April 24, 2014

IntelliJ Keyboard Shortcuts

I want to use shortcuts. I prefer the IntelliJ keyboard scheme. Which do you use?

April 16, 2014

Tip: Use the weakest CSS selectors

I am reading Mobile HTML5 written by Estelle Weyle. It is an awesome recap and new knowledge about html, css and javascript. I want to highlight one of tips I got: Use the weakest CSS selectors (can be found on page 204). We all know, that inline CSS and !important are evil. They have a higher level of specifity and override the standard cascade of the CSS rules. If you use !important, then it will be hard to override CSS rules when you really need it. After these two classic “evils” the evil number three is overqualifying of CSS selectors. You should really never add more classes or ids or elements than needed. Consider this: [code language=“css”] .warning { background-color: red; } [/code] It is often enough, you don’t need those: [code language=“css”] html .warning div .warning div.warning, div > .warning body p#myP.blue strong.warning [/code]

April 13, 2014

It is time to standardize the Chuvash Keyboard Layout

[caption id=“attachment_3165” align=“alignnone” width=“630”] Proto-Bulgarian Runes (Chuvash language is the closest language to the Proto-Bulgar language). Wonder if they are supported in Unicode :)[/caption] The Chuvash Computer Keyboard layouts have existed since 2001, but due to the lack for Unicode support we were forced to use the look-alike letters from other latin-based keyboard layouts. On Linux The Chuvash keyboard layout was added in [2007](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11246 “The original “bug” in FreeDesktop bugzilla”) and Linux is still the only operating system that has a native keyboard layout for Chuvash language. On Windows we have used the Keyboard Layout Creator and distributed it as an executable file. Today, when Windows XP is not supported anymore, the majority of users now have full support for the correct Chuvash letters from the Extended Cyrillic table. These four Chuvash letters are “additional” to the Russian alphabet: Ӑ, Ӗ, Ҫ and Ӳ. Now when new “keyboards” appear on Android, in web browser (they use the standardized letters) and hopefully in Windows and iOS, we have to consider put the correct letters into the keyboard layouts. For Linux the /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ru file has to be updated: [code] // Chuvash language layout // Anatoly Mironov @mirontoli partial alphanumeric_keys xkb_symbols “cv” { include “ru(winkeys)” name[Group1]= “Chuvash”; key.type[group1]=“FOUR_LEVEL”; key { [ Cyrillic_u, Cyrillic_U, 0x010004f3, 0x010004f2 ] }; key { [ Cyrillic_ie, Cyrillic_IE, 0x010004d7, 0x010004d6 ] }; key { [ Cyrillic_a, Cyrillic_A, 0x010004d1, 0x010004d0 ] }; key { [ Cyrillic_es, Cyrillic_ES, 0x010004ab, 0x010004aa ] }; include “level3(ralt_switch)” }; [/code]

March 25, 2014

Using CAML with SharePoint REST API

Do you prefer REST over CSOM as I do? I’ll skip the whys. Andrew Connell put it already in wrtiting so nicely. Well, if you do prefer REST, then you must have discovered some shortcomings of REST, or its incompleteness compared to CSOM. I think of:

Inability to filter items based on multivalued taxonomy fields
Inability to filter items based on user fields where user is added through a group, rather than directly, e.g. AssignedTo=[Me] combined with a SharePoint group.
…

In such situations I was forced to use CSOM. Until yesterday. Yesterday I learned that we can actually use CAML queries in REST requests. This enables using REST in all situations. The REST API is still developed and many features are added. Maybe a particular operation that needs a CAML query today, can be supported in the core REST API and can be easily refactored then. But until then, we can use CAML queries in REST requests. Here are the important things about it:

March 23, 2014

Pragmatic Responsive Design

I have been curious about the responsive design but have not had time to try it out. To learn more I decided to make an existing website more responsive. A friend of mine drives a Chuvash Dictionary website: samah.chv.su. Today it looks like this in a mobile browser: The site is a classic 1000px-ish centered page with header and two columns. The left column is for the main content and the right column for additional “aside” information. Can it be more classic? This current version works, you can still use the dictionary on a mobile phone. But there are several improvements that can be done:

March 19, 2014

What about the SharePoint app domain?

This is an open question about the domains for SharePoint apps. On Technet: Configure an environment for apps for SharePoint (SharePoint 2013) we can read the following:

You must configure a new name in Domain Name Services (DNS) to host the apps. To help improve security, the domain name should not be a subdomain of the domain that hosts the SharePoint sites. For example, if the SharePoint sites are at Contoso.com, consider ContosoApps.com instead of App.Contoso.com as the domain name.

March 19, 2014

First look at Yammer integration in SharePoint 2013 SP1

I have installed SharePoint SP1 on my development machine. Yammer and OneDrive links have appeared in the Central Administration: If you go ahead and click “Configure Yammer”, you can activate it: Because:

Yammer is Microsoft’s recommended tool for social collaboration.

When you activate Yammer, you’ll get this dialog, and the Yammer link in the SuiteBar: What happens when you click on Yammer, is that you are redirected to Yammer.com and you are prompted a login page. Then you have a usual yammer site with all your networks and stuff (in my case, SPC14 network): Then, if you go to your newsfeed, the following message is shown:

March 14, 2014

The sessions I attended

My colleagues and friends keep asking me what sessions I went to and what I would recommend to see on channel9 where all of them are publicly available. Here is my prioritized list of sessions:

#spc325 Real-world examples of FTC to CAM transformations. This was the most exciting developer session. Vesa Juvonen takes the Cloud App Model to its maximum. Wanna know more about the future. See this session.
#spc404 Build your own REST service with WebAPI 2. You know REST? You like $filter, $top and $select? Good, why not create an own api? You have all the tools in Visual Studio 2013. Just get inspired by Scott Hillier.
#spc269 Developer audience keynote | What’s new for the Office & SharePoint developer. Get all the developer news presented at #spc14.
#spc3999 SharePoint Power Hour - New developer APIs and features for Apps for SharePoint.
#spc371 Developing socially connected apps with Yammer, SharePoint and OpenGraph. Chris Johnson talks about how to use Yammer API to post updates, like and comment from code. What if you wanted to send an update to Yammer from your Line-of-Business application? Very easy.
#spc303 Advanced Performance Analysis for SharePoint. A real-world case study how performance of a SharePoint site is measured, captured and analyzed. Really interesting.
#spc391 Deep dive into Mail Compose Apps APIs. Main compose apps are similar to SharePoint apps, they are run as iframes and can be used to update an email while writing it or start a workflow. Good stuff.
#spc334 Real-world SharePoint architecture decisions. Wictor Wilén talked about his best topic: architecture decisions. He is probably the best in this area in the world, and his presentation becomes better and better every time he presents it.
#spc3000 Changing the look of Search using Display Templates and CSR. You can do a lot of stuff using the Display Templates and Cliend-Side Rendering. See this session to get inspired and gather a deeper understanding how it works.
#spc382 Managing Search Relevance in SharePoint 2013 and O365. How does XRANK work? Well it is complicated. This session is a must-see.
#spc224 The SharePointConference.com Site: From Sketch to Launch to Live! Did you know that SharePointConference.com was built upon SharePoint? See this session to find out what was good in SharePoint for this site, and what workarounds and hacks were necessary to get it to work.
#spc302 Advanced development patterns for SharePoint Apps. Provider-Hosted Apps are the best type of apps. Let’s see what examples and tips are provided in this session.
#spc322 SharePoint 2013 Search display templates and query rules. An introduction to Search Display Templates.
#spc301 Access is back! High-value, ’no code’, functional & flexible business apps with the new Access services. There were a lot of jokes in this session. Access apps are new “no-code” solutions and will replace the InfoPath solutions.
#spc407 Deep dive into the SharePoint 2013 CSOM API’s. The name is not correct. It is a dive into the CSOM, but it is not deep. See it if you want an introduction, but please keep in mind, the examples don’t follow the javascript coding conventions.
#spc381 Load testing SharePoint 2013 using Visual Studio 2013. Never used load-testing with Visual Studio? Got a 1.15 hr to kill? Well, see it to learn how to start the Visual Studio and what difference is between a web test and load test.

The sessions I wish I had attended:

March 11, 2014

My five takeaways from the SharePoint Conference 2014

The SharePoint Conference 2014 was an astounding event. Over 10 000 like-minded SharePointers that met, learned a lot and shared new ideas, couldn’t be better. It was also the first time I was to the U.S. and Las Vegas. What a country, what a city! This place must burn people’s lives faster than anywhere else in the world :) I want to share my five takeaways from this conference. I’ll keep it short:

December 10, 2013

Custom Error and Access denied pages in Sharepoint

Unfortunately in SharePoint 2013 the custom error pages are not applied: link 1, link 2. Hopefully there will be a hotfix that solves it.

Comments from Wordpress.com

ryan - Mar 5, 2014

I agree, I have seen a few about. Thanks for the post

Jon - Mar 2, 2014