Kirk Evans Blog

I just posted Part 1 of a series of SharePoint for Developers screencasts that show developers how to use the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 1.3 to build and deploy assets for SharePoint.  In this screencast, I focus mainly...

I’ve done a bit of work with customers interested in consuming SharePoint data without using the SharePoint web services.  A common request asks how to consume the data from JavaScript. Turns out the answer is easy when you develop a custom feature...

I’ve seen a few questions asking how to install VSeWSS 1.3.  This post walks you through it. First, download VSeWSS 1.3.  The February 2009 CTP is available here.   Once you’ve downloaded it, run the executable. Once the installer is running...

WCF makes it easy to call the SharePoint web services using WCF.  In this post, I’ll show how to call the Lists.asmx web service and show the few things you need to take into account. Creating the Proxy Just like if you were using ASMX web services...

Awhile back, I posted about creating an image handler to render images stored in a database .  Someone pinged me and asked how you could use that with ASP.NET Dynamic Data web sites.  Hmm… I haven’t looked at Dynamic Data very deeply yet, so...

Lately I have fallen in love with Office programming, but I’m still a complete n00b at it.  I was pilfering through my RSS feeds the other day, and realized I didn’t have a way to export the feeds list as OPML.  Hmm… good time to open Visual...

Even more free training for SharePoint Developers.   Module 1 - Developing Solutions on the SharePoint Platform » learn now Module 2 - Web Parts » learn now Module 3 - Page Navigation » learn now Module 4 - Page Branding » learn now Module 5...

Hotmail now supports POP3! POP server : pop3.live.com (Port 995)   POP SSL required ? Yes User name : Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com Password : The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live SMTP server...

It turns out to be pretty easy to customize the look and feel of a SharePoint site using SharePoint Designer 2007 and Internet Explorer 8.  Using IE8, you can easily find the CSS class for a particular element and modify it, and SharePoint Designer...

If you are suddenly unable to debug ASP.NET apps using the ASP.NET Development Server (aka “Cassini”), check your hosts file and make sure there’s an entry: 127.0.0.1 localhost There was an update on March 9, 2009 that might have removed this entry...

I have been trying to find a way to write an addin or utility to make the RSS support in Outlook suck a little less .  Outlook has support for OPML import, but it flattens the hierarchy in the OMPL file.  For instance, here’s a very small sample...

Need WCAG 1.0 compliance for your SharePoint sites?  Today, HiSoftware released the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint 2.0, a freely downloadable kit that helps you to quickly implement WCAG 1.0 compliant sites.  Read the press release for AKS...

Code Access Security (CAS) can be a difficult concept for developers to wrap their heads around, so I imagine that for non-developers CAS is probably a complete mind twist.  There’s a set of whitepapers at http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads...

The more I talk about SharePoint to customers, the more I end up talking about Office 2007 and, inevitably, The Ribbon. While I enthusiastically show Office 2007 and explain The Ribbon as one of my favorite features (yes I really do love the Ribbon),...

Just got this email from a coworker.  Had no idea this was available, I’ll certainly leverage the Friends and Family feature, especially for the conference calling number that we use within Microsoft… that will save me some minutes per month, absolutely...

This is just way cool.  Check out Eric White’s blog for a slick use of extension methods to make it easier to convert types in the System.Xml namespace to types in the System.Xml.Linq namespace , and vice-versa.  Here’s a quick teaser: XElement...

Sweet!  10 new SharePoint Themes released!   Each theme is represented as a Visual Studio 2008 solution that you can use with Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 1.3 .  This is cool because it shows you how VSeWSS 1...

While working on a demo for the upcoming NAB conference, one of the Silverlight product developers showed me a really cool API in SL3:  the WriteableBitmap API.  It’s really easy to use… you can point it at a UIElement and render an ImageSource...

I’m the first to recognize that it’s easy to complain, but harder to give props.  Today, I am giving props to the folks who started taking marketing at Microsoft seriously. I have complained both often and loudly about Microsoft’s marketing. ...

Eric Hoffman, a great guy from AOL has joined our team and is starting up a blog… watch this space… http://blogs.msdn.com/erichoffman .