July 2005 Entries
[Heather Solomon]...
... has pulled it all together - and she's excited about it! What is it? She's riding a Camel, er, writing CAML.
Seriously, she has put together an article that is clear and concise on the subject of creating a Custom Site Definition and Custom List in a WSS Site! It walks you through, step-by-step, on how to get it done. Benefit from all of her research and read the article...
» Add a Custom List to SharePoint - a foray into CAML
via [Stefan Goßner]
Stefan has come up with a solution to avoid performance problems caused by Site Deployment API.
Read it here. »Avoid performance problems caused by Site Deployment API
This has got to be one of the most promising weapons against cancer. Scientists have finally taken nanotechnology to a level that is effective against destroying cancerous cells in mice. The molecular sized smart bomb “travels to the tumor and burrows deep inside. The outer membrane then disintegrates and releases an anti-angiogenesis drug so the blood vessels feeding the tumor collapse.”
“We're quite hopeful and optimistic that as we translate this into humans the results pan outas they have in animals,” Professor Ram Sasisekharan, of MIT's Biological Engineering Division,said in an interview.
The great thing about this, other than it could be...
Mei Ying analyses Stefan Goßner's writeup on not using undocumented API's (or 3rd party tools that use them) when working with MCMS. However, she goes into some Workarounds such as:
Creating Custom channel properties
Managing users in the rights groups
Assigning rights groups to channels, resource galleries or template galleries
Moving channels, template galleries or resource galleries
You can check out the full article at the following link:
Some Workarounds to Missing PAPI Functions
I just stumbled upon this interesting offering on Yahoo! - Konfabulator 2
» Yahoo! Widgets
Some notable widgets:
TiVo Control
A remote control Widget that uses TiVoWeb to send keys to your TiVo. Requires TiVoWeb or TiVoWeb Plus to be on your TiVo.
Includes 30 Second Skip, Sort, Now Playing, Quick Display shortcuts.
HAL9000
A novel Widget where HAL9000 periodically speaks
GeoLocation
Looks up an IP address and displays the known geographical location of that IP address
Alienware Build Tracker
Tracks the build process (phase) for a new Alienware PC.
TremorSkimmer
view in near-real time all of the recent earthquake events on this planet.
What is KONFABULATOR : 2 ?
» Here's the info
via [Scott Hanselman]
Since I was on Scott's site looking at the FormsAuthentication Timeout issue, I remembered he had a Developer and Power Users Tool List that Rocked! It just does. Makes me wanna have more hours in the day to look at the ones I haven't used.
Here they are:
Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List
We have a similar environment setup Scott describes in this following post - Development does not have SSL, UAT and Production do have SSL. We experienced similar problems with timeouts as well. I thought I would reference this for others that may come across this.
via [Scott Hanselman]
“Someone logs into an ASP.NET application successfully and does some stuff. They wait for 10.5 minutes. That means no clicking, just waiting. Then they click and get the next page successfully. Then the click on the NEXT (the second since they've been waiting) and get kicked out to the login page.”
Find the steps involved...
... Heather Solomon does it for me. She had me at the word '<style>'. Heather is a coworker and does wonders with the initial Forms I stub out in ASP.NET. She recently did a once-over on a project and I felt like I had just had an extreme makeover, Developer's Edition. We have another really good web designer, Chris Lasley, that I've had the pleasure of working with and he just blows me away with his CSS wonders. I enjoy working with both.
Anyway, this post isn't an attempt to sell Heather's work or Chris' (okay, it might be), but rather, my attempt...
Well, it was leaked by the Scobleizer and is called MSN Virtual Earth!
Looks like some cool competitive stuff available. There's a MVE Team Blog here.
Check out the Channel 9 Video Interview here.
I bookmarked my office location here
Thanks to AC and Angus Young, er Logan for the heads up. I enjoy cool stuff like this.
via [AC] and worthy of repeating here:
“Stay out of the SharePoint database… no matter what you think. You are breaking your support boundary if you jump into the database. You should NEVER access it directly... always use the API. If you can't do it via the API, you shouldn't do it. Think you found an issue with the SharePoint API/database? Bring it to Microsoft's attention via a PSS call...don't fix it yourself.“
“AC, what do you know?” Fine, don’t listen to me, but listen to Fitz… he’s in the SharePoint product group in Redmond and his words should make an impact.
»...
via [Klipspringer]
My long time friends in the band Klipspringer made me aware of this and are participating in it. Today has been marked as the West Memphis Three (WM3) World Awareness Day. I had never heard of their story, but it's worth reading.
» Free The West Memphis Three
Windows Vista? This will take some time to settle ... Vista? I'll admit I wasn't too thrilled with “Longhorn” because I'm a Oklahoma Sooners fan - but at least it was a Strong name. Vista sounds like a car from the past I would like to forget about. Oh well, Vista... Vista... Vista... here's the shpill on it...
[via MSFT Press Pass]
REDMOND, Wash., July 22, 2005 — Today Microsoft Corp. announced the official name of its next-generation Windows® client operating system, formerly code-named “Longhorn.” Video of the name announcement can be seen via the link below.
» Media Alert: Microsoft Unveils Official...
[via Stefan Goßner]
These are invaluable for the MCMS developer - bookmark them
[Online html version] [Offline CHM version]
Stefan Goßner has been working with ASP.NET 2.0 and how applicable it is toward a MCMS website. He educates us on the problems and provides solutions. He has posted findings and samples to GDN as well:
» ASP.NET 2.0 & MCMS – a first look (discusses SP2 and ASP.NET 2.0 impacts to MCMS)» ASP.NET 2.0 & MCMS – The easy way to site navigation (discusses the provider model) » ASP.NET 2.0 & MCMS – Try it out now! (why wait for SP2, just throw ASP.NET 2.0 on MCMS now!… btw, it’s not supported until SP2) » ASP.NET 2.0 & MCMS – Master Pages » ASP.NET 2.0 & MCMS – Web...
To those who subscribe to my blog:
Here's my feedburner reference...
I plan on changing the icon on the left nav soon. Until then, please use the above link.
Thanks and I appreciate you subscribing to what I have to contribute to the community...-Wayne
Compliments of AC:
“Its official.
Microsoft is melding the infrastructure underlying SharePoint Portal Server and Content Management Server (CMS) for the Office 12 wave starting next year.“
» Microsoft Today: Microsoft To Ease Integration Of SharePoint Portal, Content Management Servers
This was a predictable move from Microsoft. The two products mesh well - Collaboration and Content Management. The release date can come none too soon!
My wife and I have committed to not using credit cards for personal use. The short reason - we got turned onto Dave Ramsey. I may write an article on the subject in the near future. But, in the meantime, I really get a chuckle when I see articles like this...
» An open letter to my dearest creditor
Heather Solomon, a colleague and friend, has posted her thoughts on the Sharepoint Community. Sometimes, we need to refocus on why we do what we do. Heather's question revolves around Web Parts, Tools and Add-ins - why we don't see more useful ones available? She has a point. Within our organization, it seems like everything we do is a custom fit.
»»Have we lost the Sharepoint vision?
Hopefully, this will inspire some of us Devies to create a killer Sharepoint WebPart, Tool and/or Add-in.
Scott Mitchell has written an excellent article on Forms Authentication. It's not your typical configuration How-To blurb. It goes under-the-covers on how a user is authenticated. If you are needing to know all that there is to know about authenticating users this will put you on the fast track. It includes references to previous articles detailing the implementation and configuration aspects too.
» Forms Authentication
Other referencesUsing Forms Authentication in ASP.NETRole-Based Authorization with Forms Authentication
Apparently, Microsoft.ApplicationBlocks.ExceptionManagement has a problem when Impersonation is set to True on a Windows 2003 Server. This is happening to me with its default setting of publishing to the Windows Application Event Log. I found this out when migrating code from our development environment (DEV) to our User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment.
What a paradoxical problem to be in! I want to log suspect errors to a log and the mechanism I'm using to do it generates its own error. Give me a break! Anyways, after doing some research on the subject I found a good posting over at Brendan Tompkins...
Look's like Chester has another release of MCMS Manager (3.1).
Some additions include
1. Tools Add in Manager.2. Reports exporter.3. MCMS Health Checker.
I personally haven't tried it as I'm just jumping into the MCMS environment. However, my co-worker and mentor, Andrew Connell, had some comments that seem promising.