Aug15
Categories: Development, General, Tools
Huge thanks to Reza Alirezaei for his series of posts on creating your own time bombed VM.
After reading that I thought to myself, 'hey, I could use that technique to keep a set of different VMs across multiple projects with the same base set up'.
After a couple of hours of installing, configuring and tinkering with a base MOSS Dev VM followed by 20 minutes of setting up difference disks I now have a shiny new set of VMs running off a common base.
If you're anything like me and love working with virtual machines I strongly suggest that you look at this technique, it's saved me a good deal of disk space and lowered the time to set up a new development environment to but a few minutes.
Aug13
Categories: CAML, Development, SharePoint
So, you want to provide a look-up in a SharePoint Site Definition and you'd quite like to provide your users with some options? (i.e. items in the source list)
Firstly you're probably interested in this post from Josh Gaffy about adding a lookup column declaratively using CAML.
Next you'll be wanting to use this snippet to declare your source list and the data it will contain.
1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
2: <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
3: <ListInstance FeatureId="89CA0ED1-8E9B-48fa-8C4D-CB406544D662"
4: TemplateType="100"
5: Title="Option List"
6: OnQuickLaunch="TRUE"
7: Description="Choices"
8: Url="Options" >
9: <Data>
10: <Rows>
11: <Row>
12: <Field Name="Title">Foo</Field>
13: </Row>
14: <Row>
15: <Field Name="Title">Bar</Field>
16: </Row>
17: <Row>
18: <Field Name="Title">Fred</Field>
19: </Row>
20: <Row>
21: <Field Name="Title">Mildred</Field>
22: </Row>
23: <Row>
24: <Field Name="Title">Karl</Field>
25: </Row>
26: <Row>
27: <Field Name="Title">Lenny</Field>
28: </Row>
29: </Rows>
30: </Data>
31: </ListInstance>
32: </Elements>
Hope that someone finds this useful.
Aug12
Categories: ToolsAlright, I've just had to edit an existing wsp :o|
I won't go into the why and wherefores, suffice to say that I decided that the easiest way to achieve my end was to extract the contents, edit the necessary XML file and repack the cab.
Now I didn't feel like writing a ddf and using MAKECAB.EXE for this quick hack, so I had a quick Google Live Search ;o) and found CabPack 1.4 sure it was last written in 1999 but it works, it's free and the UI is dead easy to use.
That is the total extent of the UI, there is easy to follow documentation provided too.
Jul31
Categories: Best Practice, SharePoint
Firstly thanks to everyone who came along, it was great to meet so many people either using SharePoint out there in the "Real World"™ and others who were just keen to learn more.
Further thanks to:
And as promised here are the slide decks and a link to the code that I used on the tour.
Get on out there and get SharePointing :o)
Jul15
Categories: Deployment, Development, General, SharePoint, Tools, Visual Studio, VSeWSS
So Matt Smith of the Christchurch SharePoint User Group has organised a national tour for the various SPUGs that are active here in New Zealand.
I'll be talking in Auckland, Tauranga and Christchurch over the space of a week. The fine people in Tauranga are either doubly blessed or cursed as I'll be talking to both the SPUG and DNUG there.
The low down on the SPUG presentation:
Collaborative construction of custom SharePoint artifacts
See how business users, business analysts, developers and IT Pros can all come together to create new SharePoint artifacts for your business. In this session Gavin Barron will show how users from differing disciplines can all work together. Ensuring that an emerging business need is addressed quickly while following a number of SharePoint best practices. During this session Gavin will also discuss the development lifecycle as it exists in this context.
Presented by: Gavin Barron, Intergen Wellington
Intended Audience:
- Business Users
- Business Analysts
- Developers
- IT Professionals
The tour details:
Auckland: Wednesday, 23 July
Time: Drinks + Snacks from 5:15PM, Talk from 5:30PM to 6:30PM
Location: Level 7 Fronde House, 131 Queen Street
Tauranga: Thursday, 24 July
Time: Drinks + Snacks from 5:30PM, Talk from 6:00PM to 7:00PM
Location: EnvisionIT, Level 5 Westpac Building, 2 Devonport Road, Tauranga
Christchurch: Monday, 28 July
Time: Drinks + Snacks from 5:30PM, Talk from 6:00PM to 7:00PM
Location: Canterbury Innovation Incubator (CII), 200 Armagh Street (opposite Centennial Leisure Centre)
I'll post more on the Tauranga DNUG session later.
Jul14
Categories: Development, General, Intergen
I have been memed.
How old were you when you started programming?
10
How did you get started in programming?
I was a fresh faced young thing of 9 when my sister and I received a Commodore64 for Christmas. Incredibly after a few months I got tired of the assortment of games that we had. As luck would have it the amazing machine came bundled with the Commodore 64 MicroComputer User Manual which included more than the average User Manual will these days. That book taught me how to make my C64 do things! Soon I was making the most awful noises and random series of images flashing across the screen. It was possibly the best Christmas present ever.
What was your first language?
C64 BASIC
What was the first real program you wrote?
I'd have to say my synthesiser would be it, I had worked out how to program the SID chip built into the C64 and wired up some code to read what key was being pressed and then played a corresponding note.
What languages have you used since you started programming?
Visual Basic, Classic ASP, SQL, PL/SQL, JavaScript, C#, Java including J2EE, HUGS, PROLOG, Modula2, C, and pile of frameworks that have their own languages or XML vocabularies.
What was your first professional programming gig?
Writing VBA to connect an Access based contact database to some Excel documents, saving the office lady at least 20 minutes every time the client got a new work request, not to mention reducing data errors due to the removal of the Alt+Tab integration layer.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Absolutely, I probably would have pursued it as a career option sooner too!
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Don't look for the 'perfect answer' to a given question. Look for the answer that best suits the needs of the client because at the end of the day our job is ultimately about how well can we make life better for them.
What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?
For me the the best thing about this job is the people, it's one of the reasons I love working at Intergen. The people make it a place that I want to be. Sure the challenges of solving tough technical issues are great and highly rewarding but for me the people make it really worthwhile. Be it knowing the shared pain of a hellish project or the healthy debate of Guids v.s. auto incrementing integers as keys the people make this industry what it is.
I choose
Jun30
Categories: WTF, Development, Intergen Just had a great giggle and a shudder after my workmate Henrik showed me some code that is the latest check-in for a project, and I assume running on a site out there.
1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
2: {
3: if (Request.QueryString["QueryStringKeyOfAwesomeness"] != null)
4: {
5: ThisWillBeEmbarrassingOneDay();
6: }
7: }
Inside the same class we have methods with such glorious names as:
- DoSomeMoreTrippyStuffOggaOgga()
- DoSomeCrazyAssDataUpdatesV2Awesome()
- DoJDMagicalSuperUpgradeWOotWOt()
Somewhat disturbing that the ThisWillBeEmbarrassingOneDay() can still be run on the live site if you know the magical key, but those method names, wow!
What is the craziest method name that you have encountered?
Jun20
Categories: Development, VSeWSS, SharePointChan has just announced that Paul Andrew is going to be visiting us here in Wellington, New Zealand and presenting to the SharePoint Users Group :o)
This special event will be held in Xero offices 5pm Friday 27 June 2008. Yes, it's a Friday, but as usual there will be pizza and drinks plus the chance to grill one of the Product Manager for the SharePoint team ;o)
I've worked with for Paul on a couple of projects that Intergen have done for Microsoft now. I'd say that the session that he is going to present will be focused on VSeWSS 1.2, this being the Visual Studio 2008 compatible version of VSeWSS 1.1.
Please register your interest by RSVP to kirkj@paradise.net.nz and wlgspug@sharepointservices.net.nz
Hope to see plenty of you there :o)
Jun16
Categories: Tools, General
I'm love my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic keyboard it's comfortable to use and I'm much faster and more accurate then using a regular flat keyboard. While I like some of the 'extra features' that the Microsoft Office keyboards have, like the volume control and handy shortcut buttons, I utterly loathe this F Lock thing!
Every single function that is mapped as an alternate F key setting has a keyboard shortcut already, which I know and use. But my main frustration is that by default the setting is that the F keys don't do F key stuff >:(
However there is relief if you, like me, hate having to remember to toggle the setting every morning when you boot up. Jason Tsang has a fix which changes some registry settings to flip the meaning of the F Lock key: http://jtsang.mvps.org/scancode_method.html
Jun10
Categories: Tools
Ok, so I'm a Firefox fanboy and almost never use IE or Internet Exploder as I most often refer to it.
I just happened to be using IE when I decided to write my last blog post about the release of VSeWSS 1.2 when I discovered this gem:
What a great wee feature. It automatically sets the title of the new posting to that of current page in the browser and inserts a link to that page into the body of the posting.
Nice work from the Windows Live Writer team. I wonder how hard it would be to implement at Firefox add-on for the same functionality?
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