Reverse Alchemy

TS: Microsoft .NET Framework - Application Development Foundation

Erik Burger — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:53:59 +0000

Today I passed the 70-536 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework - Application Development Foundation exam. I’m happier about this one than I was about the Web-Based Client exam since I barely had time to study due to illness. So, this completes my MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications and gets me yet another step closer to my MCPD: [...]

Starting a Virtual PC Image without starting the Console

Erik Burger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:34:20 +0000

I use Virtual PC for my desktop virtualisation needs. I love how virtualisation works. I have a set of base images I use to quickly set up any development environment, anywhere (provided the host pc has enough memory, which is pretty much a non-requirement these days). Today I was getting settled down to do some SharePoint development. [...]

Adding the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt to your Explorer Context Menu

Erik Burger — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:17:31 +0000

Recently I’ve been exploring the possibilities of MSBuild in my projects. MSBuild is a command-line tool so this involved spending a lot of time at the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt. And having to change directories every time I started a new instance really started getting on my nerves. So, Google to the rescue! I found [...]

PDC 2008 Sessions Available

Erik Burger — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:39:35 +0000

I’ve just found out that all the sessions of the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008 that took place end of Oktober are available on Channel9. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend but this makes up for a lot! The videos can be found here: http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/. Also, keep an eye on the official PDC website here: http://www.microsoftpdc.com/. Enjoy!

Don’t be like Everyone Else - Check your Code

Erik Burger — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:52:23 +0000

There is an -imho- disturbing tendency amongst developers when it comes to applying coding and style standards, unit testing, duplication analysis and the like. The typical mindset seems to be “if my colleagues don’t do it, I won’t, either”. I know, I’ve been there as well. In fact, I am still there. But if you [...]

Fields not Showing in Custom List Definition

Erik Burger — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:43:00 +0000

For an internal project we were creating a number of custom List Definitions by editing the schema.xml files. When we opened an instance of the List Definition in SharePoint, the fields we had added did not show up in the View, New and Edit forms. Only the Title field was visible. As it turned out, the [...]

Converting an Object to/from Anything - Implicit Type Conversion

Erik Burger — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:11:01 +0000

Sometimes you discover a little gem that you just know you will be using over and over again. My latest discovery is implicit type conversion. Implicit type conversion basically allows you to convert any object to any other type. Note that not all conversions make sense. As an example, let’s assume the following Field and FieldList [...]

TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development

Erik Burger — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:31:01 +0000

Today I passed the 70-528 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 – Web-Based Client Development exam. One more step towards my MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer certification

SharePoint Custom Templates and Language Packs

Erik Burger — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:16:57 +0000

Recently I’ve been working a lot with the SharePoint standard templates. A client wanted us to build a Web Part that had the look and feel of a standard SharePoint Web Part and the easiest way to achieve that was using templates. Using these, we didn’t have to worry about custom fields, save buttons, validation [...]

Loading SharePoint templates from a different location

Erik Burger — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:39:30 +0000

In his excellent post on How SharePoint 2007 Renders Its Content Geoff McElhanon shows how to programmatically load SharePoint-based templates. The code he shows us is as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 // Initialize template container with our custom template templateContainer = new TemplateContainer(); templateContainer.Template = SPControlTemplateManager.GetTemplateByName(RenderingTemplateId); // Add the container to the webpart control hierarchy Controls.Add(templateContainer); However, I ran into [...]