Mark Harrison: July 2005

WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues.

How to make that RSS or XML orange box thing without an image

From Westin's Technical Log ...

A lot of blogs have an orange box with RSS or XML written in it for people to subscribe to their syndication feed.

Here is a handy way to create that without using an image. Imagine if every website did this the total bandwidth that would be saved!

Samples: XML RSS

Here is the code:

<A title="Your Feed Name Here" style="BORDER: thin outset; PADDING: 0.02cm; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; BACKGROUND: orange; COLOR: white; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: none" HREF="Your Feed URL Here">XML</A>

Saturday, July 30, 2005

CMS RAPID interactive TV - slides

My slides from the Sky Interactive Conference .

Download . Zip password is: harrison

Update: video of demo is here ... shows how to use RAPID to create both Web and iTV content.

Compact Your VHD Files

From Heath Stewart (and Angus) ...

If you run the Virtual Disk Wizard from the File menu and choose to edit and compact an existing VHD, the wizard states that, "Before you compact this virtual hard disk, you must zero out free space on it with a third-party tool that you install on the guest operating system". The CHM file for Virtual PC 2005 Service Pack 1 has a similar message. Finding such a tool wasn't so easy.

More

Friday, July 29, 2005

Internet Explorer 7 beta

The first stage of the beta process for Internet Explorer 7 has begun - developer testing! The latest version of the world's most popular Web browser has been released for technical evaluation, feedback, and testing by software and Web site developers.

MSDN Subscribers can download Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1.

More about IE7 benefits

To learn more about Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 download the technical overview.

To learn more about the new way Internet Explorer 7 protects you against fraudulent websites and data theft, download the new Anti-phishing white paper.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Vote Telerik !

Chance to vote for Telerik r.a.d.Controls Suite in the annual .NET Developer's Journal Readers' Choice Awards in the Libraries and Controls category.

http://207.178.67.98/dotnet/readerschoice2004/frameliveupdate.cfm?BType=8

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Windows Vista Beta 1

Windows Vista Beta 1 is available for MSDN subscribers to download

Also - the MSDN Windows Vista Developer Center is now online.

csegSearch / csegRollUp - updates

Advanced SharePoint searching with csegSearch v1.1

Roll-up multiple SharePoint lists with csegRollUp v2

iFilters

For all you need to know about iFilters - start here.

An iFilter is a plug-in that understands the content and properties of a particular filetype - and is used by products such as SharePoint Portal Server, Desktop Search, Index Server and SQL Server.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

MSN Virtual Earth

MSN Virtual Earth is now live and running.

Also check out the community site ViaVirtualEarth.com focussing on building applications that use Virtual Earth.

And try this to locate yourself - http://virtualearth.msn.com/?autolocate=true

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Jason Burton - Technology & Public Sector

Jason Burton (portal technology consultant at cScape) has started to maintain a blog of news and views centred around the topic of technology in the Public Sector (primarily Local Government).

http://jasonburton.typepad.com/

IP Diagnostic Tools

Here are a great set of tools for diagnosing IP networking issues ...

Ad hoc IPTools Page

Friday, July 22, 2005

CMS.RAPID v1.1 available

I'm delighted to announce that CMS.RAPID v1.1 is now available.

CMS.RAPID enhances the core functionality of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 by providing an extensible development framework, rich functionality components and a number of solution starter sites that demonstrate best practises.

Key features of v1.1 were listed here.

The RAPIDSPS site which provides seamless integration between CMS & SPS will follow and hopefully be available within two weeks.

Windows Vista

Microsoft have announced Windows Vista - the official name of its next-generation Windows client operating system, formerly code-named 'Longhorn'.

Windows Vista Beta 1, targeted at developers and IT professionals, will be available by August 3rd 2005.

Watch the "Longhorn" announcement video.

One guys imaginative attempt to get on the beta.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

XSDObjectGen

XSDObjectGen ... is a code generator that takes an XSD schema as input and generates sample code showing how to mark up C# and VB.Net classes so that when serialized with the XML serializer, the resulting XML will be valid according to the original schema.

SharePoint and Outlook integration tool

Trinity Expert Systems has released a free utility that allows seamless integration between Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint Portal Server.

When installed, the tool forms an integral part of Outlook, and allows an easy 'drag and drop' action to copy or move specific emails into document libraries within a SharePoint intranet. The uploader tool provides quick and easy access to the relevant SharePoint document library.

It allows emails to be uploaded to SharePoint while offline, storing them in a queue until the user goes online. This feature means remote workers can quickly share information contained within emails across the organisation.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

CMS.RAPID:interactiveTV update

The Artemis guys are on the last stages of implementing the WTVML support for CMS.RAPID ready for the Sky Launch event. This will enable Microsoft Content Management Server to empower non technical authors to manage their content for sites targeting the Sky Interactive portal.

The launch event has been heavily over subscribed and the agenda has now been reorganised by splitting the one day agenda into two half day sessions, each covering the same material.

Organisations interested in using MCMS to get a SKY interactive TV presence should drop me an email at mark.harrison at microsoft.com (there is no charges from Sky).

Sky interactive TV - Site Central

With over 8 million subscribers in the UK, the Sky interactive platform enables advertisers, broadcasters, site operators and other interactive service providers to reach more viewers in more homes than any other digital platform.

Sites will be hooked in to the Sky portal by means of "Site Central" which will be the consumer hub that is available to all Sky Digital homes and accessible for the Interactive Main Menu.

There will be several ways to access a site ... all done via the remote control:

SkyKeys - discussed here - which are quicklinks for direct access
URLs - using a wtv prefix to distinguish it from web sites e.g. wtv.flowers.com
Search - by entering keywords into a search query
A to Z - find sites via alphabetised directory
Genre - browse site listings by genres such as education, entertainment and kids.
Spotlight sites - browse the 'Whats New' and 'Whats Hot' listings

Each household member can create a profile, where they can enter personal information and credit card details, facilitating speedier and hassle-free transactions. They can also add customised favourites and view their history, in a similar manner to features found on web browsers.

Live Meeting 2005 Add-in Pack download

The Live Meeting Add-In Pack consists of three distinct add-ins: the Live Meeting Add-in for Outlook, the Office Collaboration Add-in, and the Live Meeting add-in for Instant Messaging, each which offer unique features.

XPath Visual Studio Add-In

XPath Visual Studio Add-In ... this Visual Studio 2003 Add-In allows the user to test XPath expressions.

Manage web parts within a listpage

From Mart Muller ...

Just go into a SharePoint list, add ?ToolPaneView=2 to the URL, and viola, you can manage the webparts on the page.

More

Monday, July 18, 2005

New RAPID Product Manager ... CMS.RAPID v1.1 availability

Jan Holloway has joined ArtemisCorp as RAPID Product Manager and has revealed ...

Artemis will launch CMS.RAPID 1.1 this Friday; July 22.

CMS.RAPID 1.1 builds on the powerful feature set and capabilities of 1.0, and demonstrates Artemis' ongoing commitment to the RAPID framework and the growing Partner community.

Key Features of 1.1 include:

Membership - ASP.NET 2.0 membership provider implemented on ASP.NET 1.1
- Ability to create user accounts and store user details and preferences and personalisation data
Role base security model (ability to protect defined channel via member role)
Share Point Integration
- Display WSS lists in RAPID control, including document libraries
Share Point Web parts
- List RAPID postings
- View a RAPID page fragment
Extended developer features
- Debugging
- Enhanced extensibility
Improved caching
- Caching can now be controlled at a RAPID control level
Connected Pages Work
HtmlPageBuilder as an alternative to the DivPanelRenderer
Ability to hide page properties for moderator approval
Extended XHTML (Tidy lib) support
Additional Web services to provide full integration to Share Point and any other consumer
Improved logging support (DebugView)
Bug fixes
New RAPIDOrange site with Membership enabled
New RAPIDSPS RAPID and SPS site (this site will follow approx ten days later after release)

RAPID 1.1 will be available for download from the RAPID Web site at www.cmsrapid.com from Friday 22 July.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Master Pages in ASP.NET 1.1

Master pages is a new concept in ASP.NET 2.0, that enables developers to define the site's look and feel once by putting all common UI shared across the site into a single file.

Until ASP.NET 2.0 is available for production use - Steve Stchur provides An Innovative Technique for Creating Reusuable Page Templates in ASP.NET 1.x.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Guidelines to Drive User Adoption of SharePoint

From Eli Robillard ...

SharePoint Advisor magazine has an excellent article by Garry Smith that covers the most important aspect of a SharePoint deployment: getting people to use it.

WavPad - music editor

Free music editor recommended to me

http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Telerik r.a.d.Dock

Telerik have announced a beta version of a new product called r.a.d.Dock - ive tried the demo and it is very cool.

It allows users to define dynamic layouts with simple drag-n-drop at design time and customize at run-time. Users can save this layout and later reload it again. A dynamic layout is built from dynamic objects (RadDockableObject) that can be rearranged on the client browser and special regions (RadDockingZone ) on the web page where these dynamic objects can be placed/docked.

The Quick Start Framework with Online Demos of r.a.d.Dock beta can be viewed at:
http://www.telerik.com/r.a.d.Dock

r.a.d.Dock beta installation is available at:
http://www.telerik.com/t3mp0m@t/2expire/RadDock_1_0_0_trial.exe

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

SkyKeys

Further to our MCMS solution for SKY interactive TV ... organisations with sites on the service will be able to subscribe for SkyKeys.

A SkyKey is a number that corresponds to key word used by a company or brand to promote their site, and provide a short cut directly to it. The SkyKey is a marketable keyword, that corresponds to a number sequence through the alpha-numeric keys on the Sky remote control, in the same way that 1-800-FLOWERS would represent the phone number 1-800-697483 in the USA.

For example, the site wtv.flowers.com could be represented by the SkyKey 3569377 (FLOWERS).

SkyKeys provide consumers with a consistent and reliable access to a given service while offering site owners a mechanism to promote their services. Below is the standard logo/format that will be used to market SkyKeys.

SharePoint Search with boolean operators

From Arpan ...

Stewart Frey has posted a search customization tip ... a quick way to demonstrate boolean searches.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Disabling the online Web Parts gallery

If you demo SharePoint in a standalone/un-networked VPC and find that the displaying the web part galleries can be slow - the solution is to disable the online Web Part gallery. This setting is hidden deep in the configuration - you can find it by:

Going to Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration
Select Configure virtual server settings
Choose the appropriate virtual server
Select Manage security settings for Web Part Pages
Set the Online Web Part Gallery to Disable

CMS.RAPID skills in demand

Interesting to see that recruiters are now looking for RAPID developers .... more evidence of its huge adoption.

http://www.jobserve.com/W5A9D6EF1B76F6471.job

Monday, July 11, 2005

Accessibility and MCMS

I was asked today how to develop MCMS sites accessible to W3C Level 2 / AA standard.

The easy answer is to use CMS.RAPID (with the Telerik editor) which delivers AA compliant sites 'out of the box' with functionality that includes:

DIV based page rendering
Access keys
Alt tags autogenerated if not specified
XHTML control output
Optional 'safety net' filter to ensure XHTML compliancy

Going forward - we are intending to make CMS.RAPID AAA compliant and just started identifying the work required.

MCMS Enhancing Performance with Caching

From Mei Ying / Joel / Stefan ...

Microsoft has published a chapter of the book, Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server, on MSDN.

It's about enhancing the performance of your MCMS website with caching. It introduces the different caching mechanisms used by MCMS and demonstrates how you can apply output caching to postings, channels and even controls.

Read

Sunday, July 10, 2005

MCMS Manager v3.0

Chester releases version 3.0 of his MCMS Manager - a great tool that extends the functionality of the standard Site Manager.

Intellisense for XSLT & web.config/app.config

Visual Studio provides intellisense functionality by using schemas located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\Packages\schemas\xml .

Here are some examples that provide support for editing XSLT & web.config/app.config:

Now all I want is intellisense for CMS.RAPID XML templates in Visual Studio .NET .

Get your own cBlog / SharePoint Blog

From Jim Duncan ...

In partnership with Voicegateway.com, we have launched a free blogging service using the cBlog site definition.

Get your very own cBlog site at http://www.mycblog.com

MCMS Site Map Provider for ASP.NET 2.0

Stefan Gossner's code for MCMS Site Map Provider for ASP.NET 2.0 is now available. More info here.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Free VS05 and SQL05 e-Learning

From Owen Allen ...

For the next four months (approximately), Microsoft is making a ton of e-Learning courses available online for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005.

Live Meeting Add-In Pack

Live Meeting Add-in for Outlook ... With the Live Meeting Add-in for Outlook, you can:
- Schedule a Live Meeting from Outlook
- Identify individual meeting participants as attendees or presenters
- Send separate invitations for attendees and for presenters
- Specify default meeting options and override those defaults for specific meetings
Live Meeting Add-in for Office Collaboration ... With the Office Collaboration Add-in, you can start a Meet Now meeting directly from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, or Project. The document appears in an application sharing session.
Live Meeting Add-in for Instant Messaging ... If the recipient also has the Live Meeting Add-in Pack installed, you can start a Live Meeting from Windows Messenger or from MSN Messenger.

Download

Friday, July 08, 2005

First public O12 demo ... server-based InfoPath

Microsoft Watch reports on the first public demos of Office12 including a showing of a server-based InfoPath-based form in a browser

More: CNET - More: EWeek

ICE - 'In Case of Emergency'

Campaign is growing for everyone to store next of kin details in their mobile phones. By entering the letters ICE - 'In Case of Emergency' - into the mobile's phone book or home screen, users can log the name and number of someone who should be contacted in an emergency.

More

Thursday, July 07, 2005

CMS.RAPID:interactiveTV

Further to this announcement Sky has revealed more details of its interactive TV service, with new ways for organisations to get onboard.

The breaking news is that ArtemisCorp and I have been working with Sky TV around CMS.RAPID:iTV - a version of the RAPID framework that uses a TVPage Builder to deliver content and services using WTVML.

With zero charge from Sky and the low cost of implement CMS.RAPID, it means that public and private sector organisations can create and deploy content for the Sky platform with minimal effort or cost. And a great advantage of using CMS.RAPID is that the same content can be delivered in an optimal manner for both the Web and Sky channels.

Screenshots

Sky Interactive Conference

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Technology partner for the London 2012 bid

London will host the Olympics in 2012 ... we are delighted that Microsoft UK as Technology Partner had the opportunity to support this winning bid which will truly help the UK realise its potential.

http://www.london2012.org powered by MCMS.

From Justin Drerup ...

... the award winning web site that assisted the bid process was all done on Microsoft technology, in particular ASP.NET, MCMS and SQL Server.

Outlook 2003 Calendar Views Add-in

The Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Calendar Views Add-in makes it easy for you to view your Outlook Calendar appointments through a filter that is based on Outlook labels and categories. For example, you can create a view that shows you only the appointments on your calendar that are labeled Must Attend, or are categorized as Important.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Live Meeting 2005 Web Parts

The Live Meeting 2005 Web Parts integrate Live Meeting with SharePoint (both Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server) to aggregate information together within a single portal so that teams can interact more effectively.

By integrating with Live Meeting Portal, users can seamlessly view their upcoming Live Meetings or recently made recordings without having to log-in or remember any passwords. Not only do the web parts provide a view into Live Meeting from SharePoint, but they also allow a user to conveniently publish meetings and recording into a shared event calendar, so that team members can interact more effectively by having everything in one place.

Download

Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Server 2005 beta

Introducing Microsoft's new server-based business performance management scorecard application.

The new application leverages the power of the Microsoft Office System to help organizations build, manage and use scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs), and perform deep analysis - all within an intuitive, collaborative environment. Business Scorecard Server gives companies a broad view of business opportunities, through which employees can better understand business challenges, effectively shape solutions and quickly execute on their objectives. Decision-making happens across all levels of an organization, and empowering employees with powerful business intelligence (BI) solutions can help them have greater impact.

While Business Scorecard Server provides rich "out of the box" functionality for scorecarding and dashboarding, ISVs have an opportunity to extend these capabilities to either add advanced BI analytics to the product or integrate scorecarding with LOB applications.

Web services and SharePoint technology extensibility are made available for ISVs to take advantage of to build, integrate and customize Business Scorecard Server.

More

Download the Business Scorecard Server Beta 1 bits

Webcast of Tech-Ed Session

SQL Server Report Pack for IIS

The Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Internet Information Services (IIS) is a set of 12 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services reports that works with a sample database of information extracted from Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) log files. This database can be populated with your own data using the Log Parser included with the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit. You can use also the sample reports as templates for designing new reports.

This Report Pack includes the following reports:

Global Statistics
Contains a top-level summary chart of visits and bandwidth for one or more sites with drill though for each month.

Site Summary
Contains a site summary for a specified site, month, and year. Includes a document map and all other detail reports.

Time Period
Shows a parent report with subreports containing time and date based visitor statistics.

Day of Week
Contains bar chart, bubble chart and table with visitor information per day.
Hourly Statistics
Contains a chart and table with visitor information per hour of the day.

Day of Month
Contains chart and table with visitor information per day of the month.

OS Statistics
Shows a table containing of the number of visits based on the operating system type. Also shows detailed chart with version information for Windows OS visitors.

Browser Statistics
Shows a table containing the number of visits based on the browser type. Also shows detailed chart with version information for Internet Explorer visitors.

Country Statistics
Contains a breakdown (table and chart) of the number of visits based on the country of origin.

Length Statistics
Contains a breakdown (table and chart) of the number of visits based on the amount of time spent on the site.

Pages
Contains statistics about the top 5 most viewed pages on the site.

Visitors
Contains of sub reports of Web site visitor statistics grouped by time and date.

Download

SQL Server Report Pack for SPS

The Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is a set of 8 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services reports that work with a sample database of information extracted from a SharePoint Portal Server environment. This database can be populated from your own SharePoint Portal Server environment using the downloadable Data Extraction Program (DEP). The DEP will read the SharePoint Portal Server data via the object model. You also can use the sample reports as templates for designing new reports. This Report Pack includes the following reports:

Storage Report
Shows a listing of the virtual servers and the number of collections, sites, areas, lists, files and size. Also shows a size distribution and storage usage chart, and a top 20 sites based on size.

Storage Trend Report
Shows four charts illustrating the virtual server storage trend, site collection growth trend, area growth trend and list growth trend.

Site Trend Report
Shows hit counts for virtual servers, collections, areas and lists. Also shows the top 20 sites based on hits.

Comprehensive Site Collections Report
Shows the list of site collections, who owns the collection, configurable characteristics about the owner and the date the collection was last accessed.

Detailed Site Collection Report
Shows top 20 pages accessed (based on hit count) for this site collection.
Detailed Page Report
Shows users who have access to the page, when they last accessed it, any referrer URL and number of hits. Also shows two charts illustrating user distribution and referrer distribution.

Best Bet Keyword
Shows top 20, top 10, bottom 10, or bottom 20 keywords used for searching. Also shows which keywords have best bets.

Search Terms
Shows top 20, top 10, bottom 10, or bottom 20 search terms used for searching. Also shows which search terms match a defined keyword.

Download

Tech-Ed Europe - see you there !

I'll be hanging around the SPS/CMS booth and at the ATE events.

SMove for SharePoint

SMove for SharePoint is a utility that takes the pain out of backing up, restoring and rearranging SharePoint Sites. Features include a UI for backup/restore, modifying SharePoint properties and other common SharePoint administration tasks. SharePoint sites can be moved and your taxonomy rearranged using Drag and Drop in a rich context sensitive TreeView.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Patterns & Practices - Enterprise Library V1.1

The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of Application Blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application Blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code, that can be used as-is, extended or modified by developers for use on enterprise development projects.

The June 2005 release of Enterprise Library is a minor update of the original version released in January 2005. Enterprise Library features new and updated versions of application blocks that were previously available as stand-alone blocks. All blocks included in Enterprise Library have been updated with a particular focus on consistency, extensibility, ease of use and integration.

What Changed ?

Sky Interactive Conference

Later this month I'll be presenting at the Sky Interactive Conference. This is a free 1 day conference on 28th July, at BAFTA in London, to promote the launch of the new e-business portal for interactive digital tv and is a must for e-commerce operators, brand owners, digital agencies and organisations that want to reach a substantial customer base and deploy content to multiple devices.

More details and registration

How to deploy web parts

From UK Office Dev Con ...

Method 1 - manual

Copy assembly DLL to either
- /bin directory for a given IIS virtual server (e.g., c:\inetpub\wwwroot\bin)
- Global Assembly Cache (e.g., c:\windows\assembly)
Copy DWP file to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wpcatalog
Copy resources to
- For GAC-registered parts, C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\wpresources
- For Web Parts in the /bin directory, C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wpresources
Adjust web.config
- Register as SafeControl
- Select Code Access Security settings

Method 2: CAB File

CAB file should contain
-Assembly DLL
-DWP file(s)
-Manifest.XML
-Resource files (if needed)
CAB won't contain
- Code Access Security settings
Server-side object model has methods for deploying such a CAB file
Deploy with STSADM.EXE
Located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN
Add it to your path
Stsadm -o addwppack -filename filename [-globalinstall] [-force]

Method 3: MSI File via WPPackager

All of the features of CAB file deployment, but with
- Code Access Security support
- Ability to uninstall via Control Panel
Get WPPackager.EXE from here
Add additional files to project for use by WPPackager
Run WPPackager after project is built

SharePoint - Office - Windows - Live - XBox Search, Content Management, Portals, Collaboration, Business Process, Business Intelligence, Social Networking

Sunday, July 31, 2005