This has always been a problem for developers with requirements to support multiple browsers. When writing code various browsers render the exact same peice of code differently. So the development process consists of programming workarounds so they render the same or very similar.

Now we have a free tool that we can use to test multiple browsers easily during our development process.

http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

I have been developing inside SharePoint for a while now and while things are getting easier with tools I think this process for developing User Controls inside SharePoint gives me a lot of control.

1. I have a Graphical User Interface
2. I have a separate project to build and test outside of SharePoint
3. I can easily update and view my project html and binary code

Currently this process doesn’t create me any SharePoint Solution files to deploy across environments. I think to achieve this I will need to create a VS 2008 SharePoint Project…but so far these projects seem to add weight and time that I don’t want at the moment…while I am developing.

1. Create a VS2008 web project
2. In IIS create an IIS Application under your SharePoint web site that has a path to your VS2008 web project created above. This helps for updating content
3. In your VS2008 project create some user controls and test that they function
4. In VS2008 project properties under the Build Events tab point the Post Build events text box and add a copy statement to copy your .dlls and .pdbs to your SharePoint web sites bin directory. This will deploy a new .dll every time you build your VS2008 project. I had problems when I put the VS2008 project .dll into the GAC…it only worked when I put it into the SharePoint’s web sites bin directory
5. Update your master page with CSS references if your VS2008 project contains a style sheet.
6. In SPD in your Page Layout add a Register directive to register your user control
   “<%@ Register Src=”~/UI/UserControls/JobGoals.ascx” TagPrefix=”uc1″ TagName=”JobGoals” %>”
   OR
   Update the SharePoint web site web.config file
   <pages>
     <controls>
           <add src=”~/UI/UserControls/MyAttributes.ascx” tagPrefix=”uc1″ tagName=”MyAttributes”/>
           <add src=”~/UI/UserControls/JobGoals.ascx” tagPrefix=”uc1″ tagName=”JobGoals” />
       </controls>
   </pages>
7. Add the User Control to the Page Layout
   <uc1:JobGoals ID=”JobGoals1″ runat=”server” />
8. Update the SharePoinnt web sites web.config file
   <SafeControl Src=”~/UI/*”  IncludeSubFolders=”True” Safe=”True” AllowRemoteDesigner=”True” />
9. Restart IIS, navigate to a page that uses the page layout and you should see your User Control

Because we created a IIS Application under our SharePoint web site and mapped our VS2008 projects .dll output path to our SharePoints web site, updates are extremely simple.

1. .ascx changes:                modify, save in VS2008 and refresh sharepoint browser
2. .ascx.cs changes:          modify, save, build  in VS2008 and refresh sharepoint browser

I completed my Part 2 presentation on the CQWP today. I thought that the rain may have kept the numbers down so it was great to see a good turn out.

Topic Covered:

• How and where best to use – plan ahead
• Displaying extra columns in result set
• Modifying the ItemStyle.xsl and .webpart files
• XSLT
• Tips and tricks – (thanks Tim for the select=.) tip
• Subclassing using Visual Studio
• Deployment

I always need more time presenting at user groups.

Slide deck and demos will be uploaded to the BSPUG site soon.

I was having a great deal of pain on a new SharePoint development server recently. Environment = Windows 2008, IE7.

Situation

1. Create a SharePoint web application with a host header on port 80. Create a site collection
2. Update host file (or DNS) with new host header entry
3. In IE make sure the web application is in the Intranet Zone
4. Open up browser in IE navigate to site using host header and the authentication dialog login is displayed.
5. Enter my credentials 3 times and receive a 401.1 and an entry in the Security Event log
6. If I open FireFox and browse to the web site the authentication dialog is displayed
7. I enter my credentials and I can log in fine
   Note: To get rid of the authentication prompt in FireFox
1. Open FireFox and in the address type about:config
2. Find the entry network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris
3. Set the Key’s value to a comma seperated list of trusted URIs i.e your host header
8. So FireFox is fine but IE is having issues

Solution

I finally stumbled across a blog article from Brian Farnhill and Ishai Sagi that lead me to the solution.

You receive error 401.1 when you browse a Web site that uses Integrated Authentication and is hosted on IIS 5.1 or IIS 6
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/896861

In my case I am using IE 7 and while the Solution/Workaround discusses two separate methods and states that method one is preferred, I could only fix my issue upon completing method 2

A list of useful accessibility resources

Microsoft ASP.Net

• Building ASP.NET 2.0 Web Sites Using Web Standards – a must read
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479043.aspx
  
• Accessibility Support in ASP.Net
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228004(VS.80).aspx
   
• Invaulable resource on .Net controls and their accessibility
  Will explain what controls you can use with no isses (their not listed), what you need to do or not do to use certan controls, and what controls cannot be used full stop.
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227996(VS.80).aspx
   
• How to: Use Label Web Server Controls as Captions – AssociateControlId; AccessKey
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227968(VS.80).aspx
  

SharePoint Specific

• SharePoint Dev Wiki
  http://www.sharepointdevwiki.com/display/public/SharePoint+Accessibility

Tools

• Accessibilty & XHTML  checker.
  Online, Client download and FireFox plug-in - Total Validator
  http://www.totalvalidator.com/index.html
  
• Online Accessiblity Checker
  http://wave.webaim.org/ 

I was recently asked to provide a process for importing Employee pictures into SharePoint so they would show up in search results and various OOTB web parts. This particular client has MOSS but doesn’t use My Sites.

This post by Henry initially helped me out.

They didn’t want the individual users to have the abilty to upload their own photo’s or modify them in any way, this was to be managed by IT.

1. Create a Picture Library in your Intranet. This will store the photo’s for each employee. When storing employee photo’s chose the filename carefully if you want to populate the AD using scripts. I use something like cjames.jpg which is a correlation to the users account name.
2. In Active Directory choose an AD property that will be mapped to your SharePoint User Profile Property. In my case I selected the extensionAttribute1 field that is located in the ExchangedAdvanced tab ((note this field may not show up if the Exchange Mgt Console hasn’t been installed)
3. Populate this field with the URL to the employee’s photo that is in the Picture Library e.g http://sitename/ProfilePhotos/CJames.jpg (look below for a script example)
4. In SharePoint SSP click the User Profiles and Properties link
5. Click the View Profile Properties under the heading User Profile Properties
6. Find the Picture property and select the Edit menu item
7. Make note of the Usage: Number of profiles using this property. This should increase after we complete a full import
8. At the bottom of the screen make sure Master Connection is selected and in the Datasource field to map select extensionAttribute1 (note: this field may not show up if the Exchange Mgt Console hasn’t been installed)
9. Click Ok
10. Complete a StartFull Import
11. Once the full import is complete go back into the the Picture property and again check the Usage:Number of profiles that use this property. This should now contain some values.
12. Verify this by viewing an Employee’s profile and the Picture property

Some things I had issues with:

• Make sure your Import Connection service account has “Manage User Profile” permissions
• May need to execute a Full Search crawl once photos are uploaded in the Picture Library

I also wrote a script to populate the AD extensionAttribute1 field as there were over 1000 employee’s and no one put their hand up for this job. The import thing here was for employee photo images to have a one to one mapping with their login account name (samaccountname). The person who runs this script also needs certain permissions in AD to update AD accounts. I would initially comment out the On Error Resume Next so you see if your account has enough privleges or not.

The script is very limited but hopefully it may provide some insight.

‘On Error Resume Next
Set objParent = GetObject(”LDAP://OU=Users,OU=Austraila,OU=Offices,OU=AU,DC=domain,DC=local“)
objparent.Filter = Array(”user”)
for each objUser in objParent
  Wscript.Echo “Modifying ” & objUser.Get(”samaccountname”) 
  objUser.put “extensionAttribute1″, “http://sitename/ProfilePhotos/” & objUser.Get(”samaccountname”) & “.jpg”
  objuser.Setinfo   
next

Wscript.Echo “End”

Now, IT are responsible whenever they create a new account they must also populate the extensionAttribute1 field with the URL of the picture library and the employee’s picture filename will always be their account name.

This little feature has caused myself so many problems for different clients. Some of the main issues I have come across include:

• Still runs .Net code under the person who has logged into the computer
• Creates authentication issues for end users when trying to open an Intranet bowser. Have to remove their user profiles to fix

I recommend to anyone now to find the IExplore.exe (right click your shortcut and select Properties, then click the  ”Find Target” button), right click and select the ”run as”. Enter the credentials of the user you wish to log in as.

This still won’t run .Net code under the new credentials you have entered but I have not come across any authentication issues using this approach so far.

How to get non-admins to view your site collection and site usage reports

Site Collection Admins or user will Full Control can view Site Collection and Site Usage Reports.  So if you want other users to access these reports you can do the following:

1. Create a custom site permission level and select the “View Usage Data” check box
   Note: this will also select the “View Pages” permission
2. Create a new Group called something like “Usage Report Viewers” and assign the permission level you created above to the group
3. Add the people you want to view the reports
4. Provide the users with links to the report pages
   1/ http://sitecollection/_layouts/SpUsageSite.aspx - view site collection reports
   2/ http://sitecollection/_layouts/SpUsageWeb.aspx - view site reports

Use a web part to display the links and above and audience targeting so only the users in the SharePoint group “Usage Report Viewers” see the web part.

One of the most common programming issues I see when working at clients locations is the way the common .Net DataSet is managed. I see a lot of code written like the first example below which checks if the DataSet table contains any rows. The problem with Example 1 is it expects a couple of things. Firstly that a DataSet (ds) even exists and secondly that it also contains a table. This code will throw an exception if the DataSet is null or no DataSet table exists.

Example 1
//this will throw an exception if ds is null or no table exists
if(ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0)
{
            //process data
}

Example 2
So you should write your code checking of empty rows, empty tables and if the DataSet object exists.
if(ds != null && ds.Tables.Count > 0 && ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0)
{
            //process data
}
else
{
         // it is empty
}

Happy Coding!

I created a custom IFrame web part that has a dynamic source property. The client wanted the IFrame to dynamically resize itself to the browsers width and height.

To achieve this we needed to place the web part directly into the page i.e don’t use a webpart zone. A web part zone wraps tables around the IFrame and controls the width and height properties.

I read a few articles about using JQuery….may have to give this a go also.