HttpCode

I was looking for a new smaller (i.e. lighter) laptop for out of work use, I settled on a Dell Mini 9 after reading a number of good recommendations. My only gripe so far is the keyboard, I’m still miss hitting keys and the keyboard layout still causes me to look at the keyboard more than I would like, but I can see that I will get used to it, it’s not unusable like the Asus eeepc.

I thought a new machine would be the perfect time to give Windows 7 a good try, so far it’s been great.

I really like the new taskbar of Windows 7, but one thing I found after a few days of using the keyboard shortcut of ‘windows key’ + m, was the ‘show desktop’ button at the far right of the taskbar, it’s a little button that when clicked will show the desktop. It seemed fairly hidden (at least for me).

I’ve been a big fan of JQuery for a long time now, as I find myself using the ASP.NET MVC framework more and more, I find that I’ll tend to look towards a JQuery plugin as my first port of call if I need some client side functionality. However I’ve worked with a number of people who really like the ASP.NET AJAX control toolkit, usually these people don’t have much exposure to the vast richness of the JQuery landscape. So I thought it might be useful to point out some JQuery equivalents to the ASP.NET Ajax control toolkit:

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Accordian

JQuery:

http://jquery.bassistance.de/accordion/demo/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Always Visible

JQuery:

This control shows a section of text that is always visible.

http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/388213.aspx

Alternatively the following code will provide the same effect as the ASP.NET control:

   1: $(window).scroll(function() {        

   2:         $('#jqueryScroll').animate({ top: $(window).scrollTop() + "px" }, { queue: false, duration: 350 });

   3: });

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Autocomplete

JQuery:

When you have typed more content than the specified minimum word length, a popup will show words or phrases starting with that value, the JQuery version can be easily bound to an ASP.NET MVC view that returns JSON data.

http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-autocomplete/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Calendar

Standard calendar functionality

JQuery:

http://dev.jquery.com/view/trunk/ui/demos/functional/#ui.datepicker

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Cascading Dropdown

Surprisingly I couldn’t find a prebuilt JQuery plugin, the following links do show how simple it is to create using JQuery:

JQuery: http://devlicio.us/blogs/mike_nichols/archive/2008/05/25/jquery-cascade-cascading-values-from-forms.aspx

Other notable method (http://weblogs.asp.net/stephenwalther/archive/2008/09/06/asp-net-mvc-tip-41-creating-cascading-dropdown-lists-with-ajax.aspx)

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Collapsible Panel

JQuery:

http://roshanbh.com.np/2008/03/expandable-collapsible-toggle-pane-jquery.html or http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/jquery-tutorials-for-designers/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Confirm Button

Very similar in functionally to the modal dialog plugin and the thickbox plugin.

JQuery:

http://www.ericmmartin.com/projects/simplemodal/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Drag Panel

The standard JQuery UI library has the Dialog feature which is on par with the ASP.NET control toolkit.

JQuery:

http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Dialog

ASP.NET Control Toolkit DropDown

Simple menu drop down navigation

JQuery:

http://ayozone.org/2008/02/06/drop-down-menu-with-jquery/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Drop Shadow

Create drop shadows around page elements, no images needed.

JQuery:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/DropShadow

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Filtered Textbox

This plugin will restrict the input of a textbox, it may be used to allow only numeric input.

JQuery:

http://www.texotela.co.uk/code/jquery/numeric/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit List Search

The implementation of the JQuery control is a little bit different to the ASP.NET Ajax control, but it may still be useful.

JQuery:

http://rikrikrik.com/jquery/quicksearch/#examples  or  http://ejohn.org/blog/jquery-livesearch/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Masked Edit

Another control that prevents certain input from being entered, this control allows for a mask to be displayed to help the user.

JQuery:

http://digitalbush.com/projects/masked-input-plugin/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Modal Popup

A plugin that helps create modal experiences.

JQuery:

http://famspam.com/facebox or http://www.ericmmartin.com/simplemodal/ or  http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Slider

Create a winforms like slider.

JQuery:

http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Slider

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Mutually Exclusive CheckBox

Not so much a plugin, but sample code to show the concept.

JQuery: http://blog.schuager.com/2008/09/mutually-exclusive-checkboxes-with.html

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Numeric up / down

A textbox control that has buttons to increment or decrement the number, much like the numeric spin button in winforms.

JQuery:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/spin-button

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Password strength

A control that will help users pick a strong password.

JQuery:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/pstrength or http://phiras.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/password-strength-meter-a-jquery-plugin/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Rating

The star rating control is flexible enough to work on down level browsers.

JQuery:

http://www.fyneworks.com/jquery/star-rating/#

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Resizable Control

Turns any DOM element into a resizable control, the user can expand the element by dragging the corner to make the control the desired size.

JQuery:

http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Resizables

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Rounded Corners

Use JQuery to create rounded corners without using images (if your browser doesn’t have an extension to create them).

JQuery:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/corners

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Slide Show

A number of Slide Show and image carousel plugins are around, I’ve picked a couple below:

JQuery:

http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle/  or http://www.gmarwaha.com/jquery/jcarousellite/

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Tabs

JQuery:

The JQuery tab plugin is very powerful, it allows you to keep tight control over the page HTML

http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Tabs

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Textbox Watermark

A watermark control is simply a textbox with either an image or text inside that disappears when the user clicks inside the textbox.

JQuery:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jWatermark

ASP.NET Control Toolkit Validator Callout

JQuery:

An apples for apples equivalent can be found below

http://www.carnovsky.net/samples/jquery_callout_plugin.htm 

Or a more complete and extensible validation plugin (which rivals the ASP.NET validation framework) :

http://jquery.bassistance.de/validate/demo/

I came across an interesting problem today, the MySite link was incorrect, it was working the previous day.

The first step I took was to look at the SSP, which showed that the correct My Site location was entered.

The second step was to look at the Alternative Access Mappings, again they looked OK.

By now I suspected that the ISA server was doing something funny, we had asked the network guys to publish a new rule, so I had a look at the rule settings and found the culprit:

Notice the ‘Apply link translation to this rule’ checkbox, the ISA server was looking at the HTML returned by MOSS and changing the MySite entry, it’s actually a pretty cool feature of ISA that is handy if you are accessing your web application from the internet (to your intranet). But in my case it wasn’t needed and incorrectly setup.

I thought it was an interesting problem, by logically stepping through each potential cause and eliminating it, the root cause was discovered pretty quickly.

A new whitepaper has been published on MSDN:

Analyzing SharePoint Usage

This whitepaper covers in detail the process of using LogParser to deeply analyse the logs produced by SharePoint.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Using LogParser
• Counting users
• User type distribution
• Requests (RPS) distribution over time
• Distinct users over time
• User agent distribution
• Slow pages
• Offlice web service usage

A lot of this information applies to any web application, not just SharePoint sites.

I came across a weird problem with IE and the way it automatically passes credentials to an intranet site. Basically we had an intranet site in the form of http://<intranet name>.<domian name>, e.g. http://intranet.httpcode.com.

Now if users set their homepage directly to this, they would be prompted to authenticate on the first page load, however if you first browsed to another site first (didn’t matter what it was, it could be google.com), then the intranet URL, IE would not prompt you to authenticate, it would work as expected. It’s as if IE didn’t know that the intranet site was in the Intranet zone on the first load.

I found this KB article, I’ve highlighted the interesting bit below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258063

• Internet Explorer must consider the requested URL to be on the intranet (local). If the computer name portion of the requested URL contains periods (such as http://www.microsoft.com and http://10.0.0.1), Internet Explorer assumes that the requested address exists on the Internet and does not pass any credentials automatically. Addresses without periods (such as http://webserver) are considered to be on the intranet (local); Internet Explorer passes credentials automatically

We ended up just creating the intranet site without a period, i.e. http://intranet this seems to work, in that IE on the first load passes the credentials on properly.

I’m not really sure what to say about this problem (if it is really a problem), I couldn’t find any relevant references on the web about it. Any ideas?

Recently I had to write a SQL Server Reporting Services Report that used a web service for the data source, the web service returned a horrible .NET DataSet object which I had no control over.

To use a web service from Reporting Services, the first step is to create a new Data Source of type: XML:

Then enter the URL to the web service in the connection string section.

The next step is to create a new DataSet for the report.

In the Query Designer enter the following:

<Query>
   <Method Name="<web service method name>" Namespace="<webservice namespace url>”>
   </Method>
   <ElementPath IgnoreNamespaces="True">
<web service method name>Response/<web service method name>Result/diffgram/NewDataSet/Table1   (replace Table1 with the dataset name if used)

    </ElementPath>

</Query>

If you need to pass parameters to the web service, this can be done by adding something like:

<Parameters>
       <Parameter Name="<parameter name>">
           <DefaultValue></DefaultValue>
       </Parameter>
   </Parameters>

But be sure that the case of the parameter name is exactly the same as the parameter in the report that you wish to pass in.

The following code will create a site based on a template, then it will add a new contributor group:

//create the subsite .. subSite is an SPWeb object
SPWeb createdWeb = subSite.Webs.Add("Url", "Title", "Project Subsite", 1033, "Template Name", true, false);

createdWeb.BreakRoleInheritance(true);

SPMember member = createdWeb.Users[createdWeb.Author.LoginName];
//create the user groups ...

createdWeb.SiteGroups.Add(createdWeb.Title + " Contributors", member, createdWeb.Author, "Contributors to the site");
SPGroup newContribGroup = createdWeb.SiteGroups[createdWeb.Title + " Contributors"];

SPRoleDefinition contribRole = createdWeb.RoleDefinitions.GetByType(SPRoleType.Contributor);
SPRoleAssignment contribRoleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment(newContribGroup);
contribRoleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(contribRole);
createdWeb.RoleAssignments.Add(contribRoleAssignment);

The above code will break the permission inheritance, so the created site will have unique permissions, this code could be refactored to also create Owners and Reader’s groups.

I was playing around with setting up the navigation created by a legacy custom site definition. Information posted for my reference more than anything else:

<WebFeatures>

    <Feature ID="541F5F57-C847-4e16-B59A-B31E90E6F9EA">

        <Properties xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

            <Property Key="InheritGlobalNavigation" Value="true"/>

            <Property Key="IncludeSubSites" Value="true"/>

            <Property Key="IncludePages" Value="false"/>

            <Property Key="InheritCurrentNavigation" Value="false"/>

        </Properties>

    </Feature> 

</WebFeatures>

Some of the settable properties are:

The boolean properties:

• IncludeInGlobalNavigation
• IncludeInCurrentNavigation
• InheritGlobalNavigation
• InheritCurrentNavigation
• ShowSiblings
• IncludeSubSites
• IncludePages
• SortAscending

The next properties take an enum:

• OrderingMethod - Automatic, ManualWithAutomaticPageSorting, Manual
• AutomaticSortingMathod - Title, CreatedDate, LastModifiedDate

I’ve been working with a client recently that had a problem with the Web Front End servers randomly rebooting. The servers were Windows Server 2008 running virtually on VMWare ESX. Interestingly the problem didn’t occur on any of the other Win 2008 servers that also ran on VMWare.

Firstly we discovered that the machines weren’t just rebooting they were in fact blue screening and then rebooting after they did a dump.

So we fired up WinDbg and had a look at some of the dumps.

We found that the offending method was:

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  X64_0x7E_BAD_IP_HTTP!UlAuthenticate+73

The loaded module was HTTP.sys

This seemed to fit, the environment that was crashing was the only one to have Kerberos enabled, so we suspected some interaction between Kerberos and VMWare to be the cause (hence these were the only servers crashing). But since Windows 2008 runs HTTP.sys which is a kernel mode driver, we knew that as part of the Kerberos setup we had to explicitly allow the kernel to authenticate as the app pool user (via the application host file). We also knew that we could use IIS manager to move this authentication out to user mode, if you open IIS manager, expand the web site, select Authentication from the right and select the advanced properties on the Windows Authentication item. This will present you with the following option to ‘Enable Kernel-mode authentication’:

After we deselected this option our servers have been running solidly.

I received an interesting error today while trying to ‘Manage Data Sources’ on a report “The resource object with classname ‘ReportServer’ and the key ‘DataSourceList’ was not found”:

I found that sometimes it would work, but other times it would fail. A bit of tracing showed that when I hit web1 in the farm it would fail, but web2 would succeed.

With this information in hand I hand a look at the App_GlobalResources folder under c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories\<web application name>

Interestingly web2 (which worked) had some resources called ReportServer.resx, but web1 (which failed) did not have these resources, that was what was causing the failures.

I copied the resources across and the issue resolved itself.

I suspect that the report services add on wasn’t installed properly.

A little while ago I created a simple Application Definition for working with some CRM 4 data via the BDC.

Well recently the CRM Search Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 have been released, which provides a better Application Definition File:

The enterprise search accelerator allows Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data directly from their SharePoint portals. By combining these two technologies users from different areas of the business will be able to:

• View and edit any Microsoft Dynamics CRM data such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service cases and any custom entity data through MOSS.
  
• Launch a MOSS search which can return documents, emails, web content and Microsoft Dynamics CRM data.

If your interested in seeing how Commerce Server and SharePoint can be integrated, you might want to take a look at the December 2008 CTP of Commerce Server 2009:

The bullet point of interest is:

• Complete out-of-the-box e-commerce shopping site in SharePoint with new search functionality, new shopping features, and what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) content management and design experiences. This helps to facilitate rapid assembly and maintenance of e-commerce Web sites by business users and creative professionals.

For more information about this upcoming release, the PDC session is a good place to start.

A new web part for CRM 4 integration into SharePoint has been released by Microsoft:

Overview

The List Web Part for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides a way to view and update Microsoft Dynamics CRM records using a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 Web site. Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can create shared or personal List Web Parts of Microsoft Dynamics CRM records from a SharePoint Web site, open records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 from the List Web Part, and create connected List Web Parts.

Ascentium has a blog post with some screen shots.

I was working with a client recently who had the idea that they could make use of Excel Calculation Services to render parts of a spreadsheet that they use heavily inside their business. The client hoped to be able to publish the spreadsheet in it’s current form.

Unfortunately if any of the following features are inside your spreadsheet, it will fail to render:

• Spreadsheets with code.  This includes spreadsheets with VBA macros, forms controls, toolbox controls, MS 5.0 Dialogs, and XLM Sheets.
• IRM-protected spreadsheets
• ActiveX Controls
• Embedded SmartTags
• PivotTables based on “multiple consolidation” ranges
• External references (links to other spreadsheets)
• Spreadsheets saved in formula view
• XML expansion packs
• XML Maps
• Data validation
• Query Tables, SharePoint Lists, Web Queries, and Text Queries
• Spreadsheets that reference add-ins
• Spreadsheets that use the RTD() function
• Spreadsheet that use spreadsheet and sheet protection
• Embedded pictures or clip art
• Cell and Sheet background pictures
• AutoShapes and WordArt
• Ink Annotations 
• Organization Charts and Diagrams.
• DDE Links

In my case the complex spreadsheet that the client was using contained a number of these features, which basically meant that they need to maintain a cut down spreadsheet just for rendering on the intranet.