Site Actions Menu

2010-03-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

Picking through the master page, I discovered that we can add fine grained permissions to the Site Actions menu.

For instance, they happened to stick the capability to "Edit in SharePoint Designer" into the Site Actions menu. That may be a big no no for us.

However, the PermissionsString and PermissionMode properties are here to save the day.

We can specify which group actually is able to see the control based on the PeremissionsString property.

The property allows for a comma separated list of permissions specified in SharePoint. Only the users with those permission sets are going to see the button in the site actions menu. I modified the permission string to only show the item for users who have "ManageWeb" permissions.

The beauty of the MenuItemTemplate, is that we can remove the button all together.

SharePoint 2010 Rich Text Editor

2010-02-08T09:14:00.001-08:00

SharePoint 2010 allows for incredible site branding of content. This has always been a challenge in MOSS 07.

SharePoint 2010 as a seamless process of including specific style rules through a combination of the out-of-the-box "WYSIWYG" functionality and Custom StyleSheets.

Custom Style Sheet

I created a custom StyleSheet that is referenced in a master page template. This step is not necessary since you can simply include the stylehseet through the Alternate CSS URL when you select/configure the master page under Look and Feel section (Site Settings>Master Page).

SharePoint parses the StyleSheets and includes specific "ms-rte" class rules. The rules are devided by Functionality; Style, Element, Image, Position, Table. Depending on the rule name used after the "rte".

ms-rteStyle: Specifies a Style Rule
ms-rteElement: Specifies an Element Rule
ms-rteImage: Specifies an Image Rule
ms-rtePosition: Specifies a Position Rule
ms-rteTable: Specifies a Table Rule

In order for the style names to be available in the desired drop down selector you have to specify the "-ms-name" property in the class:
.ms-rteStyle-FooBar{
-ms-name: "Foo Bar";
}

This will include "Foo Bar" as a label in the Style Selector.

Element Rules

[element].ms-rteElement-[name]: Will specify styles for the Element Source Selector

Element rules are very concrete element specific rules.
This gives you complete control of what type of element you want rendered and what class name it should inherit.
If I wanted the Shadowed Box to render as a "DIV", I would simply specify the element (DIV) tag in the stylesheet along with the ms-rteElement rule:
DIV.ms-rteElement-ShadedBox{
-ms-name:"Shaded Box";
border: 1px solid #d7d7d7;
padding: 5px 10px;
background: #eee;
}

This rule is then available in the Markup Styles selection.

And will render the following:
<div class='ms-rteElement-ShadedBox'>Shaded Box</div>

Style Rules

.ms-rteStyle-[name]: Will classifiy rules for the Markup Styles Selector

Style rules are simply appending class names to any element that you choose in the "WYSIWYG" Editor.
For example, if you want a selected elment to inerhit a style that creates a shaded box around content:
.ms-rteStyle-ShadedBox{
-ms-name: "Shaded Box";
border: 1px solid #d7d7d7;
background: #eee;
padding: 5px 10px;
display: block;
}

After a quick browser refresh, this rule was available in the Style Selector. I am very excited about this. I know that this was available in MOSS 07, but it took some work around to get it to work, so we never deployed it. SharePoint 2010 implements this behavior exactly the way it should be.

Position Rules

.ms-rtePosition-[name]: Will classify rules for the Postion Selector (designed for images)

Image Rules

.ms-rteImage-[name]: Will classify rules specifically for the Image Selector

For Example, say we wanted an image with a dark orange border and a lighter orange background:
.ms-rteImage-OrangeBackground{
-ms-name: "Orange Background";
background-color: #f93;
border: 1px solid #c63;
padding: 6px;
}
Will Give you the following option:

Table Rules

Note that the name is very important in this context. You want to specify the same name for every cascading rule of the table.
For example if you start with:
.ms-rteTable-Foo.
Every cascasding class has to have the name Foo:

/*Table Rule */
.ms-rteTable-Foo{}

/* Header Row */
.ms-rteTable-Foo tr.ms-rteTableHeaderRow-Foo{}

/*First Header Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableHeaderFirstCol-Foo{}

/*Last Header Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableHeaderLastCol-Foo{}

/*Odd Header Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableHeaderOddCol-Foo{}

/*Even Header Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableHeaderEvenCol-Foo{}

/*Odd Row*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo tr.ms-rteTableOddRow-Foo{}

/*Even Row*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo tr.ms-rteTableEvenRow-Foo{}

/*First row Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableFirstCol-Foo{}

/*Last row Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableLastCol-Foo{}

/*Odd row Col */
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableOddCol-Foo{}

/*Even Table Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableEvenCol-Foo{}

/*Footer Row*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo tr.ms-rteTableFooterRow-Foo{}

/*First Footer Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableFooterFirstCol-Foo{}

/*Last Footer Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableFooterLastCol-Foo{}

/*Odd Footer Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableFooterOddCol-Foo{}

/*Even Footer Col*/
.ms-rteTable-Foo td.ms-rteTableFooterEvenCol-Foo{}

.ms-rteTable-[name]: Will classify rules specifially for the Table Selector
tr.ms-rteTableHeaderRow-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the Header Row of the parent class.
td.ms-rteTableHeaderFirstCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the first header table cell
td.ms-rteTableHeaderLastCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the last header table cell
td.ms-rteTableHeaderOddCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every Odd header table cell
td.ms-rteTableHeaderEvenCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every Even header table cell
tr.ms-rteTableEvenRow-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every even table row
tr.ms-rteTableOddRow-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every odd table row
td.ms-rteTableFirstCol-[name]: Is a cascaing rule for the first table column
td.ms-rteTableEvenCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every even table column
td.ms-rteTableOddCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every odd table column
td.ms-rteTableLastCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the last table column
tr.ms-rteTableFooterRow-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the footer row
td.ms-rteTableFooterFirstCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the first footer column
td.ms-rteTableFooterEvenCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every even footer column
td.ms-rteTableFooterOddCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for every odd footer column
td.ms-rteTableFooterLastCol-[name]: Is a cascading rule for the last footer column

CAML

2008-01-31T20:43:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have been working on a WebPart which using the Sharepoint API, retrieves a SharePoint list from the List Library.

The WebPart then generates an ordered A to Z list with categories, anchor links, and searching capability.

Now one of my largest challenges has been filtering the SharePoint list using the API.

One way to query the List is using Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML).

CAML is an XML based language, used to Customize websites in SharePoint in various ways.

I find the syntax of CAML quite tedious and have yet to figure out a way to generate it dynamically to query my list.

I have spent quite a bit of time understanding the static structure of CAML.

In this situation I'm trying to filter two columns ( Office, Category ).

I can have one or many Offices and Categories.

Before I retrieve the SharePoint list I will pass it the a Dynamic generated CAML query.

At the moment i'm generating the CAML using StringBuilders in an enormous loop! Not my ideal way of doing it, and I know that I can use the XML Document Object to generate the CAML.

So this is what I'm going to begin doing, I will work out a solution of dynamically generating CAML using the XML Document Object. I know that this isn't the only way as there are always many solutions to everything. However using the XML Document object seems like the ideal way of doing it, since CAML is XML Structured.

So my Journey begins, I will be sure to keep posting on my progress.

My SharePoint