My book on WCF and REST is doing – and SHIPPING!
So many people have been asking me when the book would be ready – well NOW!
Code will be up this week (this of course I know will be the next logical question
once people get their copies :))
Check out my new book on REST.
Today, we posted a release candidate (RC) of the Web Platform Installer (Web PI) here. This effort is a direct result of feedback we’ve received from customers regarding the need to significantly simplify the installation of key components needed to spin up new web properties. With the Web PI, customers can now use a simple tool to install Microsoft’s entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Or, the tool can be used to install more specific combinations of these technologies.
Timing is critical for this update; our customers are already knee deep in deploying platform updates across Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and others. This newest RC for the Web PI now enables installation of ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio Tools for Silverlight and offers compatibility with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP for a more complete, enterprise-level experience. As well, with the Microsoft Web Application Installer (WebAI), we are including several .NET and Open Source applications for development on top of the platform itself. These include Drupal, WordPress, OSCommerce, DotNetNuke, Graffiti, PHPBB, and Gallery. We know our customers are working within heterogeneous environments today, and the need for tools and solutions that drive cross-platform interoperability is more important than ever. We’re continuing to drive interoperability into the core platform through.NET framework updates, Silverlight and “Oslo’s” M language, which is now included in the Open Specification Promise.
We’re already hearing from our customers that this tool is saving them significant amounts of time; check it out and see for yourself. Then, go back to doing what you do best-building and hosting powerful next-generation web apps that will revolutionize the business! Oh yeah, by the way – it’s free.
So you think GUI coolness nowadays is only related to fancy RIA stuff like Silverlight? Think again! The video above is a little project I’m working on, using jQuery plugins to show a cool way to navigate to the Lists and Document Libraries of a SharePoint site. So there are no requirements on the client, everything is done using Javascript! Nifty isn’t it? I need to polish the code a little bit and I hope to be able to release it later on this week. But i’m still thinking about a cool name .. any suggestions?
The first part of this article showed you how you can enable jQuery in SharePoint 2007 sites and pages, so in this article let’s assume jQuery is up and running in your SharePoint environment. The second part of this article will show you a couple of things that you can accomplish by making use of jQuery in SharePoint 2007. It’s not my goal to write about how jQuery is working, the syntax etc, for those things I kindly refer to the tutorials that are already available.
Time to get started with a first sample! Let’s assume you’ve got a nice SharePoint List or Document Library with a bunch of columns and some data in it. SharePoint can display that data in a nice table of course, but let’s try to make that table even nicer by highlighting the entire row when the user hovers over the table. The JavaScript code, using jQuery to accomplish this goes as follows:
$(document).ready(function()
{
$(“table[class=’ms-listviewtable’] tr”).hover
(
function() {
$(this).addClass(“myRowHighlight”);
},
function() {
$(this).removeClass(“myRowHighlight”);
}
);
}
);
The first line creates a function that will be called when the document is completely loaded, this function is defined inline. In this function first all tr elements of all the tables that are having the class attribute set to ms-listviewtable, are selected (this class attribute value is used by SharePoint for every table that contains list data). For every tr element, the hover jQuery function is called. This hover function takes two parameters, once again two functions: one will be executed when the mouse pointer enters the hover area (in this case the tr element), the second one will be executed when the mouse leaves the hover area. When the hover area is entered, the addClass method will add the myRowHighlight CSS class to the tr element and that CSS class is removed when the hover area is left. Of course the myRowHighlight CSS needs to be declared as well:
<style type=”text/css”>
.myRowHighlight {color:red; background-color:#FFCC66}
</style>
The next thing that we need to think about is how we can tell a SharePoint page (which is showing a table containing List data), to execute that script and declare the CSS class. Probably the easiest thing to do is to make use of the Content Editor Web Part. Navigate to for example a Task list (e.g. http://yoursite/Lists/Tasks/AllItems.aspx). Next click Site Actions, Edit Page to switch the page into edit mode. Then click on the Add a Web Part button of the web part zone of that page and add an instance of the Content Editor Web Part. Click on the link open the tool pane and click on the button Source Editor.
Finally copy and paste the script and CSS class discussed above (note that script tags have been added around the JavaScript code!):
<style type=”text/css”>
.myRowHighlight {color:red; background-color:#FFCC66}
</style>
<script>
$(document).ready(function()
{
$(“table[class=’ms-listviewtable’] tr”).hover
(
function() {
$(this).addClass(“myRowHighlight”);
},
function() {
$(this).removeClass(“myRowHighlight”);
}
);
}
);
</script>
Now you can click Exit Edit Mode in the top right of the screen to switch back to the normal view. When you hover over one of the rows of the table, the entire row will be highlighted.
Although adding the script and style in a Content Editor Web Part is very easy, you probably don’t want to do this in every list view for ever single List or Document Library if you want to activate the row highlighting everywhere. A better approach is to wrap the adding of the script and style in a Feature. And once again this can be accomplished by making use of the Delegate control (for more information about this approach, check out the previous part of this series).
The feature.xml simply points to a manifest which will define the delegate. The only special thing in the feature.xml is the ActivationDepenencies element: there’s an activation dependency defined that points to the feature ID of the SmartTools.jQuery feature. So the TableRowHighlight feature can only be activated if the jQuery library is loaded.
<Feature xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/”
Id=”{7D6840E4-E31A-4c75-B2AC-71A262D0B375}”
Title=”SmartTools.TableRowHighlight v1.0″
Description=”This feature enables the highlighting of rows in List or Document Library views, when the mouse is hovered above them.”
Scope=”Web”
>
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location=”manifest.xml”/>
</ElementManifests>
<ActivationDependencies>
<ActivationDependency FeatureId=”{45B66929-08B5-4715-8511-F9FB94F614EE}”/>
</ActivationDependencies>
</Feature>
The manifest.xml is even easier, the only thing to pay attention to is the fact that this delegate control (which loads the SmartTools.TableRowHighlight.ascx user control), has a sequence that’s higher than the sequence of the SmartTools.jQuery delegate (which adds the jQuery library). So first the jQuery library is loaded, then the custom script is added.
<Elements xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/”>
<Control
Id=”AdditionalPageHead”
ControlSrc=”~/_controltemplates/SmartTools.TableRowHighlight.ascx”
Sequence=”100″/>
</Elements>
The SmartTools.TableRowHighlight.ascx user control, will simply define SmartToolsRowHighlight style, and load a Javascript file (tablerowhighlight.js). This ASCX file should be deployed to the CONTROLTEMPLATES folder in the 12\TEMPLATE folder.
<%@ Control Language=”VB” ClassName=”SmarToolsTableRowHighLight” %>
<style type=”text/css”>
.SmartToolsRowHighlight {color:red; background-color:#FFCC66}
</style>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://weblogs.asp.net/_layouts/SmartTools.TableRowHighlight/tablerowhighlight.js”></script>
And finally the tablerowhighlight.js javascript file will execute the function to accomplish the hover effect. This javascript file should be deployed to the LAYOUTS folder of the 12 hive.
$(document).ready(function()
{
$(“table[class=’ms-listviewtable’] tr”).hover
(
function() {
$(this).addClass(“SmartToolsRowHighlight”);
},
function() {
$(this).removeClass(“SmartToolsRowHighlight”);
}
);
}
);
What’s the result? Well, when the feature is activated on a site, the delegate is adding the ASCX to the HEAD element of the page’s HTML. This ASCX will take care of defining the style and loading the script. All the grids showing data coming from SharePoint Lists or Document Libraries, will now have the fancy hover effect. To illustrate all of this, I’ve packaged the row highlighting functionality in a nice SharePoint solution (including a nice installation wizard) which can be download from the SmartTools project on CodePlex (direct link to the releases).
Hi all
I have added a new functoid to my functoid library.
This functoid will take a string, that is separated by some character as input and
split it up into the substrings it is, given the separator. It will then return the
substring given by a third parameter.
So for instance, given these three inputs:
You would get “Eliasen” as output.
You can download my functoid library at http://www.eliasen.eu/DownloadSoftware.aspx and
here you can also find updated documentation describing this new functoid.
—
eliasen
I've uploaded a new version of the Blogical SFTP Adapter for BizTalk unto Codeplex . This release adds support for passphrase protected identityfiles after a forums request . Get it here ….(read more)
Today while setting down at the ISV Innovation Day at Microsoft in Melbourne and looking at the agenda, I thought about all the technology around Windows Azure and what it really means to developers.
Since returning from the US I having spent the last couple of weeks since PDC digesting the Windows Azure announcement and talk to other developers about Windows Azure, the most asked question so far is “how do you pronounce Azure?”.
So I think from now on I am going to start calling Windows Azure, Windows “Light Blue”, so that the questions about it can concentrate on the neat technology in it and not what it is called.
Over the Christmas holidays I am going to go through all the webcasts and PDC videos and try to collect all the different pronunciations of Windows Azure to prove my point, so stay tuned.
We will be holding the next Melbourne BizTalk User Group Meeting onTuesday 2nd December 2008 at 5:30pm
The venue and sponsor for the meeting will beStargate Group at Level 3, 600 Victoria Street, Richmond
The topics will be:
Bill Chesnut from Stargate Group (www.stargategroup.com.au) will do a presentation on “1st Look at BizTalk Server 2009”
Bill Chesnut from Stargate Group (www.stargategroup.com.au) will do a presentation on “PDC Recap – Windows Azure & Dublin”
Please note we are starting the meeting at 5:30pm and there will befood anddrinks supplied
Please rsvp for [email protected] if you plan on attending the meeting.
BizTalk ’Cloud’ Services – BizTalk in the Cloud
With recent developments and BizTalk 2009 on the horizon, I thought we’d look
at just what all these ’cloud services’ mean and understand the term ’cloud computing’
What’s cooking this month for the group?
This month we have Scott
Scovell (BizTalk Virtual TS) presenting on a very exciting new shift in computing
– Microsoft Azure Cloud Services.
You might be thinking – “What does this do for me?”
Well….(far too much for me dictate here)…but imagine if you can:
– Connect seamlessly between clients and yourself
(including firewalls etc)
– Switch and deploy in house processes dynamically
to ’the cloud’
– Point to Point and Multicast messaging in the
cloud between clients + server processes (i.e. similar to BTS filter messaging)
– Push Workflows up in to the cloud….moving
off premises and take advantage of the Cloud’s computing power.
Alot of all this is based on the WCF Framework – you can start taking advantage
of this today!
For e.g. in BTS (R2 or 2009), you can create a ’httpContextRelayBinding’ bound Receive
Location, and you’ve now got an endpoint that can be called from anywhere (security
permitting), from client’s networks and your own.
There’s a huge amounts of smarts around all of this, but I look at them in the light
that alot of ISPs offer Virtual Hosting – “Here’s a box and do what you will with
it”. You’re then responsible for O/S, Web Setup, maybe DNS, etc etc etc.
In the Cloud – MS give a very granular degree of control by electing
WCF Services, Workflows, Endpoints, Security, ServiceBus etc etc – that we can dedicate
1 or 100 CPUs to (at ’the flick of a switch’). Redundancy, fault tolerance and even
Geographic redundancy (e.g. engage some nodes in Greenland to run your apps – maybe
closer to your clients)
Main Event on the night:
Utilising Microsoft Azure from BizTalk 2006 R2 (+ beyond)
Scott will cover:
1. Building blocks of Azure Cloud Computing.
2. Getting Started with Azure
3. BizTalk talking to the Cloud
4. Lots of demos!
Meeting details:
When: Nov 26, Food at 6pm, kick off 6.30pm. Finish up around 8.30pm.
Where: Microsoft
1 Epping Road
Riverside Corporate Park
North Ryde NSW 2113 Australia. (parking available)
Speaker: Scott Scovell
What’s happening in the BizTalk Community:
The combined user group leaders & I are setting up a Shared Folder in the
’Mesh’, where we’ll be holding all the presentations across the User Groups (&
other files). I’ll let you know when our testing is done.
(BTW – this lets you have a local folder on your machine that automatically gets synced
up to the ’Mesh’. Easy peasy…I’m hoping)
Share the User Group Soap Box:
I always welcome a new voice and ideas at our group – if you want to share
your experiences, thoughts, “I wish I can do….. for my solution…”. Then contact
me and I’ll be more than happy to slot you in.
Q. Do you need to have presentation skills: No (just look at me) – can you
tell a story in the office or at the pub? Or at a 3 yr old b.day party? – then I want
you.
Q. Do I need a PowerPoint Slide Deck? – no!!! *death by powerpoint*
is a painful way to go……
Q. Can you capture my ’best’ side? We take you whichever way you are. J
We’re up for a great night – come along and learn how to make your BizTalk
solutions go a long way.
See you there and let me know your coming
Mick (mb: 0404 842 833)
http://sydbiz.org