I came across a good article for guidance regarding turning on SharePoint's publishing infrastructure, here is the link http://mindsharpblogs.com/penny/archive/2007/09/28/2973.aspx.

Notes for turning on the Publishing feature

• If you want to turn on the publishing feature you must do so at the Site Collection level first. Follow these steps...
  • Navigate to the Site Collection's top level Site then go to Site Settings.
  • Choose ‘Site Collection Features’ link.
  • Activate the ‘Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure’ feature.
• To turn on the publishing feature at the Site level. Follow these steps…
• Go the Site Settings page of the particular site.
• Choose to the ‘Site Features’ link
• Activate the ‘Office SharePoint Server Publishing’ feature
• You will notice you will now have access to Site Setting links such as ‘Navigation’  (under Look and Feel) that give you greater control over fine tuning your Site navigation.

This article may answer questions like….

•  How to start using web content management features of MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
•  I cannot see the ‘Navigation’ link under Look and Feel for my Site.
• Where is my Navigation link under Look and Feel

I have used events in the past extensively when developing windows applications. I just discovered a new feature recently when developing a windows workflow application. The ability to execute Code when Host Programs Add\Remove\Raise Events in your custom control\object.

I have developed a sample project to demonstrate the custom event feature. When you run the solution click on the "Add Handler" and "Remove Handler" buttons, you will see custom code getting invoked. One needs to be familiar with the base windows event\delegate model before your understand what is happening here to appreciate it fully. 

Download CustomEvents.zip, unzip it and run the solution.

CustomEvents.zip (36.98 KB)

Team Foundation Server, setting up your version control folders and branch relationships to properly merge code in the model

Somebody asked me a question how to make a form immovable once it is loaded - I am sure this is not a very common request...I looked at the form properties but did not come across any property at the form level that achieves this...so I wrote some code to do it - it seems to work. Throw this code into your form code...

'Trap Initial Form Load to capture initial form coordinates
Dim originalLocation As System.Drawing.Point

Protected Overrides Sub OnLoad(ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
   MyBase.OnLoad(e)
   originalLocation = Location
End Sub

'After location changes restore back to original location
Protected Overrides Sub OnLocationChanged(ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
   MyBase.OnLocationChanged(e)
   Location = originalLocation
End Sub

http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2007/05/free-powershell-introductiongetting.html

Vishwas Lele gave an excellent talk on MOSS 2007 - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server today. I was impressed with the features and the kind of extensibility power that is encapsulated within this product - Vishwas started out by explaining how MOSS is based off WSS 3.0 and ASP.Net 2.0 which are tightly integrated to basically give you features from both worlds i.e. SharePoint features using WSS 3.0 features and programming\extensibility using ASP.Net 2.0. He then continued showing how you can have a single site but show different users content based on their regions. He also demonstrated Content Types and how do drive lists based off them. I was impressed with the extensibility options using InfoPath 2007 where you can now allow an end user to design\change forms without installing InfoPath on their PC's - this is achieved using Forms Services which are web based. In the end Vishwas demoed how the MOSS also includes Excel Business Services where you can harness formulas\business logic embedded in Excel to drive your business logic. Also coupled with .Net 3.0 you can use Windows Workflow which is tightly integrated with MOSS, this interests me since I develop mostly business applications which have complex business workflow logic. Great talk from Vishwas which I highly recommend.

For more on developing solutions using the MOSS technology go to this excellent article http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/08/GatheringMoss/

 

I picked up this month’s MSDN magazine and came across an interesting article. The article described a way to test .NET Classes though the command line!!! Who would have thought of that - obviously Microsoft did and is achieved through a free downloaded program called Window PowerShell. This excited me due to its potential of Unit testing objects. Here is the link to the article http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/05/TestRun/default.aspx

 

Here is what I did first

• Downloaded Windows PowerShell for XP from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx
• Open Windows PowerShell through your Start Menu. The first things I tried to do was type in old DOS command like dir etc. and they worked. In fact the tool gave me more information on the files e.g. was the file in the listing read-only etc.
• The first programming I try to do is to write a program\profile that executes on start up – here is how I got it working
  • The article mentions that you can view your profile file (startup script file) when you type notepad.exe $profile. But that does not quite work since it seems the file does not exist by default.
  • Type $profile in the command line. This will show you the path of the startup script file
  • Create the directory and file physically in the path show e.g. My Document\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
  • Now go back to the power shell prompt and type notepad $profile – this opens up the profile file correctly now
  • In the profile file type in the text below and save. Open power shell the script should execute…
    • C:
    • C:\
    • write-host "My first windows power shell script"
  • Well it won’t execute by default. Power shell disables script execution by default for security reasons – to enable scripts to execute, I executed the command
    • set-executionpolicy unrestricted
  • Re open the Windows PowerShell program, you will now see the message “My first windows power shell script” and notice that your default directory is C:\
  • !!SUCCESS!!!

 

More to follow tomorrow\this week – this is exciting cannot wait to start unit testing….

There is a code camp  at Reston, you will find more information at http://novacodecamp.org/. Code camp is a ONE day deal where you can sit and listen to industry technical guru's belt out presentations on the latest topics in the Microsft Technical Arena and best of all it is free. A must go...

My First Windows Mobile 5.0 Program using Visual Studio 2005 - T-Mobile Dash Smartphone - Steps for beginners and sample first program with source code

Brian Noyes presented at the Capital Area .NET User Group today http://www.caparea.net/Default.aspx?tabid=54. He went thought the basics of WCF and did a simple demo showing us the fundamentals of the underlying concepts - He went through the ABC's - A - Address (Where) B - Bindings (How) C - Contract (What) - We went on to see how we define the Contract and related objects and how to host a Service to ultimately consuming it through a proxy. Very good presentation.

Brian has his blog at http://www.softinsight.com/bnoyes/ He is also coming out with a new Book on Click Once Deployment technologies which is coming out next month December 2006.

If your .NET solution contains projects that contain custom/user controls for windows/web forms these controls are automatically loaded into the toolbox so that they can be utilized on your forms. In some cases when there are a large number of controls in your project the solution seems to compile slowly or the toolbox seems to take quite some time to load. If you are facing such issues turn off the AutoToolboxPopulate property on the ToolsàOptionsàWindows Forms DesigneràGeneral tab.

http://www.madcodecamp.com/photoalbum_contents.aspx?Albumid=5

Something basic, Not that you would but you could...If you want to debug .NET solutions without Visual Studio you can use DBGCLR.EXE to do so which gives you a GUI interface to debug .NET Executables/Programs/Processes. To use this you either need to have the .NET SDK 1.1/2.0 installed or Visual Studio (in which case you don't need to use DBGCLR). Users who have SDK installed can find the tool at Microsoft.NET\FrameworkSDK\GuiDebug. Users who have Visual Studio installed can find this tool at Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\GuiDebug for .NET 1.1 or Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\GuiDebug for .NET 2.0.

 

Click here  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d9kh6s92.aspx to get a listing of tools for the .NET Framework.

Writing Cross-Language .Net Solutions in VB.Net, Visual C# and Visual J#

I have uploaded the Mirosoft Reston Code Camp presentation and source code for my talk on custom controls (with data binding) at http://www.knowthycode.com/Downloads/20060608/WinForms_Custom_Controls_Presentation_Clyde.zip

The schedule and details for the Reston Code Camp can be viewed at http://www.madcodecamp.com/schedule/codecampmain.htm. Hope to see you there.

Geoff Snowman and Lamont Harrington are going to host a, what I believe to be an excellent session on Biz Talk integration. So if you are a novice, expert or simply want to know more about Biz Talk and how it integrates with other microsoft products come on over. Find out more at http://caparea.net/Meetings+and+Events/509.aspx

Microsoft will be hosting a Code Camp on June 10’Th. The code camp is a great event for .NET developers to network and also gain a lot of information on the topics that are current and unique. The speakers in Code Camp are experts on topics they speak on and have a lot of experience in the subject they are presenting; it is a good opportunity for developers to get questions answered in person. You actually see code being developed on the fly!!!

Call for Speakers- To present on a wide variety of topics from Web Applications, Smart Clients, Data Access and Security Best Practices.

Whether you are a speaker or an attendee we would love to have you participate in this developer event.

Whether you are a speaker or an attendee find out more here.

Boosting performance when using solutions that contain large Visual Basic projects in Visual Studio 2005

Designing and Debugging a User Control in DESIGNTIME and RUNTIME in Visual Studio 2003

HOTFIX: For Visual Studio 2005 crashing/compile errors message while Debugging using Edit and Continue or ASP.Net

If you have hosted your blog using dasBlog on your IIS Server then do not name the application as dasBlog. I had my blog hosted at www.knowthycode.com/dasBlo g. Brian had put a reference to my blog in his blog hosted in dasBlog, and it should have worked.

But nope the dasBlog Web application does not like the word "dasBlog" in any URL's specified in its web post's. So when you post the web log like brian did it kinda does a find and replace for the word "dasBlog" as part of URL's and really screwes up the way the HREF is rendered to a browser in the web post.

What does the replace is the section listed below in your Site.Config for your dasBlog web application. 

<ContentFilter find="dasBlog" replace="&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dasblog.net&quot;&gt;dasBlog&lt;/a&gt;" isregex="false" />"

Watch how weird this webpost looks due to the word dasBlog in it's contents.

Thanks Brian for pointing this out

Designing and Testing a User Control in Visual Studio 2005 using the Test Container

Smart Client Custom Controls Powerpoint Presentation and Source Code

I have officially started blogging November 19'Th 2005. I hope to share my ideas and concepts through this blog and have fun doing it. I speak at user groups about development using Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework 2.0, I want this blog to initially serve as a portal for people who are interested in and want to collaborate on topics that interest me.

About myself: Worked in the Software Industry for about 13 years. I started programming in COBOL/C/Unix and have since then gone onto build successful database intensive enterprise applications primarily using Microsoft Technology (VB6/COM+/.NET/ CENTURA/SQL Server/ORACLE). I specialize in building software components for use in Database driven GUI applications.

Thanks Brian for the help on blogging and everything else.