15 posts from: dev collutions
Honduras Bound
(Indexed 2004-07-07):
[Image]For the third year in a row, I'm off to Honduras with a team from my church. Being a team with me in it, we have our own website (SharePoint based, of course) for getting information out to the team and our sponsors. Check it out under the Show Me link. I'll more than likely be unable to get online whilst there, so you won't hear from me for about two weeks. Isn't that a great excuse for not blogging?
QMv2 - The power behind it all
(Indexed 2004-07-04):
[Image]Back to the SharePoint side of things, as promised, I've created a Show Me page detailing how the QuoteMachine web service was made. If you'd rather skip it and go straight to the source, click here.
QMv2 - Scalable Text
(Indexed 2004-06-29):
Ok, so this isn't really SharePoint related, but it's a pretty cool trick so I thought I'd share. Only one change to the Quote Machine v2 today. I added some client side scripting to make the text of the Quote resize dynamically based on the size of the window. Go ahead, give it a try: visit the latest variation, resize the window, be amazed by the automagically self-scaling text, and then come back... I'll wait... Wow, back already. And not too impressed I see. Oh well, it was worth a sho...(truncated)...
Pet Project: Quote Machine v2 - Getting Started
(Indexed 2004-06-25):
Well I've finally gotten around to starting on the new version of the Quote Machine. While the current version relies on SharePoint Team Services, Remote Scripting, and a Java Applet to do its magic (see earlier post), the new version will use more current technologies. Here's the short list: Server Side Technologies: Windows SharePoint Services a List to house the quotes the WSS Object Model to access the quotes data programatically ASP.NET a custom XML Web Service, QuoteMachine.asmx, wri...(truncated)...
Preview schmeview
(Indexed 2004-06-06):
[Image]I've made a few web parts in my day, but until recently didn't know enough about the framework to implement a design time preview. When I'd open a page with one of my web parts on it in FrontPage, I'd get a message saying 'The preview for this Web Part is not available.' This didn't really bother me (much) so I ignored it. But I knew there must be a way to get my web part to show up correctly in FrontPage. The key lies in implementing the IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface in the we...(truncated)...
Holiday?
(Indexed 2004-06-01):
[Image]Holiday plans fell through so I decided to spend the day 'working'. I created a workspace to share beta stuff a while back and spent the day today getting it ready for everyone. You (dear reader) can ignore all the 'us' and 'our' talk on the beta workspace; it's really just me so far. Call it wishful thinking, but someday Collutions will be BIG and I'll look like a jerk if I don't give credit to the whole team ;-) The Connected Page Viewer web part is now available there for anyone ...(truncated)...
Connected Page Viewer Web Part
(Indexed 2004-05-30):
I just noticed a discussion about the connected page viewer web part used on the WSS FAQ (thanks, Mads, for pointing it out). It is, as Mads pointed out, just an IFrame. It acts much like the page viewer web part that ships with WSS. However, once connected to a links list (or any list with a hyperlink column) it will get it's src property from the currently selected item. You can demo this on the WSS FAQ, in the Useful Documents section, at the bottom of the page. I suppose I could make i...(truncated)...
My Pet Project (continued) (again)
(Indexed 2004-05-23):
So anyway, you're probably wondering what the Quote Machine has to do with SharePoint. Ok, so maybe you're not. Heck, maybe you're not even reading this... After getting a pretty good grip on this SharePoint development stuff, I realized that if the quotes were in a SharePoint list, they would be much easier to edit. So I exported them from the Access database they lived in, dumped them into Excel, and from there imported them into a list on a SharePoint Team Services site. STS instantly gave ...(truncated)...
Filter by last x days
(Indexed 2004-05-19):
I'm going to put off continuing the story of the Quote Machine for another day. Instead, I'm going to take some time to answer a question I've seen a few times in the newsgroup. The question was, basically, 'Why the #$@& can't I use the [Today] variable in a calculated field? For that matter, why can't I filter by [Today] - 5 so I can show items added or modified in the last 5 days?' Perhaps it was asked in a less frustrated tone once or twice but that's how I felt when I was trying to make it...(truncated)...
My Pet Project (continued)
(Indexed 2004-05-17):
SharePoint Team Serivces was billed as 'a team Web site solution that is designed to significantly improve the way your team manages information and activities'. Alas, there is no 'I' in team, so 'I' didn't see how STS could be useful to 'me'. At first. It slowly dawned on me though that what STS really is (or could be) is a type of content management system. It is basically a database on the back end, full of content, and a web site on the front end. Sitting in between the two is a web ser...(truncated)...
My Pet Project
(Indexed 2004-05-16):
The Quote Machine is a pet project I've had going for about 5 years. What started out as a screen saver I found online has slowly morphed into a study in pushing web technologies in directions they weren't necessarily intended to go. I like quotes. The screen saver I found way back then would show a random quote on the screen for a bit (1 second + 1/10 second for each letter in the text - average reading speed, I guess) and then show another. It was a great distraction, and fun to watch, but a...(truncated)...
RSS - Everybody's doing it
(Indexed 2004-05-14):
The now has an RSS feed, just like every other blog in existence. Works good in BlogLines. To create the feed, I used the most excellent SharePoint Syndication Generator created by Siegfried Weber. It's a great tool. The only drawback that I can see is that it's so far a manual process. Perhaps I'll make a web part to connect to a list view that will generate the feed auotmagically. I got the button from gtmcknight.com and even made my own to put on my banner on the WSS FAQ home page.
I've got Presence!
(Indexed 2004-05-13):
I found a great post (among many) on Jan Tielins' Bloggings about Showing Presence Information In SharePoint Web Parts. I decided to add the code not to a web part but instead to the dwt for the site so that it appears on every page. You can hover your mouse over my name in the bottom right of the page to see if I'm online and available for chat. Click the little icon that appears to get the presence menu (requires that you have Messenger or Outlook installed, I think).
More on Grouping Behavior
(Indexed 2004-05-11):
Another thing I'd like the groups to be able to do is remember their state across page visits. If I collapse a group, I'd like it to remain collapsed the next time I visit the page. This is possible using Persistence, a feature supported by Internet Explorer version 5 and later. Adding persistence to a WSS list view is not an easy task, but it can be done. I like the way the posts here on the blog are grouped by date, and that you can click the group header to collapse them. Once I get them ...(truncated)...
Grouping Behavior
(Indexed 2004-05-10):
One of the great things about WSS is the ability to do grouping of items in list views. I sort of hacked this kind of thing into an STS site I did for a client last year. It was great to see it built into WSS, though something was missing... I typically run with my monitor(s) at 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution. This makes the little plus/minus image used for expanding and collapsing a group of items pretty small on the screen. Being a lazy person by nature, I would much rather be ale to click any...(truncated)...