FitzBlog

ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts rock. We in SharePoint-land love them. We’re building “v3” on ASP.NET 2.0. But none of that matters right now if you have to deliver code for today’s SharePoint sites and portals. And this advice comes from...

We had a fun internal debate this week on a new tool developed in France. If you can read French, it’s documented here ; the download link for the executable (whose UI is in English) is here . The tool grabs deleted documents from the database and...

I just got out of Steven Sinofsky’s keynote session on Office “12” here at the PDC, and that means one thing. Actually, multiple, things, but the big thing is that I can stop being (as much of) a jerk about not saying anything about...

I thought I’d start this next wave of postings with the subject I’ve avoided the longest — WSRP. This one will be a little long… What Is WSRP? The abbreviation stands for Web Services for Remote Portlets. There are plenty...

I did three presentations at last week's Book Publisher's Summit, talking to publishers and authors on topics that would be great for developer-focused books on SharePoint Products, namely (a) programming with lists and libraries, (b) site definitions...

So we’re getting ready to unveil a little bit tomorrow and a lot on Wednesday regarding WSS “v3” and our Office “12” servers, but a couple of things have popped up that are very, very relevant to people that want to develop...

The short answer: Heck, yeah! The long answer: For the love of God, don’t try it in production yet. SQL Server 2005 hasn’t shipped. But as we’ve been testing our beta code for WSS Service Pack 2, due out later this year, we’ve been testing it against...

I haven’t blogged for a while, but I’m hoping to make up for it — starting with this… I’ve told you before that, if you want to add full SharePoint document library support for your own document editor, you'll have to...

Following on to my previous post, another observation that's been made out there is that our standard MOC courseware falls short of what many of you want/need. I'll respond in two ways: First of all, the developer course is targeted at the introductory...

There’s a nice article on TheServerSide.NET entitled Integrating 3rd Party Single Sign On in Sharepoint Portal Server that explains how to write a custom (unsupported by Microsoft) forms authentication layer that sits in front of SPS and WSS. But...

This is one item I’ve been holding back for a while. FrontPage “12” will be a great SharePoint site designer on many, many fronts. Like the current version, using it to edit a page in a SharePoint site will cause the page to become unghosted...

The last four days here in Orlando have been a blur, and that’s not because of the humidity or the evening events. There’s a lot going on here. There are a lot of people here. There’s a lot of content here. And there are a lot of good...

If you’ve been at a talk delivered by me, Bryan Jeffries, or Richard Mareno entitled something like “Programming with Windows SharePoint Services’ Lists and Document Libraries”, you’ll have heard the following explanation...

I get asked “how many Web Parts exist” all the time. The question drives me crazy. I understand why. Portal vendors cite the list of available portlets they have on hand as strategic selling points. They want to cite the equivalent number...

Gregory MacBeth provides a nice enumeration of the skills you need to be a “SharePoint developer”. It’s a good list. I endorse it. But examine it closely, and I hope you’ll come to the conclusion that the way to be successful when...

Next week I’m going to post something that explains the relative merits of efforts like IBuySpy Portal, DotNetNuke, etc., compared to Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server. We’re getting asked that question a lot. We also...

I’m not going to say anything more at this time, but I’d strongly suggest that attending this year’s Microsoft Professional Developers Conference would be an exceptionally good idea.

We get asked about what we're doing about AJAX quite a lot these days, especially about ASP.NET for AJAX (the technology formerly known as "Atlas"). We *love* AJAX. We actually use AJAX (albeit not ASP.NET for AJAX) all over the place in SharePoint sites...

WSRP, as I covered a few days ago, is an interoperability standard. It’s platform- and language-neutral. It’s all about requesting and transmitting chunks of HTML using SOAP. Today I’d like to weigh in on something usually uttered in...

The fact that there’s an Office/SharePoint Development track at this year’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, CA from the 13th from the 16th of September is a big break for you, for us, for everyone. Bill Gates mentioned a few weeks ago...

I’ve been at a lot of conferences in the past few months, and the question I was asked most often had to have been around what we support and don’t support when it comes to site and portal customizations, modifcations to site definitions,...

A number of times, people have said that we can solve the problem of confusion around the word “SharePoint” by just getting rid of the word. For example, we could just have “Portal Server” stand on it’s own, and we could...

My blog isn’t so much a running news log as it is an opinion column and platform for communicating practical advice. That having been said, I’ve been slacking off for too long. Well, take heart, as I’ve built up a backlog of things to...

I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am about the first issue of SharePoint Advisor magazine. I just got an advance copy, and the regular copies are leaving Advisor Media’s warehouses tomorrow morning. I’m biased — I’m on the...

Comments like "Unless of course you want to use them next year" made in reponse to my posting “Keep Writing SharePoint Web Parts Until (at least) 2006” make me wonder if people actually read my posts before commenting on them. Well.. just...