Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Thanks to Nele for creating this card, featuring photos from our back door, our Christmas tree and our holiday to South-Africa!

[Via Patrick Wellink] Easier way to add a DLL to the GAC

Add following text to a .reg file, double click it, voila: you can add assemblies to the GAC with only two mouse clicks! BizTalk and SharePoint developers will love it. Check out the BIA blog post to download the .reg file in a zip.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\gacutil\command]
@="c:\\windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v1.1.4322\\gacutil.exe /i \"%1\""

I know my pal Patrick loves the Christmas season (trust me; last week we were in Redmond, so I spent lots of time with him), so he'll love the following web part! Todd embedded a JavaScript in a content editor web part that will draw snow flakes on your SharePoint sites. Just import the DWP (no need to deploy a dll) and you'll be in the Christmas mood immediately! Get it here

Man, I wish I was on the beta for this one: Windows Live Messenger Beta. Just look at all the new features! Let's hope they have a public beta soon (or add me as a beta tester! ;-).

• Your Contacts
• Unified Contacts
• 600 Messenger Contacts
• Word Wheel
• Edit your contact’s Info
• Nicknames (Rename your contacts)
• The Art of Instant Messaging
• Offline IMs
• Conversations While Appearing Offline
• Time Stamps
• Messenger Face Lift
• Orange
• Pick Your Color
• Toning it Down
• Display Picture Functionality
• Frameless Menu Entry
• Fixed Scrolling
• Sharing
• How-to
• Safety
• Updating Files
  Multiple Computers
• Size Doesn’t Matter
• With whom?
• Computer-2-Phone Calling
• Cheap and easy
• Crystal Quality
• MCI Partnership
• Windows Live Video Integration
• See the latest Videos

[Via Stramit] For detailed info about WSS and SPS SP2 check out this whitepaper: Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

This white paper describes features that are included in Microsoft® SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 (SP2). It also provides best practices and guidance about how you can architect your solutions considering the current and future versions of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

It explains to solve an issue that I ran into a couple of months ago: when you compile your web part with .NET 2.0, you can't deploy them anymore with STSADM. The whitepaper explains how to solve this, so expect a new release for the SmartPart soon. :-) (Btw, Denis has posted his whishlist for the SmartPart. Maybe you have some ideas, requests too?)

If you want to deploy Web Part packages that contain CLR version 2.0 compiled Web Part assemblies (that is, SharePoint Web Parts compiled by using the new CLR), you will need to create a *.config file for stsadm.exe that specifies the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<startup>
<supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727" /> <!-- update the version # once .Net v2.0 is released -->
<supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4322" /> <!-- this is the version number for .Net v1.1 -->
</startup>
</configuration>

I haven't blogged this week, because I'm (again) in Denmark to work with some SharePoint enthusiastics. But there seem to be other people who are using the Son of SmartPart, and write about it. Here's a nice QuickStart written by Hal Angseesing. Also Denis, seems to be having a lot of fun with the SmartPart! :-) Keep up the good work guys.

Something cool to check out: SNARF.

SNARF was built around the notion that social network information that is already available to the computer system can be usefully reflected to the user: a message from a manager might be seen differently than a message from a stranger, for example. SNARF applies this idea to email triage: handling the flow of messages when time is short and mail is long.

The SNARF UI is designed to provide a quick overview of unread mail, organized by its importance. The UI shows a series of different panes with unread mail in them; each pane shows a list of authors of messages. Clicking on a name shows all messages involving that person.

Lately I got quite some questions about how you can create connectable web parts with the SmartPart for SharePoint. Because I’m a little bit lazy I’ve recorded a screencast that’s going to show you the basics for creating connectable web user controls that can by hosted in the SmartPart for SharePoint. I’m using SmartPart version 1.1 and ASP.NET 1.1/Visual Studio.NET 2003/SharePoint 2003. If there are some people who want to do the same using the Son of SmartPart and ASP.NET 2.0/Visual Studio 2005/SharePoint 2003, it’s almost exactly the same (same interfaces etc.). In the screencast I’m showing two web parts that retrieve data from the Northwind database: a list of employees and a list of orders. When an employee is selected, the corresponding orders are displayed in the order list. After that I’m showing a test provider and consumer, built from scratch.

• Watch the screencast
• Download the source code