Upcoming SharePoint 101: Tricks and Traps eBook Giveaway
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the SharePoint Buzz RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! This blog posts regular SharePoint 2007 news, updates of web parts, workflows, collaboration efforts, quick fixes and everything about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, especially with SharePoint 2007. Go ahead, subscribe to our feed!
Mark of EndUserSharePoint.com fame is looking to giveaway his ebook SharePoint 101: Tricks and Traps to all registered email subscribers via his weekly newsletters.
Mark has been blogging about all the trials and tribulations of End users who are throw into the world of SharePoint. Microsoft has done quite a bit to improve on the user interface and navigation of WSS / MOSS sites but there is still a slight learning curve for those new to SharePoint. Mark’s blog is a definite read on my blogroll and I am constantly sharing it on my Shared Item Feed.
If you haven’t done already, subscribe to EndUserSharepoint.com’s newsletter. Tell him, SharePoint Buzz sent you.
If you are not aware of this, then visit SharePointBuzz.com and view the items that I am constantly sharing on the sidebar. It’s probably the least used features by SharePoint Buzz visitors. I do plan on beginning more focus to it in the near future.
Another Free SharePoint Hosted Blogging Offer
Just got wind of this post, over at zevenseas.com, they are offering the first 20 people, who are genuinely want to blog about SharePoint using SharePoint, a FREE SharePoint Hosting Blogging Offer. The blog would be powered by CKS:EBE, with the following features coming prebuilt:
- Modular Theme Framework (”MTF”) that allows for the development of rich themes
- Support for Akismet comment spam detection
- Multiple categories/tags can be mapped to each blog entry/post
- Friendly URL (”FURL”) for the blog’s posts
- Friendly URL for the blog’s RSS feed (and support for FeedBurner)
- And more…
Now if you are not one of the 20 people that accepted, SharePoint Buzz is always looking for people interested in guest bloggers on our site. Feel free to contact us if you are interested.
2 New SharePoint Visual How To’s (Record Center and SPGridView)
Just some video viewing for those learning SharePoint 2007. The Visual How To’s are a great resource from Microsoft. Here are two new Visual How To’s:
Displaying Search Results in a Grid View in SharePoint Server 2007 (direct link to video)
Summary: Learn how you can bind search engine results to an SPGridView control to display the results in a grid format in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides various ways to display search results. This Microsoft Office Visual How To shows how you can bind the results from the search engine to an SPGridView control to display the results in a grid format. Using a grid to display the search results makes it much easier to compare results and their metadata. You can extend this example to provide additional functionality, for example, to perform bulk actions on the search results.
Putting Multiple Items on Hold in SharePoint Server 2007 (direct link to video)
Summary: Learn how to programmatically apply a hold to all items in a folder in a records center in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The records center in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 lets you define and apply holds to records. Applying a hold prevents records from going through disposition, which means that all expiration policies are suspended until the hold is removed. In the records center, you can apply holds to individual records or to all records that are returned in a search result. This Microsoft Office Visual How To shows you how to programmatically apply a hold to all items in a folder.
Download IE8 Beta 1 (IE8-WindowsVista-x86-ENU.exe)
Well it looks like the rumors are true as the Internet Explorer 8 Beta site is up and you can download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.
What can we expect from Internet Explorer 8?
On top of that, Microsoft has confirmed that IE8 will pass the ACID test and that you will be able to click the Emulate IE7 button in the command bar to browse the web like you did in IE7 when not developing your web site. Pretty cool!
Resources:
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers Now Available - IE Blog
- Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone
- Download Internet Explorer 8 from Microsoft Website (IE 8 Beta 1)
Download links:
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista x64 Edition and Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 Edition and Windows XP SP2 Pro x64 Edition
FREE Microsoft Press E-Book Offer!
Was browsing TechNet and noticed this link to a FREE Microsoft Press E-Book Offer! Register / login with your Windows Live ID and immediately download one of the following FREE E-Books:
Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo - Get a head start on using the Microsoft Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Project with advance insights from two experienced developers. This book introduces the LINQ architecture and classes, describes the new language features in both C# and Visual Basic, and provides code samples in both languages.
Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX by Dino Esposito - Get a jump on using the new framework for developing AJAX-enabled ASP.NET applications—with insights from a noted authority on ASP.NET. This reference covers the February 2007 release of ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0. It delivers practical instruction and extensive code samples to help you create state-of-the-art applications with the latest Web development tools.
Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney - developing next-generation applications. This practical introduction delivers advance insights and extensive code samples—simplifying the way you implement compelling user experiences for the Web.
Click here to Get the Free Visual Studio 2008 E-Book Offer [w/o redirect]
UPDATE: It looks like the only eBook that is free, is the Introducing Microsoft LINQ, the others are not complete eBooks. It would be nice if we got what was advertised.
Today’s SharePoint Buzz - SPC 2008 Day 1
Its the first day of the SharePoint Conference 2008 and I am missing quite a bit by not being there. After reading my daily SharePoint blog posts and news, a few buzz worthy news items are brought to my attention:
- Microsoft SharePoint Online by Microsoft Online Services
Based off of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Online is familiar and easy to use, and it enables collaboration within the applications your users already know. Additional features that are included: Single sign-on capability, Forefront anti-virus scanning and web form / phone based Teir-2 support for IT Administrators. The service offering will be provided in two flavors: Standard and Dedicated. If you would like to sign up for the beta, register here. Another site that points to this page is MOS Beta.In addition to Microsoft SharePoint Online, they have just introduced Office Live Meeting 2007, Exchange Hosted Services, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Office Communications Online
- Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint
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We have all been looking at ways to integrate Silverlight into SharePoint, Microsoft has just answered that question, with this new offering. “This Blueprint provides a helper assembly and sample Web Parts that are built by using the helper assembly to access SharePoint data sources from a Silverlight application. The helper assembly includes a wrapper class that hosts Silverlight and acts as a Web Part. Developers can build additional Web Parts on Silverlight by using the Blueprint, or they can modify the helper assembly themselves. SharePoint Products and Technologies and Silverlight are supported by Microsoft, but the Blueprint bits are not supported. They will instead be made available as shared source.”
- MSDN Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint - lists what is the blueprint and what is offered by Microsoft
- Silverlight for SharePoint Blueprint - explore the 6 different samples that are available for you; included are videos, code walkthroughs, visual studio solutions and setup instructions
- Codeplex Microsoft Software-plus-Services Blueprints - a series of open source frameworks and workflow-based guidance packages. As a starting point for both architects and developers who are building real solutions,, each Software-plus-Services Blueprint includes source code and/or utilities, guidance, structured step-by-step workflow-based guidance and tools delivered within Visual Studio 2008
- Channel9 Software Plus Services Blueprints wiki
- Flickr SharePoint Conference 2008 Pictures - if like me and you could not attend the SharePoint Conference, then why not feel like your there by checking out all the pictures that are being tagged with spc2008
Last week was very hectic for me as I was attending the Heroes Happen {Here} toronto event (sold out) and the Toronto Code Camp (700+ registrants). I was also fortunate enough to contribute to both events:
- Heroes Happen {Here} Canadian Community site
the designed by me (Kanwal Khipple) with the help of Muhsin Shahid. Mark Zanoski assisted with content and Bill Brockbank helped out tremendously with the server configuration and administration. You can read about it @ Share Your Experiences at Heroes Happen Here Events!!
- Toronto Code Camp - I was tasked with creating a PowerPoint template for all the presenters to use. If there is a request to see the template, I will share it
That’s all for now, this month, we will have another contest, weather web part and even some SharePoint branding samples.
Branding Master Page Tip #36
Here’s a SharePoint branding tip for the top navigation menu:
To change the background color for the top navigation flyouts via CSS using this .ms-topNavFlyOutsContainer { background-color:#000 !important; } will give you a black background but will still cause the background color to be different when the text size is smaller then the width of the largest text item in your flyout menu. For example:
To change this, just go to your master page and change the syntax for your top navigation from
<DynamicMenuStyle BackColor=”#F2F3F4” BorderColor=”#A7B4CE” BorderWidth=”1px”/> to <DynamicMenuStyle BackColor=”#000000” BorderColor=”#A7B4CE” BorderWidth=”1px”/>.
This will give you the following desired affect:
Replace the color black (#000000) with the color that you’d like the top navigation flyout menus to have.
