A small good-to-know with FireBug

Like me, I think you like it, the FireBug. It is really nice, helpful when especilly you work with CSS.
But have you ever been frustrated when you work on those for hyperlinks i.e. a:link, a:hover etc?
You want to know which of the classes takes the effect when it appears on the browser, but it tells you that only when you click the element.
But with the case with a hyperlink, when you do so, what takes the effect is that of “hover”, not that takes the effect when the page is loaded.

I was very frustrated, helpless, but found out that just by coincident, after you once selected the element, if you refresh the page, it tells you the css class that takes the effect at the page load time.

Business Data Catalog.

Gaaaaa!!
Lately Sharepoint keeps disappointing me. Here is another one.
We can not make BDC available to anonymous users. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948729
Since I am using MOSS for an internet facing site, where majority of pages are supposed to be accessible anonymously, this is a big limitation.

And also, I just can not find the exahusted reference listing and explaining all possible values that a Property of an element in the application definision XML can take.

I expected that the BDC Definition Editor in the SDK would do the IntelliSense. But not. It just pops up a blank textbox where you have to type a valid value…

Customize list form

This is really still just my own memo.

To redirect after submit, add ?source=URL.

The official way (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101191111033.aspx) of creating a custom list form, uses the DataFormWebPart.
It has a limitation. Attachment does not work. So it has to be disabled.

There seems unsupported workaround exists. http://cid-6d5649bcab6a7f93.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!6D5649BCAB6A7F93!130.entry


If it is just to apply the coporate masterpage, we could go just by replacing that of the default NewForm.aspx with whichever masterpage we want.
Attachment works.

BTW, NewForm.aspx uses ListFormWebPart. We can not customize it, or a very little. For instance, it seems we can not hide fields that we do not need users to fill in.

Input validation. http://rdacollab.blogspot.com/2007/07/custom-sharepoint-edit-forms-with.html

My first experience with Subversion

On the Subversion server, I did:
- Create a folder for my repository, and
- Did TortoiseSVN “Create repository here …” on the folder.
This should be the equivalent of doing DOS> svnadmin create (path to the folder).

And on my PC,
- Create a folder structure in a temporal location, in the way that I want to organize my projects like below.
Category1\ Project1-1\ trunck
branches
tags
Project1-2\ trunk
branches
tags
Category2\ Project2-1\ trunk
branches
tags
etc.
- Then, import those Categories, specifying the repository’s URL i.e. http://(svn server)/svn/(repository)/.

I wanted to organize projects in categories in one repository, but seems they are igonored when I imported.
What created in the repository are only the projects, in flat structure, no categories…

Then, finally I import my VisualStudio solutions and projects as follows, always on my PC.
For each,
- Import the VS solution, specifying this time URL of the project’s trunk folder i.e. http://(svn server)/svn/(repository)/(project)/trunk.
# my categories were completely ignored…


Here is how to make changes into those projects, and save back into svn.
- First, I need to checkout the VS project from svn, into an empty folder of the name of the project.
# I can not make the change directly into the project from which I did the intial import.
- Then, make whatever modifications I need to do.
- Next, I could verify if nobody else has changed the project in the meantime, with check for modifications, or update.
- Finally, I commit the project.

Variations stopped

I suddenly realized that the Variations has stopped copying sites and pages from the source to the targets. No recent entries in the log…
Looked into the timer job status and difinition to find that nothing for this particular web application.

I stopped it once intentionally. Unchecked the “Automatic Creation” option. Then I was believing that I had started it again by checking it back.

Found this blog entry http://www.objectsharp.com/cs/blogs/max/archive/2008/02/25/missing-timer-job-definitions-after-sharepoint-move.aspx.
Although what triggerred it is different, the situation is the same. The jobs have disappearred.

I created a “cheating” publishing site collection in the web application in question. The jobs are back. Variations started again.

FlexListViewer

http://blogs.infosupport.com/porint/archive/2006/08/15/9865.aspx

Have you ever wanted to have a list presented on a page, which resides in a site different from where you have the list?
I believe the list and view are one of the big selling points of Sharepoint. I like them very much. On the contrary, I do not like the Content Query Web Part. Out of question.

Our site is of multi-lingual. We use the Variations technique. Though there are many points of it that I am not happy. This, I believe is one of the biggest shortcomings.
If you say to your users that they have to manage a separate list for each different language, they would laugh at you.

FlexListViewer is my saviour. It allow to have a view displayed in the other site than the one the list belongs to.

Better even, the source code is available. There was a small point of it that does not really fit to our need. We are in the usual, stagin -> internet facing setting. We prepare pages in the staging, and the Content Deployment pushes them to the internet facing site. The out-of-box FlexListViewer, the view URL needs to be a full URL, starting with http://hostname. But in our case, that changes, in the course of deployment. So, do not want to really specify any host.

Thanks to the developper, who made the source available. I modified it so if the specified URL starts with “/”, it assumes the host it is on.

Lock down the Internet facing Sharepoint site

There is such a command, but this post is not about that. It did not seem to me what I want.

I want to “lock down” the web site so nobody including me can modify it directly. We use the Content Deployment which pushes what we prepare, permission settings as well as contents, from the staging site to the internet facing site. So the modification should happen only at the staging site.

I said we copy the permissions. Our web site is very di-centralized. Every part has own group of people managing it. The management includes “targetting audiences”, restricting access in other words.

The solution I found is the “Policy for Web application”. It allows to say “Deny Write” for everybody.
This is good. Now even the site collection administrators can not modify it.

However then found that even the user used for the Content Deployment can not write into…

Then the solution found is to Extend the Web application, and define Internet zone for the actual service, Denying Write for everybody, while keeping the Default zone still writable.