We have developed a webpart that will allow to display the top 10 trending topics in Twitter within a Sharepoint web page. The webpart uses a combination of JSON and JQuery. The webpart along with installation instructions can be downloaded from here
In order to add a Silverlight application to Sharepoint web page, we need to add a content editor web part and insert HTML object tag with appropriate properties. In order to make this process easier, we have developed a Silverlight Loader webpart.
This webpart will take in the Silverlight 2.0 application file (XAP) file path and loads the Silverlight application within the Sharepoint page. The webpart along with installation instructions can be downloaded from here
After viewing the Channel 9 video on Sharepoint development with Visual Studio 2010 we were eagerly waiting for the for the Visual Studio 2010 beta release to try out all those Sharepoint goodies. But when we downloaded and used the Visual Studio2010 Beta 1 released last week, we were disappointed to see that only two Sharepoint templates were available. The ones for sequential and state machine workflows. The templates for other Sharepoint project types such as webparts, lists etc were missing.
Later we understood from the MSDN forum that the full Sharepoint features is stated only for Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2010. So we need to wait until then.
Through the default font sizes in Sharepoint web pages might look fine on Internet Explorer browser screen, they will be very small when a print is taken of the page. This blog explains how to fix the issue by using the CSS media rule.
The CSS 2 media rule specifies how a web page will be displayed in different types of media. Using this rule we can specify different style settings for different media such as a screen, print, mobile etc. For more information on CSS media rule visit http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html
With the default Sharepoint styles the font size will look alright when viewing on screen, but when the page is printed the font size will be very small and the content nonreadable. The problem can be solved by adding media rule style settings to the Sharepoint master page (usually Default.Master). To increase the print font size we need to set the print media rule. This can be done in two ways
Internal Style Sheet
Add the following style tag to the Sharepoint master page
<style type=”text/css“>
@media print
{
BODY {font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; !important}
TD {
font-size:12pt; line-height: 24px; !important}
}
</Style>
External Style Sheet
Add the style tag in an external CSS file and refer to it in the Sharepoint master page using the link element.
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”print.css” media=”print” />
Adding CSS media rule using any of the above-mentioned methods will increase the print font size of Sharepoint pages without affecting the visual appearance.
Cheers,
V.Kumar
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to create gripping blog posts. Live Writer has a lot of features that give better blog experiences such as WYSWIG authoring, Photo Publishing, Map publishing, Video embedding etc. Windows Live Writer is free and can be downloaded.
Live Writer supports posting to popular blogging sites such as Live Spaces, Blogger, WordPress etc. Live Writer also supports posting to SharePoint blog site. Rest of this blog explains the process of setting up Live Writer to post to a SharePoint blog site.
1. The first step is to add a blog account to SharePoint blog from Live Writer. Click Blogs – Add blog account from the writer menu bar.
2. This would open a popup prompting to select the blog service to be used.
3. Select SharePoint blog and click Next button.
4. The next screen would prompt for the SharePoint blog URL. Enter the URL of your blog(for ex. http://MySite/Myblogsite and click Next)
5. Live Writer would configure blog settings and take you to blog post creation page.
6. Enter post title and content.
7. You can also add photos, links, videos etc to your blog post
8. Once you are satisfied with the content and styling of photos click publish button on the tool bar to post the blog to the SharePoint blog website.
9. That’s it your blog will be posted to the SharePoint blog site.
Shantha Kumar – MCTS
[email protected]
Sharepoint site pages by default will reference to core.css file. The core.css has reference to a lot of image files and http request will be placed to download the files even if it is not used in the page. This is not a desirable situation for public facing Sharepoint sites. In order to prevent core.css from being referenced the following CSS link reference has to be removed from the master page.
Once the CSS link is removed core.css will not be referred and therefore associated images will not be downloaded. Below is the snapshot from websiteoptimization.com which shows the number of requests with core.css and without core.css
With core.css
Total HTTP Requests: | 75 |
Without core.css
Total HTTP Requests: | 41 |
All public facing Sharepoint sites and Sharepoint intranet in some instance are configured to allow anonymous access. If anonymous users have read/write access to lists they will be able to see the Sharepoint list pages such as AllItems.aspx, Dispform.aspx, Editform.aspx, and Newform.aspx by using a URL like . Since this is not a desirable situation, anonymous users should be blocked from seeing the list pages. This can be achieved by changing the ASP.Net configuration settings for the Sharepoint site. Following lines have to be added to the web.config file of the Sharepoint site
<location path=”lists”>
<system.web>
<authorization>
<deny users=”?” />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</location>
This will prevent the anonymous users from accessing any pages under Lists. If they try to navigate to a list page such as http://server/lists/listname/allitems.aspx they will be prompted for username and password.
Sharepoint custom list data can be easily grouped on any column of our choice. We had a requirement to group a custom list based on Month Name and year from a date column for which we had to create a calculated column and tweak it. This blog explains how this was achieved
1. Create a new calculated column in the Sharepoint list.
2. In the formula for the calculated column use the TEXT function to extract the month name from the date column. The syntax for TEXT function is
TEXT(ColumnName,format)
For extracting the full month name use “MMMM” or use “MMM” for 3 letter month names. For example
Text(StartDate, “MMMM”) will return January whereas Text(StartDate, “MMM”) will return Jan3.
3. Use the YEAR function to extract the year from the date column.
4. The complete formula for the calculated column will be as shown below
=TEXT(StartDate,”MMMM”)&”-“&YEAR(StartDate)
5. The calculated (Events) column will now show month name and year as seen in the image below,
6. Now when we create a view and group it by the calculated column(Events) the view will display data as shown below
Popfly is a free online game & mashup creator from Microsoft. Popfly enables users to create and share web pages, mashups, and applications in a trouble-free way. This blog explains the steps involved in embedding a Silverlight based Popfly mashup within a Sharepoint page.
You can embed in Popfly mashup within a Sharepoint page in two ways, using content editor web part or page viewer web part. Before embedding the Popfly mashup make sure that it is publicly shared.
If you want to use Sharepoint Content Editor web part follow the below steps
1. Login to your popfly account and navigate to the mashup page.
2. From the share, panel click on embed link.
3. Copy the HTML IFrame script to a clipboard.
4. In your Sharepoint site navigate to the page where you want to embed the Popfly mashup.
5. Add a content editor web part to the page.
6. Edit the newly added web part and click Source Editor.
7. In the source editor window paste the script from the clipboard and click SAVE.
The Popfly mashup will now be displayed on the Sharepoint page as shown in the screenshot below,
If you want to use Sharepoint Page Viewer web part follow the below steps
1. In your Sharepoint site navigate to the page where you want to embed the Popfly mashup.
2. Add a page viewer web part to the page.
3. Edit the newly added web part.
4. For the link property give the URL of your Popfly mashup appended with “.small”. For example, if the URL of your Popfly mashup is http://www.popfly.com/users/346490/Cricket%20Images then the URL for page viewer web part will be http://www.popfly.com/users/346490/Cricket%20Images.small
Sharepoint pages not only contain contents but also additional sections such as top navigation, quick launch etc. Printing these pages using the browser Print option will result in the navigation and other sections also getting printed. To avoid this annoyance we at IOTAP have a created a Printer Friendly Page web part for Sharepoint which when added to a Sharepoint page will display a print button. Clicking this icon will open a printer friendly version of the Sharepoint page with the print dialog.
We have updated this webpart to use JQuery for simplification. You can download this web part and setup instructions from IOTAP webparts