s sealed or internal. And while they are pretty easy to setup you can find yourself spending a couple of hours if somehow they seem not to be applied…
To modify the presentation of an existing control you need two things: a Control Adapter class which comes in a couple of tastes (check out the System.Web.UI.Adapters and System.Web.UI.WebControls.Adapters namespaces for more detail [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 2nd '09 |
Remove HTML markup in Content Query Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
How many times have you tried to generate a short preview out of a Rich HTML field using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP)? How many times did you end up making your customers using the Description field instead just because the CQWP doesn’t provide an out of the box mechanism for removing HTML markup? Guess what: it does.
Removing the HTML in the real world
What would you do if someone asked you to remove all HTML from some string in your custom application? Depending on your skills you would [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 1st '09 |
Inconvenient programmatically exporting Web Parts
Waldek Mastykarz
Programmatically provisioning Web Part instances is an important piece of structured and repeatable deployment of SharePoint solutions. Preferably you would like to be able to deploy preconfigured Web Parts at particular places in your SharePoint solution. In order to do that you need two at least things: the target location where do you want to deploy the Web Part instance and the preconfigured Web Part itself. SharePoint Web UI allows you to export Web Parts. While it’s definitely doable to [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 1st '09 |
AC’s VS CodeRush/Refactor Tools for SharePoint Developers v1.1 Cheat Sheet
Waldek Mastykarz
Just recently I started using AC’s Visual Studio CodeRush/Refactor Tools for SharePoint Developers. I know that the AC’s Tools have been there for a while. Somehow I missed them. Lucky for me, just recently I stumbled upon them once again and decided to give them a try and guess what: they are great and they save you a lot of time typing SharePoint XML.
Andrew has put a lot of stuff in there, and while I don’t use all of it, I really appreciate being able to type newguid to generate a GUID [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 1st '09 |
The First Dutch SharePint: Next Friday
Waldek Mastykarz
It’s finally going to happen: the very first SharePint in the Netherlands - SharePoint by day, SharePint by night.
Right after the “SharePoint Day with the Experts: Amsterdam” we’ll all be heading to have some SharePint. There will be a lot of great folks out there: Joel Oleson, Mike Watson (MOSS MVP), Daniel McPherson, Robin Meuré, Ton Stegeman (MOSS MVP) and (last but not least) Marianne van Wanrooij.
If you want to talk about SharePoint or just have a drink with us you should definit [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 31st '09 |
Did you know: Changing existing Site Definitions is unsupported
Waldek Mastykarz
During the last SharePoint Black Belts meeting we talked about deploying of all kinds of things in SharePoint. One of the topics was deploying and updating custom Site Definitions. Did you know that changing existing Site Definitions is unsupported?
Personally I’m using custom Site Definitions quite a lot. Every Web Content Management (WCM) solution I’m working on, is based on a custom Site Definition. It’s either for convenience or a must-have (like a customer who wants to be able to crea [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 26th '09 |
Provisioning Publishing Pages using Features declarative markup
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint Features allow you to provision all kinds of assets in a declarative way - we all know that. Using XML you can provision not only branding resources like CSS, JavaScript files and images but also Page Layouts and Master Pages. But did you know that using exactly the same mechanism you can provision Publishing Pages?
If you’re following me on Twitter you probably know that since a couple of weeks I’m working on a brand new Web Content Management (WCM) solution based on Microsoft Of [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 25th '09 |
Debugging Content Query Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is one of the coolest web parts available out of the box in MOSS 2007. Using nothing more than the standard functionality you can aggregate content available within your Site Collection. Additionally you can extend the CQWP by introducing new XSLT parameters and functions, what allows you to create pretty complex data presentation including paging.
The downside of customizing the CQWP is that it doesn’t present you with sufficient feedback should you have done som [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 17th '09 |
Inconvenient SPWeb.GetListItem (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070001)
Waldek Mastykarz
SPWeb ships with the GetListItem method which allows you to retrieve a list item using a URL. While in general you would use the SPContext.Current.ListItem property to get the current list item, there are situations when the GetListItem method becomes really useful, like for example getting the current list item with elevated privileges. There is however one confusing thing about the GetListItem method and if you’re not focused enough, you will spend hours trying to figure out what is wrong.
W [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 16th '09 |
Speaking at “SharePoint Day with the Experts: Amsterdam”
Waldek Mastykarz
I will be on the Experts Panel & Q&A on the upcoming “SharePoint Day with the Experts: Amsterdam” event on Friday, April 3rd.
What is it? “SharePoint Day with the Experts: Amsterdam” is an event organized by Quest Software and hosted by Microsoft. It’s a free no-cost seminar and there will be a lot of great content including meeting people who have been involved with SharePoint for years, like Joel Oleson, Mike Watson, Matthijs Hoekstra, Daniel McPherson and Robin Meuré. Check [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 10th '09 |
SharePoint InstantListFilter
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just been pinged by Jaap Vossers: he’s published another SharePoint solution which enhances the User Experience – SharePoint InstantListFilter.
SharePoint InstantListFilter allows you to quickly filter a list view in a filter-as-you-type manner. It uses jQuery to hook up the filtering engine, so there is no reload after applying the filter.
Check out SharePoint InstantListFilter by Jaap Vossers @ CodePlex.
Technorati Tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007 [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 3rd '09 |
AKS v2.0 available soon
Waldek Mastykarz
According to the HiSoftware’s press release Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0 will soon become publicly available.
Originally planned to Q3 2008 AKS v2.0 was supposed to provide us with some new features improving delivering accessible websites in MOSS 2007 among which XHTML compliancy and a new Accessible Rich Text Editor (aRTE). Unfortunately for some reasons, the release has been delayed until now.
Just recently HiSoftware has announced that AKS v2.0 will soon be publicly availabl [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 26th '09 |
Speaking at SDN Event March 30, 2009
Waldek Mastykarz
I will be speaking at the upcoming SDN Event on March 30 in Driebergen.
Together with my great colleague Erik Schoenmakers I will discuss deploying SharePoint solutions in different environments in a structured and repeatable way. We are going to present what SharePoint offers you to support structured and repeatable deployments and what the different shortcomings are. Then we will give you a little demo of how we have designed a complete development and deployment environment for SharePoint sol [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 22nd '09 |
SharePoint QuickLaunchExtender
Waldek Mastykarz
Via Jaap Vossers: Jaap has pulled it off again. Just recently he created yet another solution which enriches the standard SharePoint UI: introducing the SharePoint QuickLaunchExtender.
SharePoint QuickLaunchExtender extends the standard capabilities of the Quick Launch menu with a couple of new features. First of all you can expand/collapse the different sections. This resembles the Accordion Left Nav Feature by Paul Grenier.
Then you can expand the different sections accordion style:
Last b [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 17th '09 |
SharePoint People Search – Lessons learned. Part 1: Covering the basics
Waldek Mastykarz
For the last couple of days I’ve been working on a facebook solution based on SharePoint People Search. And while you might think that it’s nothing more than configuring and developing for SharePoint, there are quite a few search-specific things I’ve learned in those few days.
First things first
The first thing you are very likely to do while working with a solution based on SharePoint Search is to configure the SharePoint Search Service so that it crawls your content and returns some resu [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 4th '09 |
SharePoint People Search – Lessons learned. Part 2: Programmatically running search queries
Waldek Mastykarz
In the first part of the SharePoint People Search – Lessons learned article we’ve discussed the basics of configuring SharePoint People Search. We have also looked at how it could be used for a facebook solution and what the shortcomings are. In this part we will explore different aspects you are very likely to face while creating a custom facebook solution based on SharePoint People Search.
Introduction
If the standard search functionality provided by SharePoint is insufficient for your req [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 4th '09 |
SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool (SPDisposeCheck) available now!
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool aka SPDisposeCheck is finally available! You can download it from MSDN Code Gallery @ http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck.
SPDisposeCheck is a tool to help you to check your assemblies that use the SharePoint API so that you can build better code. It provides assistance in correctly disposing of certain SharePoint objects to help you follow published best practice. This tool may not show all memory leaks in your code. Further investigation is advised if [read].
Posted: Thu, Jan 29th '09 |
SharePoint mobile-friendly interface (Imtech Mobile SharePoint)
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2007 ships with a mobile-friendly interface. In the past few years the usage of mobile devices has grown tremendously. It is then not surprising that the SharePoint team has provided a mobile-friendly interface for accessing data stored in SharePoint. Unfortunately the standard SharePoint mobile interface is far from perfect and maybe even far from useful.
It’s not Black & White
SharePoint’s Web UI is richly loaded with bulky html, images, cascading style sheets and JavaScript [read].
Posted: Thu, Jan 29th '09 |
Get to the on-line SharePoint SDK with one click (MSDN bookmarklet)
Waldek Mastykarz
While developing custom SharePoint solutions there is a big chance you need to look into the SharePoint SDK on regular. To keep off continuously surfing to the on-line reference, the SharePoint Team have provided us with the compiled CHM files. I admit that the off-line help files do simplify finding the information on a particular class, method or property. They have however two serious flaws: the content is outdated and there is no community content included in the off-line SDK.
What’s the p [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 27th '09 |
Programmatically deleting list items/documents with Recycle Bin support
Waldek Mastykarz
If you delete a document in SharePoint 2007 using the User Interface, it’s being moved to the Recycle Bin, so that it can be restored if necessary. There are situations when you want to include deleting list items and documents in your custom solutions. The most commonly used approach I’ve seen is calling the SPListItem.Delete() method. While this does the job, and deletes the item, it deletes it permanently instead of moving to the Recycle Bin.
Looking carefully at the SPListItem class, you [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 27th '09 |
Quote of the Day Web Part, Reprised – Part 2
Waldek Mastykarz
[Via EndUserSharePoint.com] In the previous article we’ve discussed all the different ingredients of the Quote of the Day Web Part. Additionally we have created the basics to retrieve quotes from a list and display them on the page. In Part 2 of the article I revise the mechanism for retrieving random quote of the day.
Check out the full article Quote of the Day Web Part, Reprise – Part 2 at EndUserSharePoint.com.
Technorati Tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007, JavaScript, [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 16th '09 |
10 development-related things I’d love to see in SharePoint vNext
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous post I’ve shared with you 5 experience-related things I’d love to see in SharePoint vNext. Now it’s time for Part #2: Development – the things I deal with every day.
Less internal code
The object model of both WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 is very powerful. It allows us – developers to do cool things with SharePoint and build some great solutions on top of it. While the solutions you could build are virtually unlimited, their viability and scalability isn’t. At the end of the [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 14th '09 |
Quote of the Day Web Part, Reprised – Part 1
Waldek Mastykarz
[Via EndUserSharePoint.com] In March, Mark Miller of EndUserSharePoint.com (EUSP) has created a Quote of the Day web part. And while it has been downloaded and installed on many sites, it has one shortcoming: you had to edit the web part’s code to manage the quotes. Recently Mark asked me whether it would be possible to do something about it, to make the web part more end-user friendly.
I came up with an idea to base the Quote of the Day Web Part on the standard List View Web Part. Sounds inte [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 12th '09 |
Imtech SEO Slugs Live Writer Plugin v1.1.0
Waldek Mastykarz
Almost half a year ago I’ve release the first version of the Imtech SEO Slugs Windows Live Writer Plugin. Using the selected text the plugin generates a Search Engine Optimized slug for your post by removing all the noise words. By default slugs are being generated using the post’s title which usually doesn’t contain any HTML markup. There might be situations however when you would like to generate a slug using some text in the body instead.
The initial version of the plugin couldn’t dea [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 12th '09 |
5 experience-related things I’d love to see in SharePoint vNext
Waldek Mastykarz
It’s more than two years since the last version of SharePoint has been released. Comparing to SPS 2003, MOSS 2007 brought us a very rich environment with tons of new features. As we all might expect, the SharePoint product team is really busy with the new version of SharePoint and I assume that many of us can’t wait to get their hands on it. Looking at the calendar however, it’s probably going to be at least the end of this year until the public release of the new version of SharePoint wil [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 9th '09 |
A SharePoint solution looking for a problem – the focused href
Waldek Mastykarz
[Cross-posted from EndUserSharePoint.com] Recently I’ve been playing around with jQuery and some other JavaScript-based interface interactions. And so a couple of days ago I came up with another idea: the focused href.
The idea is simple: you are looking on a large content page in SharePoint: procedure document, article, Wiki, etc. You are particularly interested in one piece of text on that page which you would like to share with your team. How to let them know which part do you exactly mean? [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 6th '09 |
I’m a SharePoint Server MVP
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just received an e-mail telling me that I have received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for my contributions to the SharePoint community. It is a great honor to me and I would like to thank everyone who contributed to my nomination but also all my colleagues and readers of my blog who provide me with new challenges every single day: Thank you!
I’m really looking forward to all the new engagements both the MVP Award and the New Year 2009 will bring. I hope it will al [read].
Posted: Thu, Jan 1st '09 |
Programmatically creating Variation Hierarchies in SharePoint 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
Scripting deployment of SharePoint 2007 solutions gives you numerous benefits. Not only you will be able to deploy your work in a structured and repeatable manner but it also saves you tons of time which you would otherwise spend on configuring the solution in different environments over and over again. If you’re going to automate your deployment process, you would preferably want to script it all, leaving no manual steps at all. Unfortunately it’s not always possible as both WSS and MOSS te [read].
Posted: Thu, Jan 1st '09 |
Change the WSPBuilder DeploymentTarget to WebApplication
Waldek Mastykarz
By default WSPBuilder builds solutions with the DeploymentTarget attribute set to GlobalAssemblyCache. All assemblies provisioned by the solution will be deployed to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) of the target web server which might not always be desirable/doable. There are a couple of ways of how to change the DeploymentTarget to the bin directory of the target Web Application.
One way of changing the WSPBuilder’s default behavior is using the WSPBuilder.exe.config file. Changing the value [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 30th '08 |
Excluding empty text values in SharePoint Search
Waldek Mastykarz
Last week I got an opportunity to work with SharePoint Search. As you could imagine it didn’t go that easy at all and to be honest the SQL-like statements didn’t make it for me at all. And unless I’ve seriously missed something, I’ve found out that there is no easy way to exclude empty text results in SharePoint Search. At least it seemed so…
In my case I’ve had a MultiLookup field (Tags) attached to some Content Types. What I wanted to achieve is to obtain a list of all tags and the [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 30th '08 |
tryGetValue in JavaScript
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while working on a new JavaScript mockup I’ve noticed that JavaScript lacks a decent support for retrieving values of object properties. Constantly checking whether both object and property makes the code almost unreadable. But isn’t there a better to get the values of object properties and keep the JavaScript code to the minimum?
Let’s look at the following example:
var options = {
filter: true,
defaultText: "Lorem ipsum",
multiList: false
};
The options variable is an object [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 30th '08 |
jQuery :regex filter
Waldek Mastykarz
jQuery is a powerful library which simplifies working with JavaScript. Using CSS-like selectors it allows you to grab DOM elements on a page and run some operations on it. As you might’ve guessed the power is not only in what kind of operations you may perform but also how efficiently you are able to select the elements that you’re interested in. jQuery ships with quite a few filters among which Content Filters: selectors which allow you to select DOM elements based on the text they contain. [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 30th '08 |
Imtech Fields Explorer Visual Studio 2008 plugin
Waldek Mastykarz
For the last couple of weeks we’ve been thinking here at Imtech ICT Velocity about how we could improve our SharePoint development process. During the last year we have gathered a lot of different tools which help us to automate the routine. And while they all are definitely very useful, they make the development environment quite complex. Maybe even too complex. One of the improvements we thought about was integrating all these different tools we have made into Visual Studio. Imtech Fields Ex [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 22nd '08 |
SharePoint InlineSiteSettings
Waldek Mastykarz
Via Jaap Vossers: Recently I’ve been pinged about a new SharePoint project on CodePlex called SharePoint InlineSiteSettings. What is does is to display the links to all Site Settings on the front-end saving you at least two clicks:
SharePoint InlineSiteSettings is a great alternative to SharePoint Developer Bookmarklets. While the bookmarklets depend on JavaScript to get the right data, SharePoint InlineSiteSettings provides a server-side control. Just like the bookmarklets, SharePoint Inlin [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 22nd '08 |
See IDs of all available Site Definitions
Waldek Mastykarz
While working on SharePoint solutions once in a while you need to create custom Site Definitions. It’s not easy to work with Site Definitions: they can easily get very complex and are almost impossible to debug. Unfortunately there are situations when you cannot avoid using custom Site Definitions. Is there anything we could do to make it easier to work with Site Definitions?
One of the things you really have to be careful about is defining the ID of a Site Definition. According to the Windows [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 18th '08 |
Improving the SharePoint print experience
Waldek Mastykarz
Via EndUserSharePoint.com: The ability to print web pages has been available for years. Comparing it to the transition that most browsers have gone through, there is very little that has changed about how web pages are printed. While moving the digital version of a page to its paper equivalent, important information is not accessible to the print job. Luckily you can quite easily provide your visitors with a richer printing experience using no more than a couple of lines of JavaScript.
Check out [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 18th '08 |
Images slideshow in SharePoint 2007 using jQuery
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday I published an article with an example on how you can display a random image in SharePoint 2007 using jQuery. With only a couple of lines of JavaScript you can pick a random image from an Image Library and display it on a page. But did you actually know that with a little more effort you can create your own images slideshow?
Images slideshow: the ingredients
Just like in the previous example, let’s start with creating an Image Library, adding some pictures and adding the Images List [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 17th '08 |
Improve your jQuery
Waldek Mastykarz
jQuery has been out there for a while now. Many web developers use it thanks to its simplicity. But because you can use it intuitively there is a chance you might overuse it. Because not all browsers out there can easily deal with lots of JavaScript your enhancements might decrease the user experience – definitely the opposite of what you wanted. So how can you avoid it?
If you’re into jQuery you should definitely check out Jon’s article: Improve your jQuery – 25 excellent tips. These ti [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 17th '08 |
Showing random images in SharePoint 2007 using jQuery
Waldek Mastykarz
If you’ve been following my blog you know that a bit more than a year ago I’ve published the Imtech Random Image Web Part: a SharePoint web part which allows you to display random images from a list of your choice. The web part I’ve made contains some code which you would have to deploy it in your SharePoint environment to get it working. Did you actually know that you can create the same functionality using no more than a couple of lines of JavaScript and no server-side code at all?
Showi [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 16th '08 |
jQuery :random filter
Waldek Mastykarz
While working on a new JavaScript mockup I needed a way to obtain a random jQuery item. While I could use jQuery(“selector”).get(int) to get a random item, I wanted to have a cleaner way of doing that to keep my code clean.
jQuery ships with great support for extensibility. You can not only extend jQuery with custom functions but filters as well. That is when I thought of the custom “:random” filter, just as you have the standard “:first”, “:last” and “:nth” filters.
Is jQuer [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 16th '08 |
Getting values of internal properties in SharePoint 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint has a lot of gold under the hood. Unfortunately for us – developers not all of it is publicly available. Some methods/properties are marked as internal what makes it impossible for us to use is custom functionality we’re developing. But do you really develop your own alternatives or is there a way to get to those gems after all?
GroupedItemPicker – almost unusable?
One of the examples of the situation I’ve described above is the GroupedItemPicker- a list control which allows [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 16th '08 |
Is it a good idea to use lambda expressions for querying SharePoint data?
Waldek Mastykarz
.NET 3x ships with a number of new features among which lambda expressions: an easy way to write code for querying collections. Because of its ease of use many developers use it for retrieving data from different kind of collections. Just recently I’ve been asked to have a look how well lambda expressions perform while retrieving data from SharePoint comparing to SharePoint native mechanisms.
Before you read further…
Keep in mind that lambda expressions are nothing else than a fancy way of w [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 9th '08 |
RenderAllHiddenFieldsAtTopOfForm – is it really a SEO solution?
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday I’ve found out about one of the new features of .NET 3.5 SP1: the renderAllHiddenFieldsAtTopOfForm setting which allows you to control where in the page the hidden fields are being rendered. Today I gave it a shot in combination with a SharePoint Web Content Management solution…
The RenderAllHiddenFieldsAtTopOfForm has been added to the .NET framework as a solution for some postback related problems when users would trigger the postback before the page was fully rendered.
Steve Smi [read].
Posted: Sun, Dec 7th '08 |
Optimize your Internet facing sites in SharePoint for search engines using out of the box functionality
Waldek Mastykarz
.NET 3.5 SP1 ships with some extra functionality which allows you to optimize your ASP.NET pages for search engines. Basically it means less hacking and more control about the generated markup.
Steve Smith has just posted an article about using standard ASP.NET functionality to optimize ASP.NET pages for search engines. Steve wrote that .NET 3.5 SP1 allows you to control where in the page the ASP.NET hidden fields (eg. __VIEWSTATE) are being rendered: at the top or at the bottom of the HTML body [read].
Posted: Sat, Dec 6th '08 |
CodePlex Downloads Gadget update
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently the CodePlex Team has updated the GUI of the whole site. Because of some minor changes in the layout the CodePlex Downloads Gadget stopped working and turned into:
Today I’ve provided a fix which works with the updated version of the CodePlex Release pages. Additionally I’ve added the ability to forcibly reload the statistics by double clicking on the gadget’s surface.
Download: CodePlex Downloads Gadget v1.3.0.0 (48K)
Technorati Tags: CodePlex, Vista, Gadgets [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 22nd '08 |
JavaScript date formatting .NET style
Waldek Mastykarz
It’s quite surprising for a .NET developer to see that JavaScript doesn’t provide any mechanism to format dates. Considering how powerful JavaScript is, especially in environments where custom development is limited or not allowed, you can provide some great experience using JavaScript only. But just because something isn’t there out of the box, it doesn’t mean we can’t make it ourselves.
While working on a new project I’ve found that it would be actually great to be able to format d [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 21st '08 |
Let me google that for you
Waldek Mastykarz
Getting tired of answering questions like: “What is SharePoint?” and “How can I create a Feature in SharePoint?”. Start answering: “Let me google that for you”
Technorati Tags: Google [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 20th '08 |
Site Collection and Variation relative URLs in Office SharePoint Server 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 provides architecture for designing and developing scalable solutions. Two of these concepts are Site Collections for separating information and Variations for delivering multilingual solution. While working with both concepts – especially in Web Content Management (WCM) solutions I have found out that there is no easy way to create Site Collection or Variation relative links.
SPSite.ServerRelativeUrl != /
Per definition SharePoint allows you to c [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 20th '08 |
A better way to obtain objects from cache
Waldek Mastykarz
Last week I have posted a better approach to getting field values from an SPListItem. Today I’ve found out that you can actually use almost the same approach to get stuff from the ASP.NET cache.
Once again it’s an extension method which can be used in an intuitive way. The only difference is the type of the key: while getting a field value we’ve been using a GUID and now we’re using a string.
Using the above method you can now easily obtain various items from the cache in a type-safe m [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 19th '08 |
“Search on this Page” using jQuery
Waldek Mastykarz
Every modern browser provides the ability to search for text within a page. In most cases that functionality is underserved and allows you to find only one instance of the text at a time. Google Chrome recently presented improved version of search which searches for the given text as you type and highlights all instances found on the current page. But wait a minute: is this functionality limited to Google Chrome only?
Check out my article @ End User SharePoint.com: “Search on this Page” usin [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 17th '08 |
Why tables for layout is stupid?
Waldek Mastykarz
Yesterday I asked you a question: should I use tables for layout? In 99% cases the right answer is of course ‘No’ and in 1% ‘It depends’. In case you’re surrounded by a bunch of guys still stuck to the tables, I’ve found a great resource which might help you explain it to them: Why tables for layout is stupid?
Technorati Tags: Webdesign [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 13th '08 |
How to retrieve the contents of a file in SharePoint no matter its location?
Waldek Mastykarz
Imagine you want to retrieve the contents of a non-binary (text, CSS, XSL, etc.) file stored in SharePoint 2007 and all you know about that file is its location (URL). How would you do it?
The answer is way simpler than you might think: SPWeb.GetFileAsString(string) allows you to obtain the contents of the file at the given URL. But that’s not all. Using SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb.GetFileAsString you can obtain even files which are stored in subwebs! Now isn’t that just cool?!
Technorati [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 13th '08 |
Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide and SharePoint 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
As announced earlier this morning, Google has published the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide: a set of good practices which can help you get the most of your website. Having it read with my SharePoint 2007 developer hat on a couple of things took my attention in particular.
Writing meaningful titles
Creating meaningful titles tells both the search engine and the visitor what the page is about. It identifies that particular page in fact. According to Google you should try to create accura [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 13th '08 |
Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Waldek Mastykarz
To simplify the process of optimizing websites for search engines, Google has published yesterday the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Although this is the first time that Google publishes such document, the guide contains many different practices which should help you get the most of your site and reach your audience. You should definitely check it out no matter if you are a developer, a designer or a content author. As long as you have anything to do with web technologies, the guide a [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 13th '08 |
Microsoft SharePoint Team help solve the problem of disposable objects
Waldek Mastykarz
The SharePoint team has just announced that they are working on a tool which will help SharePoint developers to deal with disposable objects in custom code. SPDisposeCheck – as the tool is called, will check custom compiled assemblies and validate them against the Microsoft guidance.
I definitely like the idea of having an extra piece of software just to be sure that I do everything okay. It would be cool if it would end up as a kind of intellisense in Visual Studio so that we can get the feed [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 12th '08 |
A better way to obtain fields values of an SPListItem
Waldek Mastykarz
Obtaining the value of a particular field (SPField) of a list item (SPListItem) is quite awkward. First of all you have to pass either the index, Id or the InternalName of an existing field. If the field exists a value of the object type is being returned. In some cases that value can be null. If it’s not you can cast it to its origin type as in most cases defined by the SPField.FieldValueType Property. Imagine doing all that each time you want to retrieve a field value. Isn’t there a better [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 12th '08 |
Should I use tables for layout?
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just stumbled upon a new campaign called: “Give up and use tables”. Two guys: Todd A and Brian Matthews seem to be tired of wasting their time on making things work CSS. Instead they suggest using tables and even offer to provide you with the HTML code you need. To make it even better they provide a little app: a counter which measures how much time you already spent on making CSS work. Should you really be using tables for layout?
Tables for layouts
Probably right when CSS became mor [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 12th '08 |
Imtech SpriteGenerator binaries posted
Waldek Mastykarz
I’ve just noticed that while creating the release for the Imtech SpriteGenerator the binaries haven’t been uploaded. I’ve just fixed it by adding the executables to the existing release. Check out Imtech SpriteGenerator @ http://www.codeplex.com/tmt/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=19270 [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 11th '08 |
Wikipedia has the most valuable SharePoint resources
Waldek Mastykarz
According to Microsoft Live Search it is neither the WSS or MOSS team nor the SharePoint MVP's that provide the most useful information on SharePoint. Looking for websites about SharePoint which provide RSS feeds Microsoft Live Search returns Wikipedia on the first place.
Technorati Tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, Live Search, Wikipedia [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 11th '08 |
Paging large content in SharePoint using jQuery
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I’ve stumbled upon an interesting challenge on the Microsoft SharePoint Forums: how to automatically page the content of a large Publishing Page? And while I came up with a plausible solution quite quickly I have decided to make it work as well.
The case
Imagine you had a Publishing Page with a large chunk of content in the body (PublishingPageContent field for example). While you might just throw it to the users/visitors to read in one piece, it’s definitely much neater to split th [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 11th '08 |
Generating CSS sprites using Imtech SpriteGenerator
Waldek Mastykarz
Using CSS sprites is one of the known methods for improving performance of a website. By minimizing the number of requests the web pages load faster. Creating sprites manually is quite difficult: you not only have to put the sprite together but have to manually create the stylesheet to actually use the sprite as well. Imtech SpriteGenerator simplifies working with by generating a sprite out of a directory with images and creating a CSS for all the pieces as well.
Introducing Imtech SpriteGenerat [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 10th '08 |
Visual Studio 2008 doesn’t display XML files with the UTF-16 encoding
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while working on a new tool for converting XML files using XSLT I have noticed something odd: Visual Studio (VS) 2008 wouldn’t display the contents of the converted XML files!
It’s not the first time that I’ve been working with XML and XSLT in .NET. I really like XML, and I use it for many purposes: from storing configuration data for applications to returning raw data so it can be presented using XSLT. XML is really really great. But what would keep Visual Studio 2008 from displ [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 9th '08 |
WCAG 2.0: Preparing for tomorrow
Waldek Mastykarz
Via Roger Johansson: Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has been working on the new version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for a couple of years now. Just recently the WCAG 2.0 version has advanced to the W3C Proposed Recommendation status. To simplify the migration process WAI has posted some documentation. Check out Roger’s article Going from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 for more information.
Technorati Tags: WCAG, WCAG 2.0, WAI, Accessibility [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 7th '08 |
Provisioning Content Query Web Part querying subsites in a structured and repeatable way
Waldek Mastykarz
Today, while working on a brand new SharePoint Web Content Management (WCM) solution, I’ve faced quite a challenge: I needed to provision a Content Query Web Part (CQWP) which would query subsites of the current site using a custom Site Definition. Each time user would create a site using that Site Definition, he would get on the home page an aggregation of the content from all underlying sites. It’s more challenging than it sounds and you won’t know it unless you had to do it yourself onc [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 5th '08 |
SharePoint developer bookmarklets updated
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint developer bookmarklets got updated: 87 bookmarklets to get you as quickly as possible to the most frequently used SharePoint functionality. Get the latest version now and save time for the cool stuff instead of clicking around.
Today I’ve posted a major update of the SharePoint developer bookmarklets. I’ve added quite some new links: at the moment there are 87 different links to help you get to various options as soon as possible.
I’ve been using the bookmarklets for a couple of [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 4th '08 |
Provisioning subclassed Content Query Web Part using Gary Lapointe’s setwebpartstate stsadm command
Waldek Mastykarz
Stsadm is highly extensible and Gary Lapointe is one of the guys who could tell you everything about it. In order to support the deployment and administration of SharePoint solutions, Gary has created more than 130 custom STSADM commands. One of them – setwebpartstate has recently took my attention. I kept getting errors while importing a subclassed Content Query Web Part (CQWP) – until now…
Back in August 2007 Gary Lapointe has noticed that STSADM lacks functionality he needed for his pro [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 24th '08 |
Optimize your images and save the bits for later
Waldek Mastykarz
There are many different ways of optimizing the performance of your website. While many developers tend to look for the troubles inside their code, there are some things that designers can do to make a website load faster.
There are many good image editing tools that allow us to get the best visual result for a certain file size but "under the hood" a lot more optimization can be done
Recently I stumbled on smush it! – new service which can help you decrease the load time of your website. smu [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 23rd '08 |
New generation of web forms or a design stunt?
Waldek Mastykarz
Huffduffer has come with a quite interesting sign up form. Does it represent a new generation of web forms or is it nothing more than a design stunt?
The sign up form @ huffduffer.com resembles a traditional paper-form we’ve seen for years: some text with gaps to fill-in to provide the requested information. It’s actually the first time that I see something similar on the web. But will that case trigger a new revolution or is it just a design mockup that we’ll never see again?
I really lik [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 23rd '08 |
Localizing Content Query Web Part XSL templates
Waldek Mastykarz
It’s great to know that the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is there whenever you need to provide a roll up of some content. Delivering a solution of similar experience, possibilities and flexibility would be really time consuming. Unfortunately there are still some things inside the CQWP which could be improved. Let’s take for example localizing the XSL used for data presentation: do we really have to create a different template for every language or is there a better way?
The truth behind va [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 20th '08 |
Alternative display order in Content Query Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is a great solution for content aggregation: not only thanks to its high performance but to the XSLT-based output rendering as well. And while XSLT is very powerful, many beginning SharePoint developers experience it as an obstacle and are more likely to provide custom aggregation solutions instead of using the standard components provided with SharePoint. In this article you will find out how you can alter the standard display order of the aggregated content using [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 16th '08 |
Generating list instances XML using Imtech ListInstance Generator
Waldek Mastykarz
This week I learned the hard way that the FeatureId attribute of the ListInstance element must contain the ID (GUID) of the Feature which has provisioned the particular List Definition. Although I’ve provisioned lists using Features dozens of times, this one sneaked up on me and took me more than an hour to figure out. To prevent it from happening ever again I’ve decided to create a tool which would make working with ListInstance element even easier.
Introducing Imtech ListInstance Generator [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 10th '08 |
Setting the right value of the FeatureId attribute for ListInstance
Waldek Mastykarz
Setting the correct value for the FeatureId attribute of the ListInstance element is just one of things you can easily overlook on a sunny Friday afternoon when your mind is already enjoying the weekend. It’s like forgetting to read the small letters underneath a contract you’re about to sign: it seems like it all is going to be okay but at the end of the day you’ll be in troubles.
When provisioning list instances using Features you must provide the ID of the Feature associated with the pa [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 10th '08 |
This is a test
Waldek Mastykarz
[read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 7th '08 |
Improving performance of SharePoint solutions by using Cache and CacheDependency
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I noticed that the customers ask for more control about the custom SharePoint solutions we deliver. They not only want to be able to customize general SharePoint settings which determine the working of the solution but they want to be able to configure various custom controls as well. Storing custom settings in a list provides the power users a nice interface, yet retrieving these values for each single request is very likely to decrease the overall performance. Is it then a battle betw [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 6th '08 |
Best Practices to create designer friendly server controls
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint 2007 is a really great application development framework. While the framework is rich and contains plenty of controls which can be incorporated in the custom solutions, there are quite often situations when you need to create custom controls. Most of the time the developers and consultants focus on the functionality, forgetting that, depending on the solution, the customer might require to be able to use the custom controls in SharePoint Designer (SPD). It turns out that making the cu [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 4th '08 |
Why using the Minimal SharePoint Master Page is a bad idea?
Waldek Mastykarz
Branding Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management solutions reaches beyond development and is done in most scenarios by webdesigners. Once done the templates are being sliced into pieces and incorporated in SharePoint. To simplify the work, SharePoint community has created a Minimal Master Page: a template which contains all the elements required by SharePoint. Just recently I have noticed that using that template for branding is rather harmful and can lead to even more problems inst [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 29th '08 |
Extending Content Query Web Part XSLT with custom functions
Waldek Mastykarz
Earlier this month I wrote that SharePoint developers working with the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) are provided a mechanism to extend the information available in the XSLT transformations. While exploring the CQWP even further I found out that you could create custom XSLT functions as well! Can you imagine the possibilities?
It's probably a common knowledge by now, that the CQWP uses XSLT for creating the presentation layer for the queried data. The default set of the functions provided w [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 27th '08 |
SharePoint development toolkit
Waldek Mastykarz
If you've been following my Facebook updates, you probably noticed that I started working on a brand new SharePoint Web Content Management (WCM) solution. Just to prevent myself from from any dependencies whatsoever I have decided to use a brand new development environment. I've been developing for SharePoint for more than a year and a half now and I got really surprised seeing how many different tools I'm using while developing SharePoint solutions to simplify the process.
The En [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 16th '08 |
Generate Page Layouts using Imtech Fields Explorer
Waldek Mastykarz
A couple of weeks ago I have added some new functionality to the Imtech Fields Explorer: generating wrapper classes allowing you to work with Site Columns and Content Types in an intuitive way. Just when I thought that it couldn't get any better I thought of something new: how about generating Page Layouts?!
We all know the ability of SharePoint Designer to read the information from the chosen Content Type and provide a list of the available fields which can be dragged & dropped onto a [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 16th '08 |
Inconvenient provisioning of Content Query Web Part instances
Waldek Mastykarz
Some time ago I wrote about provisioning instances of Content Query Web Part (CQWP) in a structured and repeatable way. Just recently I have found out that there is one very important thing you have to be aware of, if you don't want to break the deployment process.
Back in June I provided you with a way to imitate the context required to provision a CQWP. Such context would consist of the minimal information required by the Content Query Web Part - the reference to the current site. In most [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 15th '08 |
SharePoint blogs RSS feeds aggregation back on-line
Waldek Mastykarz
It took me a bit to make it up and running correctly, but here it is: the aggregation of SharePoint blogs RSS is available again!
Right after I published the first aggregation I got notified that there was an aggregation of SharePoint MVPs' blogs already available. While I'm trying to follow the SharePoint scene, I have definitely missed that one. In case you didn't know it either, check out the post by Lawrence Liu at Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog: New aggregated feeds for Share [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 9th '08 |
Best SharePoint blogs RSS feeds aggregation
Waldek Mastykarz
The day that Joel Oleson has published his top 100 SharePoint blogs list, I thought that it would be great to have an aggregated RSS feed of the best SharePoint blogs on the Internet. And while it's nearly 4 months since Joel published his list, I haven't had a chance to make it work until today: I present to you the aggregated feed of the best SharePoint blogs on the Internet.
Instead of using a custom solution I have decided to use the Yahoo Pipes to do the job. Using an example aggr [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 7th '08 |
Innovation Matters is now member of 9rules
Waldek Mastykarz
The list of the new sites accepted by 9rules Network has just been published. I'm really proud to share with you that my blog has been accepted to become a member of the 9rules Network!
9rules has been there since 2003 presenting some of the greatest content on the Web. Having my blog accepted as a part of the same network which shares the content of some great bloggers like Roger Johansson, Jonathan Snook and Robert Nyman.
While there are a lot of very good blogs in the SharePoint communit [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 3rd '08 |
Extending Content Query Web Part with custom data
Waldek Mastykarz
Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you were working with the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) and you wished it could provide you with some more information? While many SharePoint developers create they custom aggregation solutions you should know better than that. Content Query Web Part can provide you with almost any kind of information that you need and all that with only a few lines of code!
The Content Query Web Part provided with MOSS 2007 is probably the best performing content [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 2nd '08 |
Optimize Publishing Pages for search engines using the Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs Feature
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I have made a Live Writer plugin which helps you create search engines optimized names for your blog posts (slugs). While I was working on a new MOSS 2007 Web Content Management (WCM) solution I have noticed that the standard page names generated by SharePoint while creating Publishing Pages can be optimized for better findability.
How MOSS 2007 deals with slugs
While creating a new Publishing Page the first thing you do is to enter the title. Based on your input SharePoint automaticall [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 2nd '08 |
SharePoint 2007 Web Services are missing DISCO and WSDL files
Waldek Mastykarz
While working on new functionality for Imtech Fields Explorer I have noticed that there are Web Services in SharePoint 2007 which are missing the DISCO and the WSDL files. If you ever tried to attach a web reference to such Web Service you know that it will fail. While you might think that it's impossible, I have found a way of creating a WSDL file for an existing Web Service.
One of the SharePoint 2007 Web Services which is missing the WSDL file is the SharePointPublishingToolboxService wh [read].
Posted: Fri, Aug 29th '08 |
Including Welcome Pages in the search scope in SharePoint Web Content Management solutions
Waldek Mastykarz
When using SharePoint search in a Web Content Management (WCM) solution you are very likely to create your scope which will include Publishing Pages only. As other pages like Application Pages and Lists' Forms are not accessible by anonymous visitors you don't want them to appear in the search results on the public site. While creating what I call a 'public scope' is rather straight-forward there is one thing you have to keep in mind to make it work as expected.
To create a s [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 27th '08 |
How to reset the Windows Live Writer language to English
Waldek Mastykarz
Via Myo Kyaw Htun.com: after installing the Windows Live Writer for the first time I thought that I missed some options when the interface turned to be in Dutch. While working on a Live Writer plugin, I have stumbled upon an interesting article about the interface language in Windows Live Writer. Myo Kyaw Htun describes the problem and provides an easy step-by-step solution on how to change the Live Writer interface language to English. Read: How to reset regional language to English in Windows [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 26th '08 |
Generate search engine optimized slugs for your blog posts (Live Writer Plugin)
Waldek Mastykarz
Search engine optimized titles, headers and URL's are very important if you want your articles to score high in the natural search results. While you definitely need to take your time while crafting the first two, let the Imtech SEO Slugs Live Writer Plugin help with the slugs.
Imtech SEO Slugs Live Writer Plugin creates an optimized slug for your blog post of any phrase chosen by you. In most cases you will use the post title to generate a slug but you can pick any other phrase as well.
[read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 26th '08 |
Imtech Fields Explorer v1.4.1.0 (Inconvenient Site Columns update)
Waldek Mastykarz
While testing the newest feature of Imtech Fields Explorer - generated Content Types and Site Columns wrapper classes I have discovered that there were some issues while using these classes for referring to Site Columns. To avoid problems while referring to Site Columns from custom code I have decided to use SPField.Id instead of SPField.InternalName. While generating wrapper classes Imtech Fields Explorer v1.4.1.0 will now use the InternalName for the property name and Id for the value:
To im [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 26th '08 |
Inconvenient Site Columns
Waldek Mastykarz
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 introduces the concept of Site Columns: reusable fields which can be used for creating content definition across the whole Site Collection. While this concept allows you to manage the way content is stored, you have to be really careful when working with Site Columns in custom development.
Yesterday I have introduced a new version of Imtech Fields Explorer which simplifies working with Content Types and Site Columns in custom code by generating wrapper classe [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 26th '08 |
Work with SharePoint Content Types and Site Columns using intellisense - Imtech Fields Explorer v1.4.0.0
Waldek Mastykarz
Windows SharePoint Services v3 has introduced the concept of Content Types and Site Columns which allows you to separate the definition of the content from the content itself. Furthermore it is possible to reuse these definitions across the whole Site Collection. In many situations you will need either the Internal Name or the ID of the Content Type/Column to obtain its reference. Manually typing these values in your code is prone to type errors which you can see no earlier than during the runti [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 25th '08 |
Search Engine Optimization of MOSS 2007 WCM sites
Waldek Mastykarz
Andrew Connell has pointed today to a new white paper at MSDN Office Developer Center called How to Optimize SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management Sites for Search Engines. From what the title says I was expecting the paper to provide SharePoint specialists with SharePoint specific knowledge and solutions to various Search Engine Optimization (SEO) challenges. Unfortunately, the white paper published at MSDN has disappointed me.
SEO is common knowledge - search results ranking isn' [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 23rd '08 |
Google's custom 404 widget
Waldek Mastykarz
I've just found out that Google has released a custom 404 widget. The idea is to improve the experience of 404 pages and instead of telling the user that he or she is lost, provide him with something he could really use.
Google's custom 404 widget resembles other Google technology like search. All you need to do to integrate it in your website is to copy & paste an HTML snippet. Check out the Google custom 404 widget at Google Webmaster Tools.
Unfortunately it's impossible to [read].
Posted: Fri, Aug 22nd '08 |
Measuring the length of a string in pixels using JavaScript
Waldek Mastykarz
There are many situations while developing websites when you need to know how long a text string is: not how many characters it has but how long it is in pixels. While this isn't of much importance for regular webdesign it might get useful in certain scenario's like for example when designing Vista Sidebar gadgets.
To provide the experience as originally designed, you want to precisely position all elements within the gadget. While it isn't really difficult in case of static text, [read].
Posted: Fri, Aug 22nd '08 |
Track the ranking of your SharePoint blog from the Sidebar
Waldek Mastykarz
Back in May this year Joel Oleson has put together a list of the top 100 SharePoint blogs. That top 100 is ordered by the Technorati Rating (Rank) of each blog participating. Joel is planning to do an update soon, so come on and improve the ranking of your blog so you can make it to the top 100 too.
Technorati Blog Info Vista Sidebar Gadget v1.0.0.0
Sure you can surf to the http://www.technorati.com/blogs/yourblog each time you want to check the ranking of your blog. But don't you think it [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 21st '08 |
Regular Expressions in JavaScript don't support the single-line mode
Waldek Mastykarz
Today, while working on a gadget involving some client-side development I have discovered that JavaScript doesn't support the single-line mode for Regular Expressions (Regex). Now why is that bad?
What is the Regular Expression Single-line mode?
As you know Regular Expressions work with patters. Using various metacharacters you can match pieces of a text string. One of such characters is a "." (dot) which by default matches any character except newline characters ( on *nix and [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 21st '08 |
Regular Expressions save the day
Waldek Mastykarz
Regular Expressions (Regex) is a very powerful technology which allows you to process strings using patterns. It gives you the possibility of processing text in a relatively easy and manageable way. Depending on what you need to do, creating a single Regular Expression might save you some pretty complex programming.
Because of its power the Regular Expressions have been implemented in probably every programming language used nowadays (including for the brevity PHP and JavaScript as well). Lookin [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 21st '08 |
The future of blogging
Waldek Mastykarz
In the last couple of weeks I have notice that people on the Internet started talking about the trend-to-come for blogging: video blogging. The idea isn't that new and there are plenty of people doing it already: they publish videos alongside the textual content. What's new about the future concept of blogging is that it's supposed to totally replace blogging as we know it now: no more writing and reading, recording and watching instead. I've been following some blogs using v [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 21st '08 |
Waldek Mastykarz @ SharePoint.Alltop.com
Waldek Mastykarz
Today I have received an e-mail from the guys at Alltop that my blog has been chosen to make part of the SharePoint.Alltop.com page. It's always great to hear that people appreciate your efforts. Considering other blogs available at that page, it's even better compliment! [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 20th '08 |
WordPress Stats Vista Sidebar Gadget v1.0.0.0
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I have published a Vista Sidebar Gadget which allows you to track the number of downloads for different CodePlex projects' releases. As the gadget works as a dashboard it simply saves you some time which you would otherwise spend to visit the pages of all the different releases you want to track. I have to admit: I really like the way it works.
But I have noticed that there is another page I visit daily: the visitors statistics of this blog. There are a couple of reasons why I' [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 19th '08 |
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Badge
Waldek Mastykarz
Proud of being a MOSS 2007 developer? If so, then this is something for you: the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Badge! Show to the world that you are a MOSS 2007 developer and that you belong to the one of the greatest communities out there!
It would definitely be great to make something useful of the badge. Post your ideas on where it should point to when clicked. The best idea will be added as the link of the MOSS 2007 Developer badge.
The MOSS 2007 Developer Badge is a Vist [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 17th '08 |
CodePlex Downloads tracking Vista sidebar gadget
Waldek Mastykarz
Since I started blogging nearly a year ago I have made quite a few tools I share with the community using CodePlex. Because all these tools are rather small me and my colleagues at Imtech ICT Velocity have decided to setup one project where we would publish tools that simplify developers' work. During that year I have made quite some tools I have uploaded to CodePlex.
Just as every other author, I've been curious about the successfulness of my products. Unfortunately as only 10% of the [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 17th '08 |
Sample code acceptance checklist for IT organizations
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, there has been the Sample code acceptance checklist for IT organizations published at Microsoft TechNet. This checklist is meant to help IT organizations evaluate custom SharePoint solutions before they are deployed in the production environments.
Because many SharePoint solutions are really complex, such checklist is definitely something you must have implemented in your organizations if you have an IT department and want to keep track of what has to be supported. I'm a developer [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 16th '08 |
Inconvenient WSSv3 RSS Feeds
Waldek Mastykarz
Windows SharePoint Services v3 ships with a possibility to create RSS Feeds for every List. This feature is quite powerful as it allows you to create multiple RSS Feeds for one List based on Views. If you have worked with Lists at least a bit, you know that you can quite easily create a custom View using the standard SharePoint interface. Without any problems you will be able to define the filter and apply the sorting criteria.
When using the SharePoint RSS Feeds with Document Libraries (like fo [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 13th '08 |
Going on vacation
Waldek Mastykarz
Finally, the last day at work is behind me. After having delivered the OneClickDeployment of a SharePoint solution for one of our customers and having a great meeting about accessibility in SharePoint this work day is finished to me. I'm officially going on vacation.
I really like the idea of seeing my family again. Quite a lot of things have changed since the last time we've spoken so it will be long evenings.
For the next three weeks I will have limited access to my blog and e-mail, [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 30th '08 |
SharePoint developer bookmarklets updated
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I've been working quite intensively with the SharePoint developer bookmarklets. SharePoint is really infamous of way too many clicks required to accomplish various things. Having shortcuts to the most commonly used functionality within one click saves really a lot of time.
The first set of SharePoint bookmarklets I have published a couple of weeks ago, provided one-click-access to a few places only. Sure it was useful but eventually you would end up clicking around to get to the Si [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 29th '08 |
Manage Checked Out Publishing Pages (OCDCheckedOutPages StsAdm command)
Waldek Mastykarz
Structured and repeatable deployment of SharePoint solutions is very important for preserving scalability and maintainability of the solution. Furthermore it allows you to keep track of the deployed components what is very important if you want to provide your customers with support for your solution.
Here at Imtech ICT Velocity we have taken that concept even further and have developed a tool (Imtech SharePoint One Click Deployment Studio - OCD) which allows us to deploy the configuration in a [read].
Posted: Sun, Jul 27th '08 |
Inconvenient SPWeb.GetFile(string)
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I've been working on a piece of code which would obtain an instance of SPFile using either a GUID or the server relative URL. You don't have to search long to find out that the SPWeb provides a method to do that: GetFile(String). According to the WSS v3 SDK it should return the file object located at the specific URL.
While checking if it was working as I was expecting it to, I have found out that it actually doesn't. The GetFile method returned an instance of SPFile but [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 26th '08 |
Consistent development of Master Pages, Page Layouts and User Controls in MOSS 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
Page Layouts form the presentation layer in Publishing Sites of MOSS 2007. In fact they are very close to the Web Forms as we know them from ASP.NET except that Page Layouts in SharePoint don't contain any content.
One of the things that Page Layouts and ASP.NET Web Forms have in common is using custom User Controls and Web Controls. This concept provides developers with high extensibility, code reusability, and allows them to encapsulate custom functionality instead of using in-line coding [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 18th '08 |
How to do it: RSS aggregation (merging multiple XML files using XSLT)
Waldek Mastykarz
In my previous article I have presented you a little test case I have made for testing the performance of various data merging approaches. Using an XSLT based method turned out to be the best performing way of merging multiple XML files.
Combining multiple XML files into one is not difficult, but some parts of the process might nog be obvious at the first glance. Below you will find a step-by-step guide of creating your own XML data merging solution.
Let's start with an empty XSLT file:
T [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 18th '08 |
Performance of various data merging methods
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I got the task to develop a Web Part which would aggregate the contents of a couple of RSS Feeds, sort them descending on the publishing date and display the top n of them. Thinking about how the whole thing could be done, I have found out that there are multiple methods to get things done. The Web Part was supposed to work on an Internet site so I decided to have a closer look at the performance of the various methods.
RSS Feeds are just an example. You could apply all the presented me [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 17th '08 |
Internet Explorer 8 will support AJAX page navigation
Waldek Mastykarz
The IE team has recently announced that they have made a few AJAX improvements in the newest version of Internet Explorer. One of such improvements is support for updating the navigation log through AJAX. So when your application uses intensively AJAX to enhance the User Experience, you can still leverage the native browser navigation mechanism by updating the navigation log information.
It's definitely great improvement of usability and accessibility. What concerns me is the fact, that it [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 15th '08 |
Imtech Extended ContentQueryWebPart (with paging) source code available
Waldek Mastykarz
Some time ago I have created a concept of the ContentQueryWebPart extended with paging support, called Imtech Extended ContentQueryWebPart. Since its release, the Imtech ExCQWP has been downloaded more than 200 times and some of you have sent me some questions regarding how it all works.
One of the frequently asked questions was about sharing the source code of the web part. Because I'm curious of what other improvements could've been done, I have decided to post the source code and sh [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 14th '08 |
Preselecting Page Layout in the Create Page screen
Waldek Mastykarz
Did you know that you can preselect a Page Layout in the Create Page screen? To preselect a layout simply add LayoutName=YourLayout.aspx to the query string parameters:
This becomes extremely useful when you want to create for example a shortcut in the Site Actions menu so that the content editors can quickly add press releases from any location on the Site Collection.
Using the LayoutName parameter preselects the chosen Page Layout what simplifies the process of creating new Publishing Pages: [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 14th '08 |
MOSS 2007 is XHTML compliant out-of-the-box
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while gathering resources for a presentation on MOSS 2007 WCM I’ll be giving next week for a Dutch SharePoint community, I have stumbled upon something interesting. Did you know that MOSS 2007 is XHTML compliant out-of-the-box? Well, neither did I. But it is so, according to CMS Matrix.
CMS Matrix is a service which provides comparison of various Content Management Systems. They have a quite impressive collection to be honest, but what I have doubts about is the quality of each r [read].
Posted: Sun, Jul 13th '08 |
SharePoint developers don’t know what accessibility is
Waldek Mastykarz
Since a couple of months I’ve been following the SharePoint Forums @ MSDN. Most of the time I’m just checking whether there are some new questions on Web Content Management (WCM) in MOSS I could answer. Each day there are posted around 100 new questions, so you could say that SharePoint is a quite popular product and the community is really busy with it.
One of the areas on the SharePoint Forums is Accessibility where people working with SharePoint can ask their questions regarding v [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 11th '08 |
Performance of content aggregation queries on multiple lists revisited
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I have done some research on performance of various approaches to querying information from multiple lists. While reading Andrew Connell’s book on WCM development I have discovered that I have missed one important approach. It turns out that it’s probably the best bet in the most Web Content Management (WCM) solutions being often under heavy load. Curious about the results I have added it to my test project.
It turned out that in spite of providing the context information yo [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 10th '08 |
Getting quickly to the VirtualDirectories folder in Explorer View
Waldek Mastykarz
I’m a big fan of using the Explorer View: it provides you much more overview of the file system and allows you to access other directories with a single click even if they are located in a different branch on the file system.
The VirtualDirectories folder (C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories) is a location you access very often during SharePoint development to access the root directory of your Web Application and do some file operations like for example editing the web.config file. S [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 9th '08 |
Getting quickly to the VirtualDirectories folder in Explorer View
Waldek Mastykarz
I’m a big fan of using the Explorer View: it provides you much more overview of the file system and allows you to access other directories with a single click even if they are located in a different branch on the file system.
The VirtualDirectories folder (C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories) is a location you access very often during SharePoint development to access the root directory of your Web Application and do some file operations like for example editing the web.config file. S [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 9th '08 |
Always consider the source when doing research
Waldek Mastykarz
Wow, Andrew Connell has just posted quite a comment on how CMS Watch has been reviewing SharePoint for the last couple of months. I’ve been following CMS Watch for a few months now and I have to agree with Andrew: there hasn’t been a single positive word about SharePoint published by CMS Watch. For customers, who rely on their opinion and report, it might seem that SharePoint is nothing but an experimental CMS.
I have worked with SharePoint WCM for almost two years now and I have to [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 8th '08 |
Browsing .wsp files using Windows Explorer
Waldek Mastykarz
How many times did you actually have to rename the .wsp file to .cab in order to browse its contents? SharePoint 2007 allows you to use any extension for the solution files, so you could build all your solutions with the .cab extension to support quick browsing. This has however two downsides.
First of all you’ll be breaking the conventions. The WSS team has decided to use the .wsp extension for the SharePoint 2007 solutions. They have probably done it for a good reason. Personally I think [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 8th '08 |
Don’t hide or disable menu items
Waldek Mastykarz
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 introduces several new possibilities of controlling how the User Interface (UI) is presented to the users. While the mechanism has definitely been improved since the previous versions, there are a few things which doesn’t make working with SharePoint easier to the end users.
I’ve just read a short article by Joel Spolsky on how the menu items should be handled: whether they should be disabled or hidden if not available or always visible [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 8th '08 |
SharePoint 12 directory in the places bar
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I have noticed that quite often I need to navigate to the 12 folder using the Open/Save file dialog. While I have already created a shortcut to 12 directory on the taskbar, which is sufficient in many cases and provides me quick access to all SharePoint system files, I was still left with the Open/Save file dialog. To get the quick access to the SharePoint system files in the Open/Save file dialog, I have decided to customize the Places bar and replace one of the locations with the 12 d [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 8th '08 |
SharePoint developer bookmarklets
Waldek Mastykarz
Tired of navigating through the SharePoint jungle just to get to Site Settings, Style Library or the Master Page and Page Layouts Gallery? Remember this moment, because it’s the last time you’ve done it. Proudly introducing: the SharePoint developer bookmarklets.
Bookmarklets are tiny pieces of JavaScript residing in your favorites. While bookmarklets are heavily used by various social sites, I really haven’t seen anyone using them for any developer purpose.
While working on va [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 4th '08 |
Back on-line
Waldek Mastykarz
For the past few hours my blog was off-line. The guys hosting my blog had some serious problems with their RAID setup: on of the disk died. At 2am GMT they have installed new drives and since then were busy restoring the accounts.
On one hand I’ve been a bit nervous seeing my blog missing the content from the last week. On the other hand, that’s one of these moment when making daily backups pays back. Nothing is missing and I’m back on-line with some fresh content. [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 4th '08 |
Adding new locations to the Look In dialog
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I’ve been asked by one of our customer whether it would be possible to add a new location to the Look In dialog. In their SharePoint solution they’re using a custom Image Library for storing images which are being used across the whole Site Collection. Adding a shortcut to their custom library would definitely simplify their editors work and would improve the editing experience.
Below you can see how the Look In dialog looks like as shipped with SharePoint 2007.
Most editor [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 4th '08 |
Performance of content aggregation queries on multiple lists
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I got the task of creating a custom content aggregation Web Part which would roll up content from two lists. As this can be done in many different ways, I’ve decided to do a little research on which of these methods would perform the best.
The case
As I’ve already mentioned, the task was to aggregate some content from two lists (in the future it might be even more). One of the lists would contain general information while the other, stored within a topic site (child SPWeb), [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 4th '08 |
SharePoint developer bookmarklets
Waldek Mastykarz
Tired of navigating through the SharePoint jungle just to get to Site Settings, Style Library or the Master Page and Page Layouts Gallery? Remember this moment, because it’s the last time you’ve done it. Proudly introducing: the SharePoint developer bookmarklets.
Bookmarklets are tiny pieces of JavaScript residing in your favorites. While bookmarklets are heavily used by various social sites, I really haven’t seen anyone using them for any developer purpose.
While working on va [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 3rd '08 |
Best Practices for developing accessible web sites in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
For the last couple of months I’ve been working with accessibility Web Content Management (WCM) in MOSS 2007. During that time I have gathered some do’s and don’ts for working with accessible WCM solutions.
During the last months I have published some of these tips & tricks on my blog. Still I’ve been thinking on publishing my findings bundled in one document. Recently it became possible thanks to Dennis Mulder (MSFT NL), Anthony Labriola (MSFT) and the crew behind Te [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 2nd '08 |
Accessible 404 (PageNotFound) in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Waldek Mastykarz
Every time you request a web page that doesn’t exist, the web server provides you with a 404 (the web server response code for an non existing URL) page - an information page telling you that you’ve got it wrong. While some of your visitors, might be able to get to the information they are looking for either by correcting the URL or finding an alternative way to access the resource, it is a good practice to provide an information page which will help the average visitors to continue [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 2nd '08 |
Adobe Flash searchable!
Waldek Mastykarz
Adobe has just announced that Flash will be searchable! This is definitely a great news for a few reasons.
First of all, the obvious one, we all be able to search the content included in Flash objects. This definitely become a relief for many designers and companies who will no longer have to make a choice between having a web site with a great experience and having its content indexed by search engines.
Another consequence of this fact is improving accessibility. Visually impaired visitors will [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 1st '08 |
Render parent control to string snippet
Waldek Mastykarz
While working with Control Adapters in either ASP.NET or SharePoint 2007 you will quite often want to intercept the output of the parent control and modify it before rendering. As retrieving the output is the same for each and every control I have created the following code snippet:
Render parent control to string
Waldek Mastykarz | http://blog.mastykarz.nl
render
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter htw =
new System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter(new S [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 24th '08 |
Semantic URL’s in MOSS 2007 (Imtech SharePoint Semantic URL’s free Feature)
Waldek Mastykarz
Semantic URL’s are one of the things I always wanted to have in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Since the first time I have opened an Internet facing site made in SharePoint 2007 I knew it would be great if the Pages part of the URL could be removed as well as the .aspx extension.
I believe that everyone working on Web Content Management (WCM) solutions would agree, that semantic URL’s are very important in today’s Web. First of all they are much more user friendly. Vi [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 23rd '08 |
Update: Imtech Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Dynamic Help v1.0.1
Waldek Mastykarz
During the last week I have added some more resources to the Imtech WSS 3.0 Dynamic Help. Below you can find the list of the changes in the v1.0.1.
As MOSS 2007 WCM is the area I’m mostly busy with, you shouldn’t be surprised seeing most updates around that topic. If you like the idea of using context help inside Visual Studio and have some suggestions about the must-have resources - let me know. In the meanwhile:
Download: Imtech Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Dynamic Hel [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 18th '08 |
Disposing (every little bit of) SharePoint objects
Waldek Mastykarz
Chris O’Brien has recently posted an article about proper disposal of SharePoint objects. While you might think that it’s nothing else than yet another disposables article, Chris presents some extra insights on various pitfalls which you are likely to face while developing for SharePoint 2007.
Personally, I’m always trying to keep disposable objects within one method, so I can clean them up when not needed anymore. But then again, never say never: one day you might find yoursel [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 16th '08 |
Tag Clouds considered harmful
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while solving a presentation issue of a tag cloud we have created for one of our customers, I have stumbled upon an article on Tag Clouds by Mark Norman Francis. While I’ve been following the trends quite blindly, I have to admit, I haven’t really though on the accessibility of Tag Clouds - one of the youngest and most popular navigation forms.
So what’s the whole fuzz about? The whole idea of a tag cloud is to make it visually clear which words or phrases are the mos [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 16th '08 |
Imtech SharePoint GoCodes (Free SharePoint Feature)
Waldek Mastykarz
Imtech SharePoint GoCodes is a SharePoint Feature which allows you to manage a list of accessible URL’s in SharePoint 2007. Instead of using for example http://SharePoint/MyDivision/SubSites/Documents/VeryImportant.docx you can use http://SharePoint/go/ImportantDoc.
The Feature allows you to use semantic URL’s. It becomes really useful if you either send URL’s to other people or want to make particular pieces of your SharePoint Site easily accessible.
The Imtech SharePoint GoCo [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 15th '08 |
Help Resources for SharePoint developers (Imtech Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Visual Studio 2008 Dynamic Help v1.0.0)
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I’ve been looking at various extensibility possibilities of Visual Studio 2008. After having successfully done a proof of concept I have thought, that ideally, I would never want to have to leave my development IDE while working on a SharePoint solution. Preferably I would like to have all the tools I need and all the shortcuts inside Visual Studio and run them with one single click. Wouldn’t the life be great?
Just today I have stumbled upon a great feature inside Visual St [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 10th '08 |
Imtech XML Sitemap (Free SharePoint Feature)
Waldek Mastykarz
XML sitemaps, as defined by Sitemaps.org, are a standard way to inform search engines about the content of your web site. While in many cases your site will be automatically crawled for new content, there may exist pages without any direct link. Using an XML sitemap is a way to let the search engine know about its existence.
XML sitemaps have another important role. They define how often the contents of the pages gets updated and how important a particular page is comparing to other pages on the [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 9th '08 |
Optimizing performance of the Imtech SharePoint Enhancement Toolkit
Waldek Mastykarz
I have spent the last days on optimizing performance of the Imtech SharePoint Enhancement Toolkit: a toolkit that I have built in order to achieve standards compliancy, accessibility and slightly better performance of Web Content Management (WCM) solutions built in SharePoint 2007.
While we have worked with the toolkit quite intensively for the past few months, I haven’t really had a chance to actually measure what’s the penalty of using it. The Enhancement Toolkit is meant to be use [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 5th '08 |
Minify your JavaScript - and save the KB’s for later (Imtech JavaScript Minificator - Free Tool)
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I have spent quite some time measuring and tuning the performance of the Imtech SharePoint Enhancement Toolkit: a toolkit that I have built in order to achieve standards compliancy, accessibility and slightly more performance of SharePoint Web Content Management (WCM) solutions.
During my tests I have stumbled upon an article of Robert Nyman about YSlow - a performance measurement Firefox add-in: Improve Your Web Site Performance - Tips & Tricks To Get A Good YSlow Rating. Because t [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 5th '08 |
Structured and repeatable deployment of Content Query Web Part instances
Waldek Mastykarz
Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is probably the best solution for data aggregation within SharePoint 2007 solutions. The limited functionality exposed through the standard UI is compensated by caching and high performance of the CQWP. Yet there is one thing that can keep you off using the CQWP in environments which require you to deploy your solutions including the configuration in a fully structured and repeatable manner.
The Content Query Web Part produces the query results as XML and uses XSL f [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 4th '08 |
Waldek Mastykarz is now 70-631 certified
Waldek Mastykarz
Today I’ve passed the 70-631 exam: Configuring Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Together with my colleagues: Erik Schoenmakers and John Bruin I have scored 1000 points. By passing this exam I have completed the SharePoint 3.0/MOSS 2007 certification as defined by Microsoft.
I’ve found the 70-631 exam the most abstract to learn. I’m a developer not an admin. Looking at the questions though, there are quite many questions about various server configuration-related stuff [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 4th '08 |
Structured and repeatable deployment of Lookup fields
Waldek Mastykarz
Lookup Fields as we know them
SharePoint 2007 ships with various Field Types among which the Lookup fields. Lookup fields allow you basically to choose a value from a drop-down list which is based on a list (SPList) existing within the same Site. By using the Lookup fields you leverage the concept of dynamic content which allows the editors to manage the list of possible values without the need to modify the existing Site Columns definitions or any other part of the solution.
While this concept, [read].
Posted: Wed, May 28th '08 |
Optimizing web site performance
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently Robert Nyman, has written a great article about optimizing web site performance using YSlow: an add-on for Firebug for Firefox. In his article Robert presents not only the add-on itself, but he also gives some tips on how to tune various settings to achieve better performance.
Although the article doesn’t target the Microsoft technology directly, it definitely gives an idea of what the common pitfalls are and how they can be avoided. I’m really curious to see how these tips [read].
Posted: Mon, May 26th '08 |
Quickly adding assemblies references using the Object Browser
Waldek Mastykarz
I create very often little projects to try things out: either based on the Console Application or the Class Library template. As it’s SharePoint development we’re speaking of the first thing you need to do is to add references to the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly. Depending on what you’re doing you might need to add the references to System.Web and Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing as well or maybe even more. You can do it just the regular way by clicking with right button on the [read].
Posted: Wed, May 14th '08 |
Slightly more accessible Web Parts
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while researching the RSS Feed mechanism of the Content Query Web Part I have stumbled upon the SuppressWebPartChrome Property. As this Property sounds very promising but is not very well documented in the current WSS SDK I have decided to have a further look at it.
What is SuppressWebPartChrome and why does the Content Query Web Part need it?
The Content Query Web Part gives you the possibility to produce an RSS feed of the items returned by the query. It uses the /_layouts/Feed.aspx [read].
Posted: Wed, May 14th '08 |
SharePoint wallpapers
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint wallpapers - definitely a must-have for every SharePoint developer out there. [read].
Posted: Wed, May 14th '08 |
SharePoint licensing
Waldek Mastykarz
Matt Groves has just posted detailed information on costs of various SharePoint licenses. Although a bit difficult to read and to compare due to lack of formatting, it is definitely a very useful piece of information. [read].
Posted: Mon, May 12th '08 |
Imtech Fields Explorer v1.3.0.0: Get to work with your Content Types and Site Columns
Waldek Mastykarz
It’s not that long ago since I released the previous version of the Imtech Fields Explorer. In that release I have introduced the possibility of exporting the Site Columns and Content Type definitions to XML using the GUI.
After I got some feedback about the tool and some other ideas I have decided to work them out taking the available functionality even step further. Introducing the Imtech Fields Explorer v1.3.0.0.
The most important changes comparing to the previous versions are:
The wor [read].
Posted: Sun, May 11th '08 |
Inconvenient Content Editor Web Part
Waldek Mastykarz
The Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) shipped with SharePoint 2007 is just one of these ordinary Web Parts: they don’t introduce any extraordinary functionality, yet we all use them in our solutions for some reason. Because this Web Part is all about displaying the Rich Text you have entered, you might think, that it is almost impossible to mess that up. Unfortunately…
The problem about using the Content Editor Web Part is that it makes absolute URL of all the relative ones you have ent [read].
Posted: Sat, May 10th '08 |
Preventing provisioning duplicate Web Parts instances on Feature reactivation
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently I wrote about various approaches to provisioning Web Part instances in a structured and repeatable way. One of the approaches I have mentioned was using the AllUsersWebPart element within Feature manifest. While being manageable and flexible this approach has one big downside: it causes provisioning duplicate instances after the Feature has been reactivated (either by Activate-Deactivate-Activate or Activate using the -force parameter). In this article I present some possible approaches [read].
Posted: Thu, May 8th '08 |
Accessibility Kit in MOSS - Is it really accessible?
Waldek Mastykarz
Mark Harrison has just posted a little notice about the fact that the United Nations office is using the Accessibility Kit with MOSS. Wondering about the result I took a look at the United Nations site.
Looking at it I have stumbled upon poor HTML and multilevel nested tables to start with. Disabling images takes away the language menu. Disabling CSS reveals the true nature of the tables for layout: the site becomes difficult to read. And the worse of it all: disabling JavaScript causes the drop [read].
Posted: Thu, May 8th '08 |
Inconvenient PublishingStartDate and PublishingEndDate
Waldek Mastykarz
Recently, while working on a custom content aggregation solution, I stumbled upon another inconvenience in SharePoint 2007 WCM. While trying to sort the query results on PublishingStartDate I got an exception that there is no such field. I found it quite odd since the Content Type of which the pages I was querying definitely had the PublishingStartDate. I have even triple checked it in the Content Type definition, in the SharePoint Web UI and using the Imtech Fields Explorer. However, while look [read].
Posted: Wed, May 7th '08 |
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