cjwalker's WebLog

MIX UX announced

2008-01-30T06:18:47Z

I'm just a little bit excited by the prospect. Originally I was hoping to glean what I could on user experience from the original session line-up. Now the decision will be easy - it's almost like a conference within a conference.

Check it out here

It's not cheating

2007-12-20T04:58:00Z

If you know a uni or TAFE student keen to get their hands on Office Ultimate 2007 for a bargain basement price - check this out - http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/

Advertising isn't my usual thing - but I am very impressed at what we're doing here for Aussie uni & TAFE students.

User Experience enlightenment - the transition

2007-12-13T06:58:28Z

Over the past six months I have been transitioning into the User Experience realm. User interface design has been a simmering passion of mine since my earliest experience with computers. So from here on in you can expect to see posts on techniques I am trying out with clients, rants about bizarre designs, and helping you sell and spread the UX message in your organisations - and of course it wouldn't be an Microsoft blog if I didn't occasionally mention the MIX conference, WPF, Silverlight and the Expression tools.

Welcome to the team Angus Logan

2005-11-30T01:41:00Z

well he's not in my office, or with Microsoft Services, but at least he's with Microsoft Australia!! Glad to have him on-board.

http://msmvps.com/anguslogan/archive/2005/11/17/75847.aspx

SharePoint User Group for Brisbane

2005-11-09T09:05:00Z

Adam Clark has kicked off the Brisbane SharePoint User Group with a first meeting today.

The plan is to get together over lunch (12:00-1:30) on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at the Microsoft office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane.

Today's meeting was very informal, just getting a few interested parties together to get some input into future meetings.

In general the idea is to get technically minded people together to share experiences, techniques, best practices etc and hopefully impart new knowledge to each other around:

SharePoint integration with workflow, BizTalk, InfoPath and other MS products
SharePoint development - site definitions, customisations, web parts
SharePoint/CMS - what's coming with the next release
Applying SharePoint to real-life business scenarios
General SharePoint tips and tricks

Please contact Adam directly if you'd like an invite to the next meeting Adam@scrumpa.net

UPDATE::: http://bspug.officeisp.net/default.aspx the web site is now up and running.

Pre-populating a document library with pages/files using ONET.XML

2005-10-26T01:15:00Z

I recently came across a forum post that indicated that this wasn't possible - well just keep those challenges coming :)

It IS possible to pre-populate a Document Library with files.

Here goes (this adds a Web Part Page to a Document Library - obviously you could create a Document Library where the default page template is a Web Part Page)

1. in your ONET.XML add a module under your existing Default module
2. The name can be whatever
3. Use the List ID from whichever Library you want your docs or pages to go to (look earlier in the ONET file for this) - Shared Documents in STS is 101 by default, likewise use the Url to specify the URL of the Document Library
4. specify the Path to where your source files are (relative to the root Site Definition in the file system)

<Module Name="randomNameForModule" List="101" Url="Shared Documents" Path="DOCTEMP\SMARTPGS">

5. you can then add FILE elements for each file

<File Name="NewDocument.aspx" Url="spstd1.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >

... at this point you can also add web parts to web part pages using the AllUsersWebPart element

6. Include the module in the Configuration (usually the one with ID="0" Name="Default" - if you made a copy of the STS Site Def and just modified the default Team Site config)

voi la

the only gotcha I have found so far is when trying to add these new pages to a NavBar in ONET.XML - it seems that SharePoint uses one set of NavBars and FrontPage another (not quite, but it can appear that way) - I think it is problematic due to ghosting.

30 new applications for SharePoint

2005-08-05T01:20:00Z

These look pretty handy - I haven't looked under the covers yet - just discovered them today.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sppt/wssapps/default.mspx

Microsoft Australia looking for Senior BizTalk Consultants

2005-07-11T01:36:00Z

Mitch Denny puts it very nicely... in a nutsehell Microsoft Australia is after a couple of Senior Consultants with strong BizTalk experience for their Canberra and Sydney offices. Check out Mitch's post for details.

Brisbane, Australia - Brisbane BizTalk Community - BrizTalk.org

2005-06-05T14:52:00Z

A new special interest group has been formed for BizTalk users, managers, developers.

If you are a Brisbane local and work with BizTalk please come and join in.

http://www.briztalk.org/

"To identify and unite the expanding community of Microsoft BizTalk Server designers, developers, administrators and users
in the Southeast Queensland area, providing a forum to share knowledge, information and experience."

Sorting numeric values in a Data View when sourcing data from a web service

2005-05-29T11:05:00Z

There is something quirky going on that I can't explain. If you add a simple XML file with no schema (with int and string elements) to the Data Source Catalog and open the Sort & Group dialog for the Data View you get the choice of sorting on elements containing numeric values as numeric values - and not as strings. This is shown in the dialog as <fieldname>(Number).

For some strange reason this does not appear when you want to sort numeric values returned through a web service...

Anyway, to fix it:

Select the desired sort field in the dialog.
Edit the XSL - look for the dvt_1.body template, find the xsl:for-each and the xsl:sort within it that selects your sort field - add the attribute data-type="number"
Voi la