Harold van de Kamp .NET Blog

Submitting an ASP.NET form by pressing the Enter key results in a Page Not Found error

2008-11-12T20:42:50Z

For a SharePoint website I was developing user controls that inherit from the ASP.NET 2.0 Membership controls. Submitting the custom login and password recovery controls by clicking the submit button worked as expected. However, submitting the controls by pressing the Enter key on my keyboard resulted in an unexpected "Page not found" error.

The problem was that the default button for the form was not referencing the submit button of the user control. Bind the UniqueID of the submit button to the page form's DefaultButton property. Don't use the ID string directly; use the UniqueID property instead, because ASP.NET automatically created unique ID values.

An example of assigning the DefaultButton property of the page form:

Page.Form.DefaultButton = YourSubmitButton.UniqueID;

Ramp Up learning program

2008-11-10T20:46:29Z

Ramp Up is a new learning program on the MSDN website.

About Ramp Up:

Introduction
Take the Next Step on Your Career Path
Ramp Up is a free, online, community-based learning program, with a number of different tracks that will help you build your portfolio of professional development skills. Ramp Up has a solid foundation of premium technical content from subject-matter gurus, and provides easy-to-access content in a variety of forms that guide you in learning the important skills. Join Ramp Up (it's free!) and help advance your career - click on a track now to start!

Benefits
Take the Next Step on Your Career Path
Ramp Up is a free, online, community-based learning program, with a number of different tracks that will help you build your portfolio of professional development skills. Ramp Up has a solid foundation of premium technical content from subject-matter gurus, and provides easy-to-access content in a variety of forms that guide you in learning the important skills. Join Ramp Up (it's free!) and help advance your career - click on a track now to start!

At the moment you can focus on the tracks: SharePoint for developers (part 1), Visual Studio 2008, Aspiring Developer, Java Developer, Visual Sudio 6.0 Developer, Visual Studio 2002/2003 Developer.

Good to see a SharePoint track already. Part 1 of the SharePoint developers track is focused on:

As a developer, would you like to learn more about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)? MOSS is based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, which gives developers the opportunity to get more problems solved with less effort. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 takes full advantage of Microsoft ASP.NET and the Microsoft .NET runtime. The new features and added programmability support in MOSS provide a wealth of development opportunities. This course will immerse you in many of the developer-centric capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

Level 1: Web Parts
Did you know that in SharePoint you can build pages as easy as in ASP.NET – and allow end users to create dashboards? Web parts allow for creating components of Web user interface that can be reused on multiple Web pages. These are introduced in ASP.NET and built on in SharePoint where they can be added to pages by end users and managed by IT Professionals. In this topic you will learn about building simple Web parts for SharePoint and how to connect them back to SharePoint site data.

Level 2: Data Lists
Did you know that SharePoint developers can work with data from lists that users get access to too? Data lists provide data storage for end users in SharePoint. End users can create lists with schema all through the SharePoint user interface and they can create, edit, and view the data. All of this data can be programmatically accessed by developers and this topic is all about that.

Level 3: Event Handlers
Did you know that SharePoint developers can automatically process data that your users upload via a spreadsheet? Event handlers (or event receivers) are custom code that runs on the SharePoint server in response to something that happens on the server. Event handlers can be useful for running business logic in response to data being added to the site. This topic shows how to create simple event handlers and investigates ways that event handlers can be used in SharePoint.

Level 4: Workflow
Did you know that you can write WF workflows in SharePoint without having to worry about storage, persistence, or how to interact with the user? Workflow in SharePoint allows for implementation of processes that require interaction such as email approvals or form completion by people in your organization. This topic shows you how to create simple workflows in SharePoint using Visual Studio that involve approvals from people by email and for meeting room resource bookings with an administrator.

Level 5: Silverlight Web Parts
Did you know that you can build rich Internet applications with SharePoint? Silverlight is a new Web user interface technology from Microsoft that allows for each implementation of animations and videos. This topic shows how a SharePoint user interface can be enhanced by using Silverlight in Web parts as part of a SharePoint site.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and SDK October 2008 CTP

2008-10-27T20:31:42Z

Microsoft released the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio October 2008 CTP, available at the Microsoft Download Center. The Windows Azure Software Development Kit October 2008 CTP is available also at Microsoft's Download Center.

Although they have just released the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP, notice the Windows Azure Tools CTP is for Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Windows Azure has been announced at the Microsoft PDC08 event, it is a new type of operation system which runs in the cloud. You host your Web applications in Microsoft data centers. Visit the Windows Azure Services Platform Developer Center website and Cloud Computing blog, for more information.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP

2008-10-27T20:11:45Z

Microsoft has released a public CTP version of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. They are the next generation development tools and platform for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System and the web.

The CTP is only available as a Virtual PC image and is designed to experience the new development tools and platform. It is not a feature complete product. Download the CTP from the Microsoft Download Center.

For more information about Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 visit the Microsoft MSDN Visual Studio website for an overview. Don´t forget to post your feedback on the related Microsoft Connect website.

Getting SharePoint 2007 SP1 language packs to work on Windows Server 2008

2008-10-20T20:35:00Z

If you normally would like to install a language pack for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 service pack 1 product, you have to make sure you both install the retail version related language pack and the service pack related language pack. You can automate this process by slipstreaming the service pack language packs.

On Windows Server 2008 this slipstream process for Service Pack 1 does not work. Mauro Cardelli summed up a nice install list how to get it working:

Download the appropriate files.
- For MOSS, you will need the MOSS and WSS files. Remember there are specific 64bit versions
- On each of the download pages, change the language in the selector to the language pack you want, here are your download links:
  - WSS Language pack http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=36EE1BF0-652C-4E38-B247-F29B3EEFA048&displaylang=en
  - WSS Language pack SP1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A&displaylang=en
  - MOSS Language pack http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2447426B-8689-4768-BFF0-CBB511599A45&displaylang=en
  - MOSS Language pack SP1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1F5C7D10-B4F9-482D-B0E5-9547A7F508E5&displaylang=en
Install the file. The install wizard will be in the language of the language pack… so know how to say 'Next' in that language!... or practice on the English version. Follow these steps:
1. Install WSS Language Pack (don't run the MOSS Configuration Wizard)
2. Install MOSS Language Pack (don't run the MOSS Configuration Wizard)
3. Install WSS Language Pack SP1 (don't run the MOSS Configuration Wizard)
4. Install MOSS Language Pack SP1
5. Run the MOSS Configuration Wizard (choose to not disconnect from farm)
Test
- Create a new site; you should see a drop down for Language which includes your newly installed language
- Go to the new site and learn how to say 'Site Actions, 'Edit Page' in a foreign language!

Also see a post on Microsoft TechNet Forums for more information.

Windows Server 2008 is Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1

2008-10-19T14:34:35Z

I just read a post announcing the availability of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 beta in a few weeks to selected testers.

SP2 for Windows Server 2008, have I missed Service Pack 1? No, Windows Server 2008 is released as Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1, see Ian McDonalds blog post.

Windows Server 2008 is Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Microsoft products and development posters

2008-10-17T20:57:58Z

Last year I've come across a lot of posters related to .NET / Office / SharePoint development. They give you a nice overview of the development possibilities of each related product. This post contains a list of those posters.

SharePoint posters

See the SharePoint Community Portal

Stsadm parameters poster for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007:

Stsadm parameters poster for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

Record Repository: Using Record Repository Features in Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) and SharePoint Server 2007

2007 Office System Document: Developer Posters

See the Microsoft Download page for the 2007 Office System Document: Developer Posters

It contains:

Developer Roadmap for the 2007 Microsoft Office System. Download this poster to view a developer roadmap for the 2007 Microsoft Office system programs, tools, services, and servers.
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 Managed Object Model Poster. Download this poster and get a deep dive into some of the new and enhanced objects in the InfoPath 2007 managed object model.
Developer Map for SharePoint Products and Technologies Poster. Download this poster and discover the developer roadmap for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.

2007 Office System Document: Open XML Developer Map

See the Microsoft Download page for the 2007 Office System Document: Open XML Developer Map

Visual C# / Basic 2008 Keybinding Reference Posters

See the Microsoft Download page for the:

It contains a wall chart showing useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual C#/Basic programming language for Visual C#/Basic in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual C#/Basic 2008 Express Edition

.NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster

See the Microsoft Download page for the .NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster

Silverlight 2 Developer Poster

See Brad Abrams blog

Using resolution 1920x1200 on a Virtual PC environment

2008-10-12T22:12:02Z

On my host PC I am using the 1920x1200 widescreen resolution and on my Virtual PC guest PC I would like to use the same resolution in fullscreen mode. By default if I go to the guest Virtual PC environment and switch to fullscreen, black bars are shown at the left and right side of the screen. This happens also with the virtual machine additions installed on the guest PC.

Microsoft Virtual PC supports at maximum the 1600x1200 resolution via the Virtual Machine additions S3 Trio 32/64 driver on a guest PC. If you are running a not supported resolution on your host PC and switch your guest PC to fullscreen, it shows black bars at the screen sides.

Using Remote Desktop to display your guest PC environment

By connecting to your virtual PC via a Remote Desktop connection you can show your guest PC in fullscreen mode normally. Connect on your Host PC to your Guest PC.

Make sure you have Remote Desktop enabled on your guest PC. The steps to enable Remote Desktop on a Windows Server 2008 guest PC are:

Open Control Panel
Go to Device Information
Go to Remote Settings
Allow Remote Desktop connection

This is a workaround, but works fine for me.

Modify the VPC video driver

You can try to modify the S3 Trio 32/64 driver so it supports your host PC resolution. With PowerStrip you can modify the driver.

Please note that I haven´t tried this myself, I´m using the remote desktop option.

Index PDF documents on SharePoint using Adobe PDF IFilter 9

2008-10-02T13:30:00Z

Using the SharePoint Search you can find documents based on their filename, metadata or content within a document. By default the content of Office documents is indexed by the SharePoint crawler, but PDF files are not crawled. To add support for PDF files you have to add an IFilter which the SharePoint crawler uses to read through PDF files and add the information to the search index.

To obtain an IFilter for PDF you can purchase the Foxit PDF IFilter from Foxit Software. There is also a free PDF IFilter available from Adobe which does exactly what you need and what this post is all about.

Getting Adobe IFilter 9 to work with SharePoint

In earlier days you were required to download Adobe's IFilter as a separate file. Since Adobe 8.0 it is included within the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader products. The current version of Adobe Reader is 9.0 includes an IFilter that is compatible with the latest PDF implementations.

To enable PDF indexing use the following steps:

Download Adobe Reader 9.0, which includes IFilter 9.0.0.0, from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
Download the Acrobat PDF Picture, to display in front of PDF search result items, from http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html
Add the PDF file type to the Extensions List for WSS search by editing the registry
- Start regedit
- Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\{Random GUID}\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList
- Add PDF to the list as a new String Value. Use a new high value e.g. if 37 is the highest value, use "38" as the key with the value "pdf"
Add the Acrobat PDF picture to the SharePoint templates directory. Copy the Acrobat PDF picture called pdficon_small.gif in the 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\IMAGES folder, e.g. %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES.
Bind the Acrobat PDF picture to the PDF file type
- Open the 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\XML\DOCICON.XML file
- Find the <DocIcons.ByExtension> part
- Add the following mapping:
  <mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon_small.gif" OpenControl="" />
Change IFilter mapping in registry
- Start regedit
- Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
- Add (or modify) the .pdf key
- Add a Multi-String value with value {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} or modify if another GUID value already exists.
- Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
- Add (or modify) the .pdf key
- Add a Multi-String value with value {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} or modify if another GUID value already exists.
Add the Adobe Reader folder to the environment path variable
- Right Click on My Computer
- Open Properties
- Open the Advanced tab
- Go to the Environment variables
- Edit the Path variable
- Add your Reader folder to the Path list, e.g. C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader
Restart the Search service by restarting your server or executing the following commands:
- Run: net stop osearch
- Run: net start osearch
Crawl the PDF documents
- Existing PDF documents that were crawled before the Adobe PDF IFilter has been installed are not indexed during an incremental crawl. You have to edit each existing PDF file to trigger the crawler to reindex the file during an incremental crawl. It´s easier to run a full crawl after you have installed the Adobe PDF IFilter.

Now all PDF documents are crawled you can query on content inside a PDF document.

View list of IIS7 running application pools

2008-09-25T15:00:00Z

While doing some SharePoint 2007 development on Windows Server 2008, I noticed the IISAPP command doesn´t exist anymore. The command does not exist in IIS7 anymore.

The syntax to view a list of IIS7 running application pools is:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list wp

Thanks to Steve Schofield

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

2008-08-27T20:39:11Z

Today Microsoft released beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8. While Beta 1 was focused on developers to early test their websites, beta 2 is for anyone who browses the internet.

For more information and a feature overview, see the IEBlog´s announcement today.

You can download IE8 beta 2 from http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

AJAX Enable SharePoint using Ajaxify MOSS

2008-06-30T19:59:00Z

Running websites on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and you would like to give the end-user a richer user experience by using AJAX?

To AJAX enable your MOSS site collection, several steps need to done as described by Mike Ammerlaan's Integrating ASP.NET AJAX with SharePoint blog post. All those steps needed to modify the web.config can be done with one easy action by using Ajaxify MOSS.

To AJAX enable the website http://myMossEnvironment install Ajaxify MOSS and run:

stsadm -o addajax -url http://myMossEnvironment

It supports both ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and the ASP.NET AJAX build-into ASP.NET 3.5. Make sure you have MOSS Service Pack 1 installed.

More information on the Ajaxify MOSS CodePlex site.

Microsoft DevDays 2008 PowerPoint Presentations

2008-06-23T21:21:00Z

This year I visited the Dutch Microsoft DevDays 2008 event. It's an event for Microsoft developers which targets several developer related subjects. I focused on SharePoint, Silverlight and Visual Studio Team System, and have seen interesting presentations on these subjects.

If you haven't been to the Developer Days before, make sure you don´t miss it next time.

The presentations are available on the Microsoft DevDays Presentations website. General information about the DevDays can be found at Devdays.nl.

Windows Server 2008 Desktop Experience feature and SharePoint

2008-05-19T18:28:00Z

When running SharePoint on Windows Server 2008, make sure you activate the Desktop Experience server feature.

Without activating this feature you can't save documents directly from your Microsoft Office application into a SharePoint Document Library.

Microsoft Certification policy changed

2008-05-19T17:58:00Z

Microsoft has changed their certification policy, so the MCITP or MCPD credentials don't need recertification every three years.

Today I received the following e-mail:

Dear Microsoft Certified Professional,

We are pleased to inform you about a recent Microsoft Certification policy change that affects your Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) or Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) credential.

In response to customer feedback, Microsoft has eliminated the requirement to recertify, or refresh, your MCITP or MCPD certification every three years. This is good news for you; there is no action required to maintain the certifications you hold today.

The certification lifecycle

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), MCITP, and MCPD credentials—Microsoft certifications for new technologies—are aligned with the Microsoft product lifecycle, and will retire when Microsoft discontinues mainstream support for the underlying technology. When a certification that you have earned retires, the record of your certification remains on your transcript, allowing you to retain documentation of your certification history.

Learn more about the certification lifecycle policy

Join the conversation in this MSDN blog

Your contact information

To make sure that you receive important information from us about your investment in Microsoft Certification, please visit the MCP Profile Center on the Microsoft Certification member site to update your contact preferences.

Visit the MCP Profile Center

We appreciate your interest in Microsoft technologies and Microsoft Certification.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft Certification program team