Archives
-
May I introduce you to Lis Tielens
I'm very happy to announce that this morning our daugher Lis was born. She and her mother are recovering from the C-section but they are doing well. For more news (in Dutch), feel free to check out our family blog: http://kids.neleenjan.net.
-
Free BIWUG Event on SharePoint 2010 Development
Next week (December, 17th) the Belgian Information Worker User Group (BIWUG, http://www.biwug.be) is organizing an evening full of SharePoint 2010 development topics. I'm talking about the Client Object Models at 19:30, but make sure to check out the full agenda:
-
SharePoint 2010 Project Deployment Issues in Visual Studio 2010
Recently I ran into the following issue when I tried to deploy a SharePoint 2010 Project in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. In the output window the following message was displayed and the deployment failed:
-
SharePoint 2010 Public Beta Available on MSDN
Finally the public betas of SharePoint 2010 (both SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server), Office 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visio 2010 are available on MSDN Subscriptions, so start your download engines right now! :-)
-
Introducing SharePoint 2010 Training at U2U
During the last couple of weeks, we at U2U have been very busy building course material for our upcoming SharePoint 2010 courses. We expect that lots of experienced SharePoint developers, power users and administrators are very eager to get up to speed with the new version of SharePoint as soon as possible. That’s why the first course that we’ve build is titled Upgrade to SharePoint 2010. This course will focus on all the exciting new stuff in SharePoint 2010, so people with SharePoint experience will get all the relevant info as quickly as possible. Because an administrator is probably not interested in developer stuff, we’ve chosen to split the course into three different parts:
-
Join my BoF Session at TechEd Europe about SharePoint, jQuery and Silverlight
I’ve got the pleasure to be able to present a Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) session at TechEd Europe next week: BOF14 Microsoft SharePoint, jQuery and Microsoft Silverlight: Better Together. If you are interested in these technologies please join the discussion on Thursday, 12:20 in Theater 6 – Pink.
-
Watch the SharePoint Conference Live, from your home/office (9am Pacific, 6pm CET)
In 20 minutes a very important event is going to get started: the SharePoint Conference 2009! If you're not in Vegas (like me), get yourself in front of a computer with a big bag of chips, popcorn or whatever snack you prefer, and watch the keynote (featuring Steve Ballmer) live! I'm sure it will be a nice show and expect an avalanche of SharePoint 2010 information to be released shortly afterwards. Also make sure you keep an eye on Twitter, blogs, Facebook etc. to see the reactions of SharePoint fans all over the world. My buddies at EndUserSharePoint are going to cover the conference with lots of real time content, so these pages will be open on my pc as well. Have fun!
-
Assembly-Free jQuery in SharePoint Sites Using the SmartTools jQueryLoader
Summary: The SmartTools jQueryLoader enables the jQuery Javascript library in your SharePoint sites using an effortless and Assembly-Free deployment technique. Additionally the jQueryLoader will dynamically load custom Javascript files, deployed to a Document Library. Seeing is believing: watch this short screencast that shows the deployment and some sample scripts!
-
"The Office SharePoint Server Standard Web application features feature must be activated" on Windows Server 2008 R2
When I was installing a brand new demo environment using Microsoft's latest and greatest platforms (Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008) I ran into an annoying issue related to SharePoint. The slipstreamed installation (including SP2) went fine, but when I tried to create a new Collaboration Portal or Publishing Portal I got the error: "The Office SharePoint Server Standard Web application features feature must be activated at the web application level before this feature can be activated.".
-
Make SharePoint 2007 Act Like SharePoint 2010, Updated
In my previous post I introduced a small script to extend the Edit Control Block (ECB) of list items and documents. The added menu items in the ECB allow users to update certain metadata fields for that item or document. The cool thing is that everything is happening in the background with the help of jQuery, even the actual updating of the data. The result: no postbacks or full page loads, pure AJAX goodness just like showcased in the SharePoint 2010 sneak peek videos. Today I’m releasing a new and improved version of the script, based on your feedback. Here are the changes:
-
Make SharePoint 2007 Act Like SharePoint 2010 (sort of ...)
[This script has been updated over here] I'm pretty sure every SharePoint enthusiast has seen those great Sneak Peek videos Microsoft released some time ago. And I'm sure that lots of the new features shown were very exciting for lots of you. Since SharePoint 2010 is still quite far away in the future, let's try to bring some of the 2010 stuff to SharePoint 2007! In the overview video, Tom Rizzo showed some new user interface functionality, pretty much all of it was heavily using asynchronous Javascript code to dynamically do updates, change layouts etc. All of this of course to prevent those nasty full page reloads. One of the features that caught my eye was the inline editing of list items or documents: without reloading the page, or opening a new page, it's possible in SharePoint 2010 to edit meta data. Pretty cool! And I want to have it in my SharePoint sites, today.
-
Customizing the SharePoint ECB with Javascript, Part 3
In the previous articles I explained the basic technique to add custom menu items to the Edit Control Block (ECB) using Javascript. Basically it comes down to writing a Javascript function called Custom_AddListMenuItems or Custom_AddDocLibMenuItems (respectively for adding menu items to the ECB of Lists and Document Libraries). In these custom functions you can use the CAMOpt Javascript function (found in the default core.js file) to add as many items as you want. Using the CASubM function you can also build hierarchical menus.
-
URL Shortening in SharePoint with bit.ly
In my two previous posts about customizing the Edit Control Block (or ECB for short) with Javascript, I showed some basic examples of what can be accomplished with this technique. Now it’s time to build a real life example instead of menu items which show Hello World dialog boxes.
-
Customizing the SharePoint ECB with Javascript, Part 2
Other articles in this series:
-
Customizing the SharePoint ECB with Javascript, Part 1
Other articles in this series:
-
SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peak
I guess this will be blogged extensivly the coming hours and days: Microsoft has released official documentation about the next version of SharePoint. Read all about it here: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx. From that site:
-
SharePoint Search-as-You-Type with jQuery
Already since a long time I’ve been thinking about a web part that would search-as-you-type using SharePoint’s search engine. The idea behind this concept is that while you’re typing a query in the search box, asynchronously the query is already executed and the results are being displayed. Every time the query is changed, the results will be updated dynamically. This will allow users to see the results without going to the Search Results page, and even more: they don’t have to go back to alter their query. In such a scenario you want to avoid full page postbacks of course, so AJAX-techniques have to be used to accomplish this. A while back my first approach would be to make use of ASP.NET AJAX to build the necessary functionality in a web part for example. But during the last couple of weeks I’ve become a really big fan of using jQuery Javascript Library in SharePoint sites, and it happens to be that the search-as-you-type functionality can be created with the help of jQuery very easily. The beauty of this solution is that everything is happening on the client (in the web browser), so there is absolutely no requirement to deploy something to the server (nowadays this seems to be called ‘Assembly Free’).
-
My SharePoint Sessions at the Dutch DevDays
Later on this week, on Friday May 29th, I will be presenting two sessions at the Developer Days in The Hague (The Netherlands). I'm pretty excited to be there, not only because it's always lots of fun to speak at this event; but there's lots of cool SharePoint 2007 stuff (IMHO) packed in my presentations:
-
"The security validation for this page is invalid" when calling the SharePoint Web Services
When working with the out-of-the-box SharePoint web services, it may have happened to you that the Web Service response contained the following exception embedded in the XML:
-
Determine the URL of SharePoint Web Services using jQuery/Javascript
If you have read some of the previous posts on this blog related to using jQuery in SharePoint 2007 sites, you probably know that it’s perfectly possible to make call the out-of-the-box SharePoint web services by making use of Javascript running in the client’s browser. This opens up a huge stream of possibilities from which I already covered some of them on my blog. A very important piece of information you need if you want to make a call to a web service is of course the URL of the web service. Figuring out this URL seems to be more trivial than it actually is. My first idea was to use the URL of the page in which the call to a web service actually happened; e.g. you’ve got a Site Page accessible in SharePoint using the URL http://mysite/mypage.aspx, so you strip the /mypage.suffix and add /_vti_bin/lists.asmx (if you’d like to call the Lists web service of course). The thing is, this will only work if your mypage.aspx file is setting in the Root Folder of your SharePoint site. For example: when you would put the Site Page in a Document Library instead, the URL of the page would be http://mysite/Shared Documents/mypage.aspx, so you’d have to strip the /Shared Documents/mypage.aspx and replace it with the Web Service suffix. This can get very complicated when you don’t know upfront in what kind of location the page will be stored (a Site Page in the Root Folder or a Document Library, an Application Page in _layouts, ...). It’s possible to write a bunch of code to figure that out, or you can make use of the following technique!
A very easy and quick way to get a reference is to make use of the alternate link SharePoint will but by default in the head section of every rendered page: -
Using jQuery in SharePoint to Display Notifications for Open Tasks
In my previous post I explained how you can make use of the Lists.asmx web service of SharePoint, to load list items by using the jQuery Javascript library. The example discussed in that post is simple and easy to understand, but very, very boring. Let’s try to do something useful with that technique: display fancy, unobtrusive notifications for open tasks, when a user visits a SharePoint site. The screenshot below shows the result, but it’s static. In real life the user would see the yellow boxes popping up, and after a couple of seconds they would disappear again (they don’t block the user interface at all).
-
Querying SharePoint List Items using jQuery
Due to popular demand I’ve created another sample of how you can make use of the jQuery Javascript library in your SharePoint sites. This example uses SharePoint’s Lists.asmx web service to retrieve all the list items of a specific list. In my previous posts I showed how you could use jQuery in SharePoint Site Pages (regular .aspx pages uploaded to a Document Library), so let’s do something different now; let’s use jQuery in a plain Content Editor Web Part.
-
Creating List Items with jQuery and the SharePoint Web Services
In my previous post I showed how to make a call to SharePoint’s Lists.asmx web service with the jQuery library to retrieve information about the Lists and Document Libraries that are available on a specific SharePoint Site. In the comments of that post, one of the readers asked if it would be possible to create a new item in a List using the same technique. Of course this is possible, you just need to make use of the UpdateListItems web method (yeah, the name of that method is not very intuitive). Here is a quick example!
-
Calling the SharePoint Web Services with jQuery
If you read this blog you probably know that besides the web user interface, SharePoint also exposes some interfaces which you can use from code: the SharePoint object model and the SharePoint web services. The object model of SharePoint can only be used by code/applications that are running on a SharePoint server in your Server Farm, so you can’t use the object model on client machines. The SharePoint web services can be used of course across a network boundary, that’s what they are built for! In this post I’m going to show you how you can access the out-of-the-box SharePoint web services by making use of the jQuery Javascript library. First let’s see what you can do with this technique: download this zip file that contains an ASPX page (a basic Site Page without any code behind), and the jQuery Javascript library (in case you don’t have it already). Upload the two individual files (not the zip file) in the root of a Document Library in any of your SharePoint sites. You can do this by making use of the web user interface; you don’t have to touch anything on the server itself. When done, just click on the link of the uploaded ASPX and you’ll see following page:
-
The "Jan Tielens" SharePoint Challenge by Christophe
My last post about splitting the Top Navigation Bar of a WSS site in two with the help of jQuery, triggered a little discussion (in a good way) in the comments. As a result Christophe from the Path to SharePoint blog wrote some Javascript to accomplish the same thing, without using jQuery at all. Now Christophe started the "Jan Tielens Challenge" on his blog: "I have already talked about Jan in a previous post. End users who visit his blog can certainly feel like a kid in front of a bakery display: so many goodies that are out of reach!
So here is my proposal: if you find on Jan’s site a tool you’d like to have as an end user, send me the challenge! If a topic gets enough votes, I’ll work on a solution that can be implemented on the client side." -
Breaking the WSS Top Link Bar in two with jQuery
-
The Twitter Search API made easy with Linq to XML
My pal Lieven and I are preparing some cool demos to show at the Belgian TechDays SharePoint Preconference next week. Our goal is to build up a nice story that shows the various ways how to use SharePoint 2007 in combination with .NET 3.5. For some those demos we're going to make use of one of today's hypes: Twitter! This evening I tried to query Twitter data using Linq and I discovered there are lots of samples available on the net; there's even a complete Linq to Twitter provider on CodePlex. Too bad the Linq to Twitter provider is focused on the tweets for a specific Twitter user and I wanted to make use of Twitter's Search API. It turned out to be very, very easy (thanks to Robert Horvick's code snippets). Just dump the code at the bottom of this post in your .NET 3.5 project, and you can query the Twitter Search API using 'sharepoint' as the query like this:
-
Speaking at the Belgian TechDays 09
Next month, (10, 11 & 12 of March) the Belgian TechDays will be held in Antwerp. Together with my pal Lieven Iliano, I'll present the SharePoint Pre-conference day on March, 10th. So what is this SharePoint Pre-conference all about? Well were going to talk about .NET 3.5 in SharePoint 2007, think WCF, Silverlight, Linq and WF applied in SharePoint 2007 sites. I'm very excited and I'm sure Lieven and I will be able to entertain you 5 (five!) sessions in a row. For the full agenda, check the TechDays site and I hope to see you there!
-
Essential SharePoint Developer Tool: SPDisposeCheck
[Via Paul Andrew] Now here is a must have tool for every SharePoint developer that wants to make sure that his code isn’t causing any nasty memory leaks due to forgotten Dispose calls (typically on the SPSite and SPWeb instances)! The SPDisposeCheck utility can actually review a compiled assembly and tell you if there are any forgotten Dispose calls, so you can even check third party assemblies. But remember, it’s a tool: nothing beats a full code review, but it certainly speeds up the process.
-
New Release of the SmartTools for SharePoint Project
Tonight I’ve uploaded new versions of all the components of the SmartTools for SharePoint project on CodePlex. For those of you who don’t know the SmartTools project: it’s a collection of useful SharePoint extensions, including:
-
Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 1.3 CTP
[Announced on the SharePoint Team Blog] The SharePoint-year makes a good start with the CTP release of version 1.3 of the extensions with the longest name ever: the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (or VSeWSS for short). Here's a short list of new features, for the details check out the SharePoint Team Blog. The final release is scheduled for "North American Spring of 2009". Get it here.