A Remote Content Editor Web Part in your SharePoint applications

A very interesting article was written by Christophe (or better known as PathToSharePoint) about a nice creative idea: How to control the home page (or any page) from your every SharePoint web on your every SharePoint SiteCollection on your every SharePoint Application. Christophe found (and implement) the idea to control those pages with the help of the Control Editor Web Part. This control will be connected to a shared file (over the entire SharePoint farm) and just execute the script from that file in your browser, so you can send mass messages to users, you can customize the page remotely (adding links, removing things from it), you can implement a custom security (or logging) mechanism with it etc.

The next step with this control is to create an administrative tool to manage the content of that file (not all users have JavaScript, HTML, CSS and SharePoint skills) and to integrate with your solutions, so your power users will have real time control over it. 

Indeed, a very interesting idea.

You can find more about this, on his blog here.

Feed your CAML some IntelliSense

Do you have problems in remembering all the key words and formats in CAML? Now this isn't a problem anymore! Thanks to John Holiday and his CAML.NET IntelliSense project. You can find more information about this on his blog: http://johnholliday.net/post/2009/01/18/Feed-your-CAML-some-IntelliSense-so-it-doesnt-bite-you-in-the-you-know-what!.aspx

To download the installer for the project follow this link: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/camlintellisense/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2212

Free MOSS 2007 WCM Learning Resources

Microsoft post a few free learning resources for those of you wanting to pickup MOSS 2007 WCM sites. 

These training modules provide architects with information about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management (WCM). The modules and accompanying videos explain the role of WCM architecture, building content management for your Web site, and server infrastructure and deployment. The modules also cover WCM design, security, and optimization.

You can download them from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b2c7980-b604-493f-b5ee-52c562458e34&displaylang=en

SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool

A new must have tool has been released by Microsoft! This tool is called SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool. This tool analyzes your assemblies and helps to identify potential memory leaks. 

This tool was made to help you to check your assemblies that use the SharePoint API so that you can build better code. It provides assistance in correctly disposing of certain SharePoint objects to help you follow published best practice. This tool may not show all memory leaks in your code. 

Please review the MSDN article on using Deploy in SharePoint applications here.
The SPDisposeCheck tool can be downloaded here.

Roger Lamb maintains a nice blog for the SPDisposeCheck team here.

SharePoint Skinner

A great tool for customizing and branding a SharePoint Web Site or portal is SharePoint Skinner.
It is a desktop application which enables you to visual edit the css for your SharePoint and save it as a SharePoint Theme. It is very easy to use and very productive. You should read more about it on its tutorial here: http://www.elumenotion.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=4
You will find it on CodePlex too: http://www.codeplex.com/SP2007Skinner

JQuery with SharePoint

I was searching for several  resources for using JQuery in SharePoint. I was impressed by how well can we use JQuery to customize SharePoint.

Some very useful resources and demos you could find here (made by Paul Grenier):

http://www.endusersharepoint.com/?s=javascript

 

§  JQuery for Everyone: Replacing [Today]

§  JQuery for Everyone: Force Checkout

§  JQuery for Everyone: Degrading Dynamic Script Loader

§  JQuery for Everyone: Preview Pane for Calendar View

§  JQuery for Everyone: Preview Pane for Multiple Lists

§  JQuery for Everyone: Expand/Collapse All Groups

§  JQuery for Everyone: Fixing Configured Web Part Height

§  JQuery for Everyone: Total of Time Differences

§  JQuery for Everyone: Total Calculated Columns

§  JQuery for Everyone: Manually Resizing Web Parts

§  JQuery for Everyone: Dynamically Sizing Excel Web Parts

§  JQuery for Everyone: Fixing the Gantt View

§  JQuery for Everyone: Cleaning Windows Pt2

§  JQuery for Everyone: Cleaning Windows Pt1

§  JQuery for Everyone: Dressing-up Links Pt3

§  JQuery for Everyone: Dressing-up Links Pt2

§  JQuery for Everyone: Dressing-up Links Pt1

§  JQuery for Everyone: HTML Calculated Column

§  JQuery for Everyone: Print (Any) Web Part

§  JQuery for Everyone: Accordion Left Nav

 

 

Announcing the WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint

The WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) Toolkit for SharePoint provides sample code for producing WSRP conformant data from SharePoint lists and libraries.  External portal platforms (e.g. BEA AquaLogic Portal, IBM WebSphere Portal, SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal etc.) can then render SharePoint data natively through their WSRP consumer portlets.  The Toolkit is available now for download from the MSDN Code Gallery.

The Toolkit demonstrates two possible methods of exposing SharePoint data through the WSRP interface and is intended to provide a starting point for customers who are interested in surfacing SharePoint data in non Microsoft portal environments.  The first method focuses on maintaining high fidelity with the SharePoint user interface and the second method focuses on providing flexibility and control over the rendered output.

Of course WSRP is just one of many options available to support portal interoperability and Microsoft continues to invest in open standards for interoperability including XML based web services, CMIS, Office Open XML, RSS and REST.  Microsoft is also investing heavily in Silverlight, designed to deliver rich user experiences and applications across multiple platforms.  For more details on the SharePoint interoperability story, visit the TechNet Office SharePoint Server Interoperability TechCenter.

A more in depth presentation about this tool will be shown here in my blog in the following few days.