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David Wise's Sharepoint blog

  • Silverlight XAP File Out of Date When Built with Expression Blend

      The latest project I am working on involves some rather tight integration between Silverlight and SharePoint so I’m getting my feet wet with these tools in the SharePoint-o-Sphere. I recently ran into an issue where the .XAP file that is needed...
  • Configuring Reflector in Visual Studio 2008

    Red Gate’s Reflector ( Formerly by Lutz Roeder ) is one of those tools that you can technically live without but the question then becomes: why?  It is free and makes SharePoint development that much easier.  And to be honest, those of us doing...
  • SharePoint Advanced Search Scopes Bug

    I have a situation where I need to allow a user to pick from a set of available scopes in the Advanced Search box in SharePoint.  In and of itself, this is not a problem as I can configure the Advanced Search Web Part to do this and then customize...
  • Hidden Gem in GMail Themes

    The other day, our good friends at Google introduced Themes for your GMail.  Big deal you say?  Just some new colors?  Think again.  Specifically think more like DreamScene on the web because these themes change.  I don’t know...
  • Curmudgeon, Revisited

    A while back, I mentioned the value of keeping an IT Curmudgeon around the office. Due to recent events, I must now amend that post. At the time I wrote that, I was working in an office with one and only one such person and immediate evidence matched...
  • Inside the SharePoint People Picker

    SharePoint provides a handy control commonly known as a "people picker" that allows users to search for and select users defined at some specified scope. This control is normally associated with Personnel field in a SharePoint List. However...
  • SharePoint Dev Tip - Restart the Timer

    The SharePoint Timer service is handy for what it does but it occasionally gets very hungry and devours hundreds of megs of RAM and keeps it for hours.  This isn't a problem on most production environments because of the memory those machines...
  • Devistafication

    There is a trend out there where people are taking perfectly good machines running Windows Vista and then uninstalling it in order to install the venerable Windows XP.  This process hasn't had a name up until now but I think I have come up with...
  • Vital Hotfix for Sluggish Design View in Visual Studio 2008

    Microsoft has released a Hotfix for the incredibly annoying performance issues when working in the Design view of an Asp.Net form that contained custom user controls. The installation info is on the MSDN Blog and is pretty self explanatory.  It takes...
  • The Battle for Nothing... or is it Null?

    I have worked in numerous programming languages and the one thing that I find most irritating is that every language feels the need to reinvent Nothing - literally - and then applies their own rules to it. In VB, Nothing is Nothing .  In C# and JavaScript...
  • The Value of an IT Curmudgeon

    They have stories from the dawn of computing, about the problems with tape backup, data layouts using bitmasking to save single bytes wherever possible and can regale you with tales of horror about the era of punchcards.  While they can expound for...
  • Accessing SharePoint List Data as XML

    The other day, I found myself in need of a way to access SharePoint list data as XML but the only method available to me was a simple http GET.  This is not too bad, but what can I get from SharePoint via GET?  RSS is too limited and scraping...
  • InfoPath 2007 / WCF Nasty Gotcha

    I've spent the better part of two days tracking down an extremely nasty bug in InfoPath that corrupts an InfoPath form completely and almost terminally after connecting to a WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) web service.  Each time you try...
  • Proper Disposal of Objects in SharePoint

    I just ran across this article on MSDN that is a fantastic read.  If you do any work where you manipulate SharePoint objects via code, especially SPSite and SPWeb then you must read this.  The article is outlines many of the gotcha's lurking...
  • Bizarre InfoPath Dialog

    I'm trying to open a local copy of an InfoPath form that was originally opened from SharePoint.  The actual .xsn file that I've been working with is on my local file system and that is where I'm opening it from.  However, when I...
  • SharePoint Service Pack 1 Links

    Microsoft has finally released the much awaited Service Pack 1 for SharePoint.  Unfortunately, not all of the links provided on the Microsoft download pages seem to go to the right places.  Here are the actual links that I've found. SharePoint...
  • What the Heck is RSS?

    The intent is for this to be one of those links that you send to your family when they ask: "What is RSS? Why would I care about such a thing?". If you are already familiar enough with RSS to know what it means, then this article is not for...
  • Connecting SQL Reporting Services to a SharePoint List

    There is a multitude of blogs that discuss how to access SharePoint data from SQL Reporting Services, so why another?  Simply because I had not found one that exposed all of the land mines I seem to hit when doing this.  So, I thought I'd...
  • New SharePoint Resource Center

    It looks like Microsoft has finally put together the first installment of a true Resource Center focused on SharePoint.  It has direct links to a lot of existing content that was previously scattered all over MSDN, some of which you might not have...
  • Hello, Live Writer!

    I started using Windows Live Writer late last week to author my blog entries and have to say that I am very impressed.  In fact, the last 3 posts on this blog were all done with it.  Once configured, it is fast, extremely easy to use and focuses...
  • Creating a Generic Dictionary

    It is great when you are in a field where you can learn at least one new thing every day. For example, I've been using generics since they became available in .Net 2.0 and yet, somehow, this was the first time I've seen this particular way to...
  • Lesson Learned While Customizing Newform.aspx

    Whenever you customize the default list forms (NewForm.aspx, Dispform.aspx, or EditForm.aspx) in SharePoint designer, never, ever, under penalty of torture using Ed Wood movies, ever, I mean ever, delete the default ListFormWebPart that is on those pages...
  • Handy SnagIt Trick

    I've been using SnagIt for years and absolutely love it. Recently, I needed to grab a picture of menus but also needed to apply some effects to the unimportant areas so as to draw more attention to the menus themselves. I stumbled a bit with the freehand...
  • Finally! A Good RSS Reader!

    It has been an arduous journey, but it appears that the search for a decent RSS Reader may finally be over!...
  • #RENDER FAILED in View With Totals and Grouping

    #RENDER FAILED while customizing a view can be caused by a number of factors. Here is a solution to one of those....
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