July 29, 2013

Set IE Proxy Server with PowerShell

Today just a quick one-liner tip for PowerShell. Use this script to set a proxy server in IE Settings. I got the inspiration from Aymeric’s blog: Scripting : Toggle proxy server in IE settings with PowerShell: [sourcecode language=“PowerShell”] sp AutoConfigUrl “http://proxy.contoso.com” ` -Path “HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings” [/sourcecode] By the way sp is just alias for Set-ItemProperty cmdlet: This corresponds these settings in IE (Tools - Internet Options - Connections - Lan Settings): It can be useful if you have want to automate this.

July 2, 2013

SharePoint Apps: "Provider Hosted First" Approach

Recently I had an exciting mail conversation with Thomas Deutsch. He came up with an idea how to fasten the development of apps. This smart approach is called “Provider Hosted First”. See Thomas’ original blog post. Here are some highlights: What you actually do is a local website which runs in grunt server:

localhost:9000
```Then a SharePoint-hosted app is created with an SPAppIframe that refers to that local app site. Genious!!! Some key features of this approach:

*   This local app contains a livereload script. Your sharepoint app is updated every time you save your css, js, html file in your IDE
*   Grunt minifies, bundles your assets
*   Grunt runs your tests automatically when your content is modified
*   The SharePoint app can be on Premises, on Office 365, wherever you want it.

#### Video

\[caption id="attachment\_2808" align="alignnone" width="630"\][![See the video how it looks like to develop using this approach](https://sharepointkunskap.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/sp-app-002.png?w=630)](http://www.screenr.com/LA8H) See the video how it looks like to develop using this approach\[/caption\]

## Comments from Wordpress.com


#### 
[Paul Tavares](http://paultavares.wordpress.com "paultavares1@gmail.com") - <time datetime="2013-07-10 02:59:34">Jul 3, 2013</time>

This is pretty cool and very similar to my current setup for developing javascript applications for SharePoint. I use a script to "deploy" updates from my PC to the folder in a document library. I'll try this out when I get around to playing with SP2013.
<hr />
#### 
[Björn]( "bjorn.roberg@bool.se") - <time datetime="2013-07-02 11:07:08">Jul 2, 2013</time>

Awesome! I'm gonna try that out!
<hr />
#### 
[Anatoly Mironov]( "mirontoli@gmail.com") - <time datetime="2013-07-02 15:31:33">Jul 2, 2013</time>

Great! When you go to Thomas Deutsch blog, you can download the source code for the solution.
<hr />

June 26, 2013

Make javascript code work with Minimal Download Strategy Part 2

I have a newer blog post about MDS, that provides a much simpler solution. Please check it before reading further.

Minimal Download Strategy (MDS) is an important feature in SharePoint 2013. It lets you download only a page delta, only changes. There is still issues with the MDS and custom scripts and almost no documentation on msdn or technet. In this blog post I want to learn more about adjusting custom scripts for MDS. As in my previous post, I want to take a real problem and try to solve it. The goal is to find a solution, not nececerilly the most optimal solution, at least for now.

June 18, 2013

Make javascript code work with Minimal Download Strategy Part 1

I have a newer blog post about MDS, that provides a much simpler solution. Please check it before reading further.

This is a part 1 of the blog post about Minimal Download Strategy and javascript adjustments for user code. What I initially thought should be enough for one post, is not enough, so I see it as a part 1. I wrote this post after I had read Chris O’Brien’s post about JSLink Here I want investigate how we can get his accordion list view working with MDS. Minimal Dowload Strategy or MDS is a new feature in SharePoint 2013. By now, if you read this post, you already know about it. The simplest way to see if MDS is enabled on your site, you can recognize it on the “ugly” urls. I don’t think they are so ugly. But it is a matter of taste and habit. No matter if you like MDS or not, MDS is enabled on many site templates and is a huge step towards a faster, more responsive architecture in SharePoint, I would say, towards the Single Page Application concept in SharePoint (but it is a long way to go). We have to keep the MDS in mind, when we write our customizations in javascript. SharePoint 2013 loves javascript and the probability is high that you write a lot of javascript. If it doesn’t work with MDS, your code breaks and the user doesn’t see the functionality, or the site owner must disable the Minimal Download Strategy feature. I wouldn’t like to have disabling of an improvement feature as a prerequisite for my code. In this blog post I want to dig into the techniques for getting the javascript code working with MDS. For a while ago I read a wonderful blog post in Chris O’Brien’s blog:

May 23, 2013

Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox on the same machine

This applies to the combination Hyper-V and VMWare as well. Really good stuff. [code language=powershell] #disable, needs computer restart bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off #enable, needs computer restart bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto [/code]

May 11, 2013

Using GitFlow with Visual Studio and SourceTree

I enjoyed this intro to git in visual studio.

May 11, 2013

A quick guide to configuring the Loopback check

Great tutorial how to configure the loopback check on a dev machine. Exactly what I needed for a month ago. Pity that this article came after that. :-) Here is the command to disable it completeley:

\# Disable Loopback check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 #
New-ItemProperty HKLM:\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Lsa -Name "DisableLoopbackCheck" -Value "1" -PropertyType dword

May 8, 2013

Styling suiteBar and IE8

Today I want to share little css tip for styling the suiteBar in SharePoint 2013 and making it work even in IE8. I needed to apply a green color to the suiteBar (#005128). It worked in all browsers except IE8: The reason why is a special css rule (in corev15.css) that only IE8 understands: [sourcecode language=“css”] .ms-core-needIEFilter #suiteBarLeft { filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(GradientType=0,startColorstr=#ff0072c6,endColorstr=#ff0072c6); } [/sourcecode] I found this answer in an blog post written by Trace Armstrong: SharePoint 2013 – Branding the Top Bar and the Importance of Browser Testing. You could override this css rule with your colors, just dig into the msdn documentation. What I needed though, was just a plain color, so I didn’t want to dig into that old progid-definitions. There is actually a simpler solution on social.msdn.microsoft.com. A guy called avshinnikov just overrides the “filter” rule by setting it to none. If you apply it only with id selector (#suiteBarLeft) then you have to put “!important” after that. Fortunately I allready had my own css class on html tag which is a sort of a “namespace” for my selectors: [sourcecode language=“css”] .takana-html #suiteBarLeft { background-color: #005128; filter: none; } [/sourcecode] The class .takana-html can have any name, of course, and it can be a class on a closer parent element to the suiteBar. The only goal for that is to make your css rules more important in your design in a natural way (and avoiding the “!important”). Eventhough many people use this principle without thinking about it, I’ve not found any info regarding this principle. I only heard Jeremy Foster and Michael Palermo talking about it and referring to it as “css namespaces” in a video course: Developing in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Jump Start. Of course, the name isn’t unique, there is another thing called css namespaces. But the concept is really good.

April 22, 2013

Making the Newsfeed web part available outside of My Sites in SharePoint 2013

Easy to add a newsfeeed to a web other than My Site.

April 20, 2013

AutoSPInstaller: error while stopping the default web site in IIS

During an installation with AutoSPInstaller on my development machine I ran into a strange issue. I got the following error:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.IIS.PowerShell.Framework’ or one of its dependencies

I haven’t found any other people having the same problem with the AutoSPInstaller, but I found a similar report on another forum: help.octopusdeploy.com. Maybe I am the only one who gets this error in AutoSPInstaller, if not it can be useful to write the solution down. The error occurs when the default web site in IIS is stopped. For some reason Get-WebSite cmdlet throws an exception the first time you invoke it, but not the second time. To get it working I followed the tip from the help.octopusdeploy.com and wrapped the Get-Website code in a try-and-catch, where the same cmdlet was in try and in catch. This line: [sourcecode language=“powershell”] $defaultWebsite = Get-Website | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq “Default Web Site” -or $_.ID -eq 1 -or $_.physicalPath -eq “%SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot”} # Try different ways of identifying the Default Web Site, in case it has a different name (e.g. localized installs)[/sourcecode] becomes this code (the lines in try and catch are identical): [sourcecode language=“powershell”] Try{ $defaultWebsite = Get-Website | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq “Default Web Site” -or $_.ID -eq 1 -or $_.physicalPath -eq “%SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot”} # Try different ways of identifying the Default Web Site, in case it has a different name (e.g. localized installs) } Catch [System.IO.FileNotFoundException]{ $defaultWebsite = Get-Website | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq “Default Web Site” -or $_.ID -eq 1 -or $_.physicalPath -eq “%SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot”} Break }[/sourcecode] With this fix I was able to run the whole AutoSPInstaller script. My development machine was a fresh installed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (without any updates). Leave a comment if you run into the same issue. If so, I’ll try to send a patch to the AutoSPInstaller code.