Writing
Notes on Power Automate, SharePoint, Azure Functions, and the moving parts behind Flow Studio.
-
Building the best bridge between your Agent and Power Automate
We keep making Flow Studio MCP better for agents and Power Automate: clearer errors, safer updates, JSON flexibility, and smaller edits.
-
Planning and migrating from Squarespace to SWA + Astro
A practical look at how we planned the move from Squarespace to Astro on Azure Static Web Apps using agents: inventory, redirects, content migration, comments, and launch readiness.
-
AI Agents for Power Automate
We are seeing a very strong interest and response in our release of Flow Studio MCP . So we want to get the word out more. AI is rapidly moving beyond...
-
Announcing Flow Studio MCP
We are introducing our favourite new child to the Flow Studio family of tools. This is Flow Studio MCP. Flow Studio MCP is a purpose-built MCP server that...
-
Flow - lightweight fast template engine using Split twice
Technique 2 — Building a Lightweight Template Engine (Using Split Twice) Take this example (using a handle-bar stil syntax) ABC {{def}} GHI {{jkl}} MN Using...
-
Flow - character replace pattern with chunk()
Hi, it’s 5am, I can’t sleep, I had these two Flow ideas that are really cool. First is a super fun trick with chunk() Select join() coalesce() No loops. No...
-
Flow Studio DevLog: reported for phishing and woes of Cloudflare
This is a quick blog post, but also REALLY IMPORTANT , concerning Flow Studio App (flowstudio.app) - the main, root URL. What’s happening right now Right...
-
About: The old trigger URL will stop working on November 30, 2025
Starting in August 2025, we’ve begun to see this warning a lot in our Power Automate flows that uses HTTP Request (or Team Webhook) triggers. The old url...
-
Diff Mode in Flow Studio
We are happy to introduce a new feature update in Flow Studio app. “Diff Mode” Navigate to Diff on the left hand side. Use the top dropdowns to select your...
-
Flow Studio Price Update 2025 & Introducing Flow Studio for Teams
Since July 2019 , Flow Studio has remained at its previous pricing of $20 per month per person and $200 per year . Over the years, we’ve introduced numerous...
-
Mathematically Elegant way to Flatten an Array of Arrays in Power Automate
When working with data in Power Automate, you may encounter nested arrays (arrays within arrays) —especially when dealing with JSON responses, SharePoint...
-
Upgrading SharePointSSO Copilot SPFx to Botframework-WebChat 4.18
This is a quick post about how to make a few packages work together. Firstly, we have this SharePoint SSO Copilot Studio Sample....
-
A debug tip for complex conditions in Power Automate #FlowNinjaHack 126
This is #FlowNinjaHack 126 Sometimes, we have complex Condition blocks in Power Automate. And when we run the flow, it just shows “false”, which is a bit...
-
Updating AzCopy in Azure Pipeline
You know how the saying goes - if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Well, something broke in my Azure Pipeline for Flow Studio App a few days ago, and it took a...
-
Flow Studio App v1.2 Updates
February and March was really busy for us here at Flow Studio. Catherine is now wearing multiple hats and helping on Flow Studio in so many needed areas....
-
Updates to Flow Studio App in 2023 October
There’s been a series of updates to Flow Studio App on our development build, as I’m preparing to push this next stable build to production, I thought I’d...
-
Updating Flow Studio's Flow Diagram feature
A customer reached out regarding Flow Diagram in Flow Studio - there was a bug preventing it from being generated. This was probably an issue that had been...
-
Tips on fixing Power BI dynamic value
In Power BI we have the ability to use dynamic value within a text block, this allows us to create dynamic paragraphs with data that automatically update....
-
Power Automate API changes - v2 Admin scope now needs user_impersonation
This blog post is about two major updates to Flow Studio App and Flow Studio for Enterprise. MSAL v2 Update First one, we finally updated Flow Studio to...
-
field notes using Power Automate with Power BI
I have been working at a client learning, testing and building Power BI reports, datasets, dataflows, datamart and dashboards for the last 8 months. With a...
-
Turning a new chapter - the MVP Alumni post
A few months ago I wrote that I’m turning a page, I’ve found motivation to move forward again, and have begin to actively change my destiny (instead of...
-
Using Power Automate to provide Timezone and Local Time to Power BI Dataset and Data Flow
Problem: In Power BI data transformation, we have useful methods such as DateTime.UtsNow() and DateTime.LocalNow() they work great when running from a...
-
Power Apps API changes - no longer accept Azure Management token
There has been recently a major change to the API and authorization that Flow Studio uses to access the Power Platform. As we have just pushed the update to...
-
Turning a new page
Wanted to write again, and let everyone know what I’ve been up to. I ended up taking a break through most of 2021 and 2022 simply resting, recovering, and...
-
Our Legacy
This blog post is quite personal and doesn’t have much to do with tech. So if that’s not what you are here for, wait for the next blog post. This is...
-
Research: Power Automate comments are stored in Dataverse
Out of curiosity, and because I think listing outstanding comments might be a product feature in Flow Studio, I did some research, experimenting with REST...
-
Parse CSV through Code in Power Automate Custom Connection
I was inspired reading Alex Shlega and Hiroaki Nagao ’s posts on using code with custom connections. So I set out to give it a go and work on another common...
-
Tiny forward steps for me and Flow Studio
I’ve been taking little tiny steps forward, this is a good time to share what I’ve been up to. Flow Studio There are several Flow Studio updates in the...
-
2021 - broken, I am missing you Lina Abidin
I told myself this eventually would happen, but I still am not prepared for it when it did. How can anyone be prepared for what happens next. On March 25th,...
-
2021 - break and thrive
Hello, you. This is a very personal post. 2020 was tough on everybody, and it looks like 2021 may eventually bring a little bit of reprieve. I only have a...
-
Self-service Microsoft Form for external guests to use Power App
This is a walk through of the steps to create a self-service guest user sign up using Microsoft Forms and redirects to the Power App. Steps Create a...
-
Ninja List: The great migration of SharePoint Workflow to Power Automate
Hello, I’m John Liu, #FlowNinja I am both MVP in Office App and Services (SharePoint) and Power Platform (Flow), I’ve been writing tools to help (4000+ in...
-
How to provision SharePoint list and resources with only standard Microsoft Flow using ExecuteSiteScriptAction
I wanted to blog about an interesting technique I was testing - how to call ExecuteSiteScriptAction from Microsoft Flow - and using that to provision...
-
ApolloServer, AzureFunctions and local debugging
I wanted to jog down some notes that’ll help with local debugging of Apollo Server with Azure Functions. Firstly, due to changes to Azure API routing -...
-
Where to find John presenting in May 2020
We are living right now in a strange time. At home, and virtual events are replacing the traditional physical events. I’ve agreed to several events and will...
-
Flow JAM Stack Episode 1 - sending data back with Flow as API
In this follow on episde, we dive a fair way in to see how we can customize Flow’s Request trigger to build a web service (API endpoint) that can be called...
-
Building modern public sites (JAM Stack) with Microsoft Flow
Web technologies evolve, and we are on the edge of a new stack, it is called JAMStack. Javascript API Markup In the world of JAM Stack, we create serverless...
-
Using Flow to create Microsoft Teams online events via Microsoft Graph
I had a Flow hack a while back to have a Flow button that will instantly create an online teams meeting. Recently, I adapted it into a trigger event that...
-
Power Studio Update April 2020
I wanted to share our most recent newsletter for Power Studio (previous Flow Studio) and Power Clarity. It was supposed to be monthly, but everything’s gone...
-
A group_by filter for liquid-node
Here’s a group_by filter for liquid-node Use this like so
-
Implementing a fast sort with Microsoft Flow using Parallel Compute
This is #FlowNinja hack 112. Parallel Compute Sort. I had written about how to sort with a variable (this is insertion sort) back in 2018 How to implement...
-
Talks and Workshop at Difinity 2020 conference Auckland
Hello, Kia Ora Auckland. I’m glad to be returning to New Zealand on February 17-20 for the Difinity Conference in Auckland. I try to tell people that I’m...
-
Flow - Format Number advanced tips and tricks
I put together a video to celebrate the new update in Microsoft Flow (Power Automate) and Logic Apps - formatNumber() The video explains 3 tips and 2...
-
Power Platform Governance with Power Clarity
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400"] Clear the FOG - let there be Clarity [/caption] Some asked me recently how does my SaaS product Power Clarity...
-
Running Serverless Apollo GraphQL on AzureFunctions with cheap Azure Blob Table database(s)
Merry Christmas holidays and happy new years. This is a bit of a holiday reading, I wanted to start by give you the sense of what I’ve been tinkering as an...
-
Redirecting SharePoint list's NewFormUrl and EditFormUrl to Power Apps
In this scenario, we have a Power Apps app that takes a query param() “AssetID” and determines whether the app should create a new item or update an...
-
True Governance of the Power Platform
It’s very early Sunday morning and I’ve just returned from an red-eye flight home from a week spent in Perth with Paul, Ashlee and Terrie Culmsee, meeting...
-
The Flow Studio journey - first lesson - seed money and salary
I wanted to write a blog post because I don’t know, I guess you are a technical person that reads my blog, and you might be interested in my journey from a...
-
M365 Developer Bootcamp and M365 Saturday Sydney
There are two events coming up soon in Sydney regarding the SharePoint, Office 365 and Microsoft 365 community and ecosystem. M365 Developer Bootcamp Sydney...
-
How do you bring your content to your readers?
Hi, today’s post isn’t a technical post, this is probably more of a “I need your help post”. So this is something I find really difficult to write about,...
-
Presentations at the Digital Workplace Conference Australia 2019 I’m looking forward to
It’s really exciting for me to be back at the Digital Workplace Conference again in 2019, this is one of the first major conferences that I was very...
-
Presenting a roadmap to learning and mastery of Microsoft Flow at Collab365 Microsoft Flow Virtual Summit
All the Flow you can eat! https://events.collab365.community/microsoft-flow-virtual-summit-agenda/ I managed to squeeze in last minute with a session on “A...
-
100 Flow-jutsu of the FlowNinja
Upon reaching a numerical significant milestone of 100 FlowNinja flow-lifehacks. I wanted to review the full list and provide that list here for your...
-
The Flow Studio journey and July price increase
I wanted to write an update about Flow Studio, my personal journey so far as a single founder, and announce that there will be a price increase at the end...
-
Getting started, a roadmap and mastery of Microsoft Flow
In the last few years, Microsoft Flow has taken off like a storm. It is one of the most versatile product, but also quite tricky to completely cover because...
-
Release of Flow Studio: Deploy & future Price Increase
We have released Flow Studio v0.1.91 “Flow Studio: Deploy” This is a super productive feature that we’ve been working on for a while. You can think of it as...
-
Join us for a free full day Sydney Microsoft App in a Day - June 7
Join Microsoft MVPs John Liu and Paul Culmsee - two of Australia’s Power Platform MVPs in Microsoft’s App in a Day event on June 7 right here in Sydney. I’m...
-
One Flow to handle them all - Part 2 figuring out the changes
I had previously wrote a method of using Microsoft Flow to subscribe to all the lists in a SharePoint site - and how to have them all call a second Request...
-
Workarounds needed to use the Excel Connector in Microsoft Flow
There are two Excel Connectors in Microsoft Flow. There’s a quirk to work with them. Plan Two Connectors How do we use them? What’s the problem we need this...
-
Flow Studio 1K users - time for a roadmap update
In the past week - total number of Flow Studio users crossed over 1000. We have 1000 users! We want to thank you, Flow makers, for your support. When you...
-
Flow Studio features in April that will help us mitigate a disaster
In the best scenario, nothing ever fails. Your code and logic doesn’t fail, flows don’t fail, SharePoint doesn’t fail, Azure doesn’t fail. Some days like...
-
A Power User friendly method of connecting hundreds of sites, list and libraries to a single Flow
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="800"] Photo by Sebastian Boring on Unsplash [/caption] We need to get this disclaimer out of the way first - this...
-
Azure Global Bootcamp Sydney - this Saturday!
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="800"] Photo by James Ree on Unsplash [/caption] I’m presenting a talk on Azure Logic Apps (and Microsoft Flow) this...
-
Upload Image from PowerApps to Flow to SharePoint via an Unused Outlook connector
This is the simplest no code approach to the PowerApps image upload problem so far. Far simpler than with Azure Function, with custom connector, with hacked...
-
One Flow to handle them all - how to subscribe to multiple SharePoint lists with one Flow
One Flow to handle them all - how to subscribe to multiple SharePoint lists with one Flow At some point - we think hmm how do we save a Flow as a template...
-
Sadly, I can't make it to MVP Summit 2019
I’ve been holding onto some slimmer of hope, may be I could still make the trip. Alas, it’s time to face reality and write down this blog post. I’m...
-
On using Microsoft Flow as a pre-ETL step for Power BI
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2087"] Photo by WeRoad on Unsplash [/caption] A topic I’ve presented a few times to an Power BI crew is the concept...
-
#FlowNinja hack 78 - modifying Modified By and Modified time with Microsoft Flow
In this quick blog post - we talk about how we can tweak the “Modified By” user field and “Modified” datetime field in SharePoint list and document...
-
Difinity Conference 2019 Auckland - Hackathon Workshop, Flow and PowerApps
I’ll be presenting at Difinity Conference 2019 Auckland on several presentations. Difinity is the largest Microsoft Data Platform conference in New Zealand....
-
MS Ignite the Tour 2019 Sydney - MS Flow x2
I’ll be presenting at Microsoft Ignite the Tour 2019, Sydney on two Microsoft Flow presentations. Advancing the Flow - understand expressions in Microsoft...
-
I hope team Office give Delve a second chance
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Photo by Jay Wennington on Unsplash [/caption] Office Delve was the first product to use the Office Graph –...
-
How to implement Sort with Microsoft Flow in 3 actions within a loop
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="800"] Photo by Sophie Elvis on Unsplash [/caption] For some reason, Flow (and LogicApps) doesn’t have a built in...
-
Hot-patching our dependencies with patch-package
This is also a quick blog post. Let me tell you the tale of patch-package. Not many people have heard the tale of patch-package. Many prefer to walk the...
-
Bad JavaScript. Expected '(' in our webpack eval chunk
This is a quick blog post for resolving an issue this morning from webpack uglified/minified JavaScript. The error happens in IE and Edge, it simply says:...
-
Migrate Angular SPA from ADALJS to MSAL because it is awesome
This is a public service announcement for all office devs. If you are using ADALJS - you need to upgrade your project to MSAL . It is awesome. It has...
-
Flow Studio subscription discount finishes very soon
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash [/caption] This will very brief. At the end of this weekend - Most of the...
-
Flow Studio trial ends soon, what's next?
This is a Flow Studio startup post. A few weeks back I locked myself in a room and added subscriptions to Flow Studio. In less than two weeks, the initial...
-
Sending email with inline images via MicrosoftGraph and MicrosoftFlow
I had previously written how we can use Send Email as Anyone in Microsoft Graph , and as a bonus wrote a section on how we can use it to send inline images....
-
Resolving Google DNS problems with hosting *.app from Hover on Azure
This is a quick blog post - special thanks to Simon Waight who looked into this with me and gave me some nudges towards the right direction. The solution...
-
Decode InfoPath attachments with a bit of JS AzureFunctions
Serge, April and me were discussing a problem with pulling out InfoPath Attachment from InfoPath form XML and writing them into a SharePoint document...
-
Hiding your Microsoft Flow valuables I mean variables out of sight
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="530"] Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash [/caption] Today is a quick #FlowNinja post on a strange technique. Hiding...
-
Flow Studio Subscription FAQ
I added Stripe subscription to Flow Studio today. I also became my first customer (as I’m testing the integration). Time for this FAQ How much is a Flow...
-
Flow Studio has a new logo
Flow Studio https://flowstudio.app has a new logo! I don’t know why I’m so happy about this, but I am. Did you draw that John - yes on the back of an...
-
Microsoft Flow HTTP Trigger <> Request Trigger, and you probably don't want to use it
Microsoft Flow has a fairly good UI update today, and with this a few “hidden” built-in triggers appeared. The GeoFence Trigger is not available yet. But...
-
Two free tickets to great Office 365 and SharePoint events in Sydney in the next month
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash [/caption] I wanted to write about two free upcoming events regarding Office...
-
From Office 365 to Azure Event Grid, the events must Flow
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Photo by Archana More on Unsplash [/caption] In this blog post, we capture all the events across an Office...
-
The curious tale of the result() function in Flow and LogicApps
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash [/caption] I owe this blog post to several persons, so I will list their...
-
Make a wishing wand - why we need a MicrosoftFlow Custom Connector for MSGraph $Batch
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Photo by Jorigė Kuzmaitė on Unsplash [/caption] A question that has been in the back of my mind since my late...
-
Office 365 Saturday Adelaide - 2018 September 15
So it is said - there's always a SharePoint or Office 365 Saturday every Saturday around the world. O365 Saturday Adelaide / SPS Saturday Adelaide In less...
-
Microsoft Graph Community Call September 2018 - $Batch and Flow
I wanted to write a quick blog post letting everyone know I've put my hands up to present a 10 minute demo on using a Custom Connection for Microsoft Graph...
-
The future of Flow Studio - Trial
Hi everyone. This is somewhat serious, and I really need your feedback. I wanted to write this down and project my intentions clearly and well in advance....
-
Post-DWCAU Conference - 7* flows in 1 hour
I'm composing this post on a sleepy Friday morning, still in Melbourne, on the day after the Digital Workplace Conference (Also Australian SharePoint...
-
The simplest No-Code Solution to Save Picture Files from PowerApps to Flow
Today, we are going to talk about a new technique (hack) to send any pictures from PowerApps to Flow. We will do this with a modified Flow Button trigger....
-
Speaking and Hackathon at Digital Workplace Conference Australia - Melbourne
In a little less than a month on August 15-16, I'll be presenting in Melbourne at the Digital Workplace Conference Australia 2018. www.dwcau.com.au (I still...
-
Flow For-Selected-Item trigger and SharePoint Site Pages, in a detective story
This is a long blog post, there are two parts: How do you make a SharePoint For Selected Item in Flow, and have it appear on the SharePoint Site Pages...
-
Office 365 Saturday Canberra 2018 #O365CBR #SPSCBR
This Saturday - 14 July, we'll be converging on SharePoint and Office 365 Saturday Canberra . I'm planning to take my time and drive down for the weekend....
-
10 Things in Microsoft Flow that isn't in Azure Logic Apps
Sorry about the catchy headline. I will start by saying I am perfectly ready to see a response post containing 20 things in Azure Logic Apps that we wish...
-
A Thesis on the Parse JSON action in Microsoft Flow
Parse JSON can be both intelligent and dumb. It can help you a lot and it can hinder you just as much. This blog post, we go deep and study the behaviour of...
-
How to get live FIFA Worldcup results via Microsoft Flow into your SharePoint Intranet WebPart
Github tweeted a link to a NPM NodeJS CLI project that uses data from http://football-data.org. Seeing that, I decided we need to build a SharePoint Modern...
-
Do bulk insert/update in Microsoft Flow with two simple elegant filter-arrays
This is a blog post of a pattern that I've brooded over for months and finally came to an elegant solution. Plan Scenario: Bulk Insert / Update Doing...
-
Do Group By in Microsoft Flow with two simple elegant loops
This is a problem I worked on with Fausto and is a common problem I see when working with rows of data in Microsoft Flow. Plan Scenario: Group By Doing...
-
Save all your Flows to VSTS via HTTP REST in 8 actions
I saw VSTS has " Send an HTTP Request to VSTS " a few days ago, and a quick test had me pulling back repo information in JSON. #FlowNinja new @MicrosoftFlow...
-
Building a tool to help everyone with Flows: Flow Studio
So, I've been head-down, deep building a tool to help everyone make better Microsoft Flows It doesn't have many bells and whistles, it is still in very...
-
Microsoft Flow: SharePoint Trigger on specific fields changed via SP HTTP Request
A very common request in Microsoft Flow for SharePoint is a trigger that only runs when a certain field has changed, or when it has changed to a certain...
-
How to use Select to simplify Create-HTML-Table and Create-CSV in MicrosoftFlow
This is a blog post about how using Data Operations - Select in Microsoft Flow can dramatically simplify Create HTML Table or Create CSV. This is mostly...
-
Run Any PnP-PowerShell via Drag and Drop Zip to AzureFunctions
So I previously asked aloud "Can we simplify this further" - It turns out you can. You can deploy a PnP-PowerShell from scratch in 1 minute. And since we...
-
Run any PnP-PowerShell in one AzureFunction from Microsoft Flow
Are you missing a SharePoint connector in Flow? Do you need that one extra thing that's only in PnP-PowerShell (because there are 300 cmdlets in...
-
Test yourself. A MicrosoftFlow Expressions Quiz!
I had an idea a while ago that a Quiz built with Microsoft Form would be a great way to learn and improve our knowledge of Microsoft Flow expressions. For a...
-
Two complementary MicrosoftFlow podcasts in March, and Two Plateaus of MicrosoftFlow
I finished listening to the Hyperfish Microsoft Flow podcast from Jon Levesque and Jeremy Thake this morning, this was recorded around the same time where I...
-
Design a "Delay until SharePoint File Changed" HTTP+Webhook for MicrosoftFlow
I love challenges - I love hearing people say "We need a Delay until File Changed" action in Microsoft Flow. I agree. But those are the same questions that...
-
How to automatically enter MVP timesheets with Microsoft Flow
The Microsoft MVP Summit is next week. I'm here at 6AM slaving away cracking on this Swagger API file so that we can all have the awesomeness of...
-
Bulk-copy files across site collection in MicrosoftGraph with MicrosoftFlow, in parallel and in batch
MicrosoftGraph represents SharePoint Document Libraries as "Drives" and Folders and Files as "DriveItems". It has ability to copy these objects. I did...
-
Send mail as anyone - #MicrosoftGraph and #MicrosoftFlow (bonus: inline image attachments)
Sometimes while browsing MS Graph permissions, you come across something like this: This is an Application Permission, it says "Send mail as any user" The...
-
Serverless Parallelism in Microsoft Flow and SharePoint
This is a short post about running things in parallel. There are two angles to this: "Sometimes you fan-out to 50 parallels and want to run them as quickly...
-
Setting up MSGraph Webhook with HTTP Action in MicrosoftFlow
I've tweeted out several small tidbits of using Microsoft Flow's HTTP action to call the Microsoft Graph. Hundreds of Graph APIs, dozens of Graph webhooks,...
-
Betting on 2018 - level up our Serverless in Azure
A recent conversation got me thinking about making some predictions for 2018. This isn't so much a "ha look I'm right in 2019" post. This is more about...
-
Office 365 Groups Management As A Service: Episode II: Know your groups with Flow, MSGraph
This is the second post on building a group management tool with Flow and MSGraph. In this post we talk about how to get a list of all your groups and copy...
-
Office 365 Groups management as a service - Flow, Functions and MSGraph
Because Office 365 Groups is a key component of group membership in Office 365, there will always be an evolving story on how to manage it, extend it,...
-
Taking PDF snapshot of any SharePoint list item for approvals with Flow
This is a post about combining two steps I've blogged recently. Combined they form a technique that can be used with approval workflows to provide a point...
-
You must copy all your Flows to SharePoint - simple ideas are the most brilliant
Another crazy idea while travelling on the train home. This one is so simple, in hindsight, I reckon others will come up with this soon. So I'm writing this...
-
ForEach Property in #MicrosoftFlow JSON. With XPath? #microblog
I can't think of a way to do "ForEach Property Of JSON" in MicrosoftFlow or LogicApps - so I came up with this method that involves XPath. Take example this...
-
Microsoft Flow makes everything Awesome. Yes, including InfoPath #microblog
This is a write up of various ideas and thoughts that I've shared over Twitter separately, but needed to be linked together and the example steps needs to...
-
Sending Custom Actionable Messages via Flow
Actionable Messages is a way that we can send a small bit of JSON within an email message, it gets picked up by Outlook (Web, App, Desktop, Mobile) and...
-
Difference between beta, edu and v1.0 of MSGraph #microblog
I find this interesting - source: digging around MicrosoftTeams powershell and Mikael Svenson's blog post on enabling Teams programmatically . What's funny,...
-
I'm speaking about Serverless Flow and Azure Functions at Collab365 Free Online Conference
Have you heard about the virtual Collab365 Global Conference 2017 that’s streaming online November 1st – 2nd? Join me and 120 other speakers from around the...
-
From Office 365 to Azure to Minecraft, connected with Flow
"John, what's this headline." This is just a love serenade to Microsoft's many engineers and teams. Thank you, for making these products that makes these...
-
Flow Admin Center - Do a spring cleaning of your Flows
I spewed coffee all over my screen. Each user in Office 365 gets 2000 Flow runs pooled. This is my personal playground tenant, I've got 10 users licenses...
-
Serverless connect-the-dots: MP3 to WAV via ffmpeg.exe in AzureFunctions, for PowerApps and Flow
There's no good title to this post, there's just too many pieces we are connecting. So, a problem was in my todo list for a while - I'll try to describe the...
-
Generate Any PDF Documents from HTML with Flow
This is a crazy one, and if you have read ALL my Microsoft Flow blog posts, you'll be familiar with all these pieces. We are going to connect them a...
-
Two ways to convert SharePoint files to PDF via Flow
This blog post is divided into three sections: The easy, The Auth and The Complete parts. Microsoft Flow released a new power to Convert Files to PDF. This...
-
Angular 4, SharePoint On-Premises, localhost development and SP-REST-Proxy
We've been running Angular 4 (via ng-cli) on our SharePoint On-Premises environment for a while, I wanted to just take a short time and jog down our battle...
-
Gaps between PowerBI streaming tiles and SharePoint
So I spend an evening playing (I actually have a lot of fun exploring these things) and figuring out how the pieces of SharePoint, PowerBI and Flow are...
-
Auto-Classify Images in SharePoint Online library via Flow for Free
Microsoft Flow's most recent update added ability to query and update SharePoint File property . This is actually really timely, as I wanted to combine this...
-
Flow to MS-Todo, then all your tasks to Flow
I'm in a celebrating mood - Flow released Export and Import. This is a great day. https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/grow-up-to-logic-apps/ So I'm going...
-
Building Binary output service with Cognitive Services and Microsoft Flow
We covered how to do binary webservices with Microsoft Flow. A question then lingers in my mind. If you can push binary data into a Flow, and within the...
-
One Connection to Proxy Them All - Microsoft Flow with Azure Functions Proxies
Office 365 licensed PowerApps and Microsoft Flow lets you have 1 custom connection. I think that's cute. I also think that limitation is absurd, considering...
-
Building binary (non-JSON) webservices with Flow
This is a short(er) blog post, as I'm packing to get ready to sleep and then wake up early and fly to Brisbane for this weekend's Office 365 Saturday. We...
-
Nested Flow (Reusable-Function) cheatsheet for Microsof Flow
To build complex, but maintainable Flows, it is important to be familiar with this next step. The Flow blog calls this Nested Flows , so I will stick with...
-
JSON cheatsheet for Microsoft Flow
I have a big blog post in the works for a significant dive in Microsoft Flow functionality. But I realized that before we get there, we need to GET GOOD at...
-
Speaking at Digital Workplace Conference Australia 2017
I'll be speaking at the Digital Workplace Conference Australia ! 23-24 August in Sydney. This is a conference that's near and dear to me - and I've had...
-
Reusing functions in PowerShell AzureFunctions
This is a pretty simple blog. Take one of the examples I've been using often: https://github.com/johnnliu/azure-functions-o365/blob/master/sharepoint-list-em...
-
AzureFunctions Work Fan-out with Azure Queue in PowerShell
So I really like using PnP-PowerShell to chain up and perform complex operations in Office 365, and linking them up with AzureFunctions and Flow. Scenario -...
-
Are you Cloud-Curious or Cloud-Serious? Azure Functions in DWCNZ 2017
I had a fantastic time at Digital Workplace Conference in NZ. Highlight Sessions Keynote by Sarah Bowden on Digital Transformation And Christian Buckley 's...
-
Taking a picture with PowerApps and sending to SharePoint with just Flow
Less than one day after I wrote about Taking a picture with PowerApps and sending to SharePoint with help of Azure Functions - I was looking at Flow to do...
-
Taking a picture with PowerApps and sending to SharePoint with help of Azure Functions
Sometimes, after having written a selfie app in Silverlight (SharePoint 2010) , JavaScript (SharePoint 2013), even an Add-in (SharePoint Online) , you want...
-
April PnP JavaScript special interest group call and Azure Functions demos
Shortly after the March Azure Functions demo , I reached out and asked Patrick about coming back to do a follow up focused on JavaScript - specifically...
-
If anyone asks is Microsoft still investing in SharePoint - show them this.
I was attending an MVP community event, and a few non-office MVPs asked me, hey is Microsoft still investing in SharePoint? Is there anything new coming...
-
March PnP special interest group call and Azure Functions demos
On March 22, I put my hand up to do demos for the Office Patterns and Practices Special Interest Group conference call. We talked about Azure Functions with...
-
Simple custom Angular (Angular2) Pipe that extends Number
We have a lot of code that looks like this in our new Angular (Angular2) module: The main reason is that we just want to display numbers in 1.2 million, not...
-
O365 Customizations in the year 2017
It is the year 2017 - watch out, because O365 customizations are full speed ahead. This is a MS Australia Ignite 'lightning talk' for Meetup Madness (sorry,...
-
AzureFunctions, PowerShell, MS Graph and AppOnly permission
In a previous blog post , I wrote about connecting to Microsoft Graph with Resource Owner grant. That particular authentication scheme is for delegate...
-
Where is SharePoint Customization going in 2017
I'm actually pretty terrible at gambling the future of Technology. But I like writing these posts because it makes me sit down and think. User Experience:...
-
Azure Functions and Punch Cards
This is apparently a computer story, but is actually also very much a human story. In which we explore the relationship between Azure Functions and Punch...
-
Interact with Graph and make O365 Groups with AzureFunctions PowerShell
In this post, we talk about how to get an access_token in PowerShell to talk to the Microsoft Graph, so we can run automated non-interactive scripts in...
-
How to tell WebPack Uglify to support IE8
Many that uses WebPack also applies the UglifyjsPlugin. By default, UglifyJS doesn't support IE8. There's a few problems that we'll see: IE8's non-standard...
-
Thankful for MVP 2017 and 2016 in Review
I've just received email that I've been rewarded with Microsoft MVP for 2017. I am thankful to be counted with some of the smartest people that does what we...
-
Running OfficeDev PnP cmdlets in 32bit AzureFunctions
Some recent changes with AzureFunction created a small problem - x64 functions are not available in the starter-consumption plans. The situation is not game...
-
Build your PnP Site Provisioning with PowerShell in Azure Functions and run it from Flow
What if I tell you - you can build your own Azure Function and use PnP to provision SharePoint Online sites without firing up Visual Studio? What if I tell...
-
Building Sandbox Solutions without Code Assembly
Sandbox Solutions are still supported in SharePoint. But the subtle distinction is that Sandbox Code Service is switched off. So solutions with Sandbox Code...
-
Access Denied when expanding ListView Grouping
A user with partial permissions to a list gets Access Denied when expanding ListView grouping. This is a bizarre bug. The setup Take your basic SharePoint...
-
Preparing Your Toolbox for the SharePoint Framework
( originally published on Telerik Blogs ) In July, we were at a junction. We had just wrapped up a new SharePoint On-Premises module with Angular v1.4 and...
-
Working with SharePoint WebHooks with JavaScript using an Azure Function
This blog post covers additional explanation on how to subscribe to SharePoint WebHooks and have it running with only JavaScript in Azure Functions. The...
-
All Demo Downloads will be on Github - blog housekeeping
I've taken a short break from writing blog posts - I haven't been idle, I have been writing something . Hopefully to be able to share it with everyone soon....
-
Azure Functions, JS and App-Only Updates to SharePoint Online
Have you ever, really wanted to have your JavaScript perform a RunWithElevatedPrivileges against SharePoint Online? Do something that the current user just...
-
Hype Level Insane - #FutureOfSharePoint
I wrote this as an email to colleagues. But it got so long and exciting with pictures I decided to publish it. There are no spoilers and I don't know any...
-
AU Digital Workplace Conference - loving SharePoint and community
I had a wonderful time in Melbourne at the Digital Workplace Conference, hosted by Debbie Ireland and Mark Rhodes . A big thank you and congratulations for...
-
SharePoint Events and news catch up for Australia - April/May 2016
I was preparing this list for our April Sydney SharePoint Usergroup event. April 28-29 Digital Workplace Conference in Melbourne This is the annual...
-
UserCustomAction-ConfigPage adding CSS file links
I've had several questions in comments about how to add CSS files using the Simplest-Safest-Most-Future-Proof-Way to customize your SharePoint and...
-
SP2013/2016 Responsive-UI and UserCustomActionsConfigPage
I just pushed an update to my Simplest-Safest-Most-Future-Proof-Way to customize your SharePoint and SharePoint Online using UserCustomActionsConfigPage...
-
ngSydney, Office Add-ins and lots of AngularJS
I went to my first ngSydney meetup on Wednesday night, and presented a short session on Office-Addin with AngularJS (I also throw in Graph API) and ran over...
-
Update on SharePoint and Office Development - 2016 Feb edition
We rotate through different topics and presenters in the Sydney SharePoint user group. But I finally got my turn to present a developer topic, and I wanted...
-
Publishing UserCustomActionConfigPage on GitHub
I wrote previously about the Simplest way to add script to your SharePoint and SharePoint Online. Although this is a simple, stand-alone page, it is...
-
Creating Multiple Custom Email-Alias Addresses with one Outlook account
Update thank you to Johannes in the comments. This is called Email Sub-Addressing . I was catching up with my brother, and he showed me a pretty cool trick...
-
Thank you MS for MVP 2016
As I still see myself a newcomer in the SharePoint community compared to our many elders, I still hold my breath every year come Jan 02 when my MVP gets...
-
Set Window Title in Nintex Forms for O365
Disclaimer. This post is about an unsupported hack. Over at Nintex Community ( registration required ), there was a question about how to change the Nintex...
-
The easiest way to add Script and Brand your SharePoint and SharePoint Online
This is the first of a few blog posts I wanted to cover in my 2015 Christmas break on the future of branding. I'll probably devote the next article to...
-
Yet another fix for "App with the same version and product ID" on-premises
"The provided App differs from another App with the same version and product ID" Ever since the beginning of 2013, we have this this problem when you deploy...
-
Convert SharePoint JSOM's ExecuteQueryAsync to Promise in the Prototype
Today's blog is about adding an additional method to SharePoint JavaScript Object Model (JSOM)'s ClientContext object, so we can use it directly like a...
-
2015 Xbox One Black Friday Edition
USA Best Console Deals http://deals.dell.com/compare/X500GOWFALLTD $299 Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Bundle (that's 4 games) Fallout 4 (and Fallout 3 code...
-
Enabling LastPass bookmarklet with Microsoft Edge
One of the problems of Microsoft's Edge browser not supporting Extensions right now is that password management with tools like LastPass can be quite...
-
Thinking with JS Promise and Promises
Here's a real life example of a quick design iteration that we went through with promises this week. In AngularJS (but this applies to any JavaScript), we...
-
Racing to the Races - Putting our Office App out there
As I'm posting this blog entry, our ( SharePoint Gurus ) first Office App (Add-In) would be available on the store. I might let you in on a secret - it has...
-
Posting to Office 365 OneNote via PowerShell
This is a guide of links and gotchas of how to post a new page to your OneNote document sitting in Office 365. Lots of this was learning for me, so thank...
-
PhantomJS for SharePoint and Office365 at Collab365
Great news everyone! Collab 365 Global Conference Collab 365 is a free online conference that's just around the corner - this is run by the team behind last...
-
Office 365 Saturday 2015 - Melbourne
I visited sunny Melbourne (so strange!) for Office 365 Saturday last weekend, covering PhantomJS and SharePoint. We also geeked out in general around the...
-
Fixing SharePoint Promoted Link's New Tab Launch Behaviour
There's a bug with Promoted Links web part in SharePoint 2013 and Office 365, and I have no idea how long it's been there. This post is about a simple...
-
AngularJS - Logging Client Side Stack Trace
Nothing beats mythical errors that happens on the client side, but not on your development machine. This post follows yesterday's post on configuring...
-
AngularJS $http and logger Circular Dependency
Error [$injector:cdep] Circular dependency found: $rootScope <- $http <- logger <- $exceptionHandler <- $rootScope <- $location <- routehelper TLDR: If you...
-
PhantomJS and Office 365 Brisbane
I thoroughly enjoyed my trip up to Brisbane. I got to see some friends, saw my sister and presented PhantomJS with SharePoint and SharePoint Online. The...
-
AngularJS Extend and Computed Property
This is an Intermediate level discussion on AngularJS Extend, Computed Property in general, and a fairly complicated binding bug that needs some new...
-
Notes on KnockoutJS Mapping and ViewModel style guide
I wanted to write down some of the better practices I've settled with since using KnockoutJS for nearly two years now. A lot of these has to do with just...
-
Clearing SPD Cache from SharePoint Designer
Our good old friend SharePoint Designer is old, but I still find it useful for editing JavaScript files in development for quick tests. Because SharePoint...
-
Moving Everyone and Everything to AngularJS
We are late on the boat. But I'm describing the journey for us, and we are truly on the boat. So in mid 2014, SharePoint Gurus decided that we'll move...
-
Presenting "PhantomJS" at SPBizConf free online conference on June 18.
I will be presenting "Introducing PhantomJS: Headless Browser for your SharePoint/Online" in the SPBizConf on 18 June....
-
Recording Playback Woes with Windows Media Player
Alt Title: Windows Media Player playback too Bright Sometime last week I recorded an online session for the upcoming SPBiz Conference . I did this using...
-
Office 365 Saturday Perth #O365PER summary
On 22nd of May I had the pleasure of presenting O365 Saturday Perth. In the past years, we have called this SharePoint Saturday. We re-branded the name and...
-
Nintex Work Inspired Breakfast Seminar - Sydney
I'm now a Nintex vTE (Virtual Technical Evangelist). Continuing my company SharePoint Gurus ' strong partnership with Nintex . I had the pleasure of...
-
Nintex Workflow - Lazy Checkin Everything Workflow
Doing quite a bit of client-side JavaScript (AngularJS in fact) and checking in and out lots of files that sit within Style Library. At the end of the day,...
-
A Hybrid Future for On-Premises
As Microsoft wrapped up #MSIgnite 2015, reveals SharePoint 2016, we can now safely say that the future is coming, and it is completely Hybrid. Say it with...
-
SharePoint Add-in: Accessing Webcam with Only Javascript
This blog post details how to access your Webcam via Javascript through the browser, and upload that content to a SharePoint library. Then, with an added...
-
InfoPath Javascript - fixing image control tooltip.
In a previous blog post I discussed using Picture Controls to host lots of images within InfoPath and manage the tooltip. InfoPath FormServer renders...
-
App for SharePoint: Web Cam
This is a Sway post. It is a short demo of an upcoming discussion on: App for SharePoint Web Cam HTML5 And SharePoint Libraries
-
[Meta] Updating johnliu.net from Squarespace v5 to v7
This is actually something really, really long overdue. v5 is from the year 2008. That is SEVEN years ago. You will notice: Responsive Design Comments are...
-
Azure Logic Apps: Build SharePoint Workflows by clicking buttons: a picture guide
TOC: Azure Logic Apps Build SharePoint Workflows by clicking buttons [This article] Introduction SharePoint Online Office 365 Connect them all Hybrid...
-
Nintex Workflow - Modifying your Farm UDA
The Problem I love Nintex UDA - it lets me push commonly used logic into a reusable User Defined Action. Then lets me reuse it in multiple...
-
Nintex Form - working with managed metadata fields
This is a post I wrote late last year, and applies to the Managed Metadata Fields in Nintex Forms via some "JavaScript middle-tier magic". ...
-
taskeng.exe command prompt - get out of my face
So I was minding my own business working, and suddenly, a command prompt popped up, blocking my work for a few seconds and then disappeared. ...
-
Working with XML in Nintex Workflows (simplified)
Problem: You call an XML web service with Nintex Web Service or Web Request actions. You get back a lot of XML, and it is very difficult to...
-
Feb 2015 CU SP2013: Workflow CurrentSiteUrl is fixed
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2920804 Assume that you create a SharePoint 2013 workflow by using SharePoint Designer 2013, and that the workflow...
-
SharePoint 2016 - debunking confusion and concerns
The announcement of SharePoint 2016 should not come as a surprise (Office 2016 was previously announced, and SharePoint has always been a product...
-
Microsoft MVP Community Camp 2015
Microsoft MVPs in the Asia region continues with various events in 2015. The first event is the MVP Community Camp held at the start of the...
-
Quick - TSQL select XPath from XML Data Type with namespace
Examples on MSDN shows the full TSQL syntax for XPath query in a TSQL statement, this has been supported since SQL Server 2008. SELECT...
-
So, this is what can happen if you hack SP javascript files
SharePoint 2010's April 2014 CU introduced a bug with copy and paste. Bform.debug.js 381,869 11-Feb-2014 12:37 Bform.js 249,012 30-Jan-2014...
-
SPD2013 Workflow - how to check user is member of group
I want to describe a method that I use to check if a user is a member of a group. Steps Call a REST webservice Reference MSDN for the correct...
-
TypeScript Definition file for SPServices v0.1
Here's something I have wanted to write for a long time, both as Thank-You to Marc Anderson's work on SPServices, as well as for personal learning of...
-
SharePoint Saturday Sydney 2014
November 29, 2014 was a great day for SharePoint Saturday. I presented "Develop and Build Workflow Apps in SP2013. Wait, Workflow Apps?" - which is a...
-
Style recommendation for writing CAML in C#
I came across some sample CAML code a while back, and have been following their way of defining CAML in C# Today a colleague commented on my code and...
-
And I say to ASHX for SharePoint: make me a folder.
Sometimes, I do get to do some on-premises farm stuff. Because deep in my soul, I'm a hardcore dev. Muahaha. Scenario In InfoPath, we want to be...
-
Copying SP2013 Workflow XAML files between VSNET projects
The Error If you copy Workflow or Workflow Custom Activity objects between your SharePoint VSNET projects, sometimes you would see these errors: Project...
-
SPS Canberra 2014 - Building SharePoint 2013 Workflows Apps (post-show notes)
On Friday afternoon I drove down to Canberra for SharePoint Saturday. It really was a wonderful afternoon. Building SharePoint 2013...
-
Setting up Azure Service Bus for debugging SharePoint 2013 Workflows
If you follow the instructions on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officeapps/archive/2013/03/21/update-to-debugging-sharepoint-2013-remote-events-using-visual-studio...
-
Small Powershell Adventures -NotIn and Arrays
PowerShell v3 has a new syntax I quite liked: $badIDs = "73574929","73573581","73575402","73576325","73575586","73575377","73574920" for($i = 0; $i...
-
KO binding for two SharePoint rich text editor controls
For a while now, I've been experimenting with a simple HTML editor for my forms. Something to work with JavaScript databinding, in my...
-
Demystifying SP2013 Workflow AppStep
A SharePoint 2013 workflow essentially can run as two different accounts. The current user, or AppStep (which runs the action as the Workflow...
-
SP2013 Workflows and WSPublishState does not exist
Column 'WSPublishState' does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user. This is a quick blog of something that troubled me for nearly an...
-
TypeScript presentation (take 2) at SPSMEL
Earlier today I delivered possibly my best TypeScript session ever at SharePoint Saturday Melbourne. The attendees were great, and I feel like...
-
jQuery Promise syntax to wrap SharePoint SP.SOD
jQuery has a special function $.Deferred - which lets you create an Deferred object to build Promise(s). We use this to simplify everything we do in...
-
Nintex Workflow Inline Function to check if SPFile is locked
IsDocumentWritable Nintex Workflow has a fairly useful function "IsDocumentWritable" that checks if the current item that the workflow is...
-
Reading InfoPath template's default values in code
String xml = ""; FormTemplate template = this.Template; using (Stream s = template.OpenFileFromPackage("template.xml")) { ...
-
Wrap up: SharePoint Saturday Adelaide and Brisbane
There is always an relevant tweet. Tomás Lázaro @ tomzalt May 22 The book Javascript Ninja has a Samurai on the cover. That happens because JS is...
-
SP2010 Forcing previously deployed file to update to latest version in site definition
I’m a big fan of quickly making changes to my SharePoint JavaScript file in SharePoint Designer and then test whether they work correctly in the...
-
SharePoint Saturdays in Australia
I wanted write about two things. I still wanted to do a summary of SharePoint Saturday Adelaide 2014, but I will have to do that later, perhaps...
-
IE11 (+Win8.1.1) F12 Developer Tools for the SharePoint Dev
This blog post is about all the new nifty features I'm finding in the latest IE11 F12 developer tools. I updated my Windows to 8.1 update 1,...
-
3 sessions in //BUILD on TypeScript
Quick blog. I'm keeping an eye on TypeScript sessions in //BUILD TypeScript by Anders Hejlsberg. Is probably the introductory session at...
-
The Microsoft MVP Community Camp is happening next Saturday March 22. What is it?
Microsoft APAC is hosting a simultaneous event in multiple cities around Asia and Oceania. It is named the Microsoft MVP Community Camp....
-
Building a 2013 No Code webpart for XKCD.com/now
Last week, XKCD (of nerd comic fame) produced this most excellent comic http://xkcd.com/now/ This complex looking image describes essentially an...
-
Using SharePoint Designer 2013 Workflow to copy file via REST on Office 365
This is a bit of trial and error, but works very well at the end, so I want to publish this and share the syntax. Related References:...
-
InfoPath's future and what everyone's saying
Andrew Connell "the future is unclear at best, realistically pessimistic and a dead-end at worst" "I do not use InfoPath any more & I do not...
-
Building No-Code Sandbox WebParts for the past, present and the future [Proposed Session Outline]
[Previous Working Title: Build amazing web parts using only JavaScript and evolving your code with any version of SharePoint] I've modified the...
-
Using spservices to create discussion and reply in a Discussion List
This updated blog post describes how I go about building a threaded, inline comments system for any page, using a SharePoint Discussion List as the backend...
-
Living with the Surface RT for 4 weeks
Across the new years holiday, I took a long four week holiday off in Indonesia with my family and in-laws. Previously I have always taken my...
-
2014 begins with a SharePoint Server MVP Award
Sometime in the early hours of the 2nd of January (I live in Australia time), I received a confirmation email from Microsoft that I've been awarded MVP for...
-
SPSSYD 2013 and special thanks to Brian Farnhill
I wanted to thank Brian Farnhill for organizing SharePoint Saturday (SPS) events in Australia faithfully for the last few years. SharePoint Saturday...
-
InfoPath - binding Linked Picture Display Text for dynamic tooltips
InfoPath is an ideal tool for XML forms. Whenever you have forms, invariably, you have little helper icons to suggest text to your users regarding how...
-
Using VSNET 2013 and write TypeScript directly to any SharePoint via WebDAV
Disclaimer: This is not the recommended workflow. As a developer you should use VS.NET 2013 and build SharePoint projects. You can then...
-
InfoPath - missing data connection files
Sometimes, your InfoPath doesn't show you all the data connection files available in your SharePoint data connections library: In this screenshot, it...
-
Fixing Facebook preview picture of your SharePoint site
I have a lot of friends in the SharePoint community, and I see a lot of SharePoint related links shared in my social circles. Sometimes, these...
-
SharePoint Saturday Canberra 2013
This is a late (and extremely brief) update for the session TypeScript: JavaScript for the SharePoint Dev Guy that I presented at Canberra. The updated...
-
Introduce your drastic UI changes... slowly
We are in the middle of a somewhat sudden rebranding exercise. One of the main colours that was used prominently in the previous theme of the...
-
SharePoint Saturday Melbourne 2013
It's that time again! I'm down in Melbourne for SharePoint Saturday later today on July 27. I'm presenting TypeScript and SharePoint, with...
-
Chrome, the Trojan Horse we didn't know about
I do not like where Chrome browser is going, and I'm typing this on Chrome. Let me explain, there are a few pieces in this puzzle. Language and API...
-
Australian SharePoint Conference 2013 Melbourne
Thank you attendees for yet another super conference. It was quite a lot of fun presenting TypeScript for SharePoint. I've got lots of feedback...
-
ContentType Workflows not being updated in the Site Collection
This is a problem we've been seeing for a long time in our development and production server. It is hard to describe the error, but there are a...
-
Modifying CSS Styles based on InfoPath field without code
This is an article expanding on a comment I made previously on the Microsoft InfoPath forums. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointcustomi...
-
Windows 8 - Export Google Reader OPML for Bing News
Let the hacks begin! Windows 8's Bing News app was updated in the last few days and with this new version, an ability was added to allow us to add our own...
-
Retrospective - Australian SharePoint Conference Sydney 2013
I had planned to post this as soon as I finish my session - but you know, conference. Lots of friends come visit during these events and the evenings...
-
InfoPath - reading template.xsd in code for type checking
InfoPath is the world's most advanced XML-based form system. Each InfoPath document is a fully structured XML file, and the template contains the XSD...
-
3-step fix Nintex WorkflowDesigner.aspx with your custom system masterpage
Scenario You have created a wonderful, responsive-design, HTML5 MasterPage for your SharePoint 2010. It works really well. You even did a...
-
Building SharePoint solutions with Microsoft's TypeScript: why and how
I wanted to write up a summary of this presentation that I've had the chance to present at two recent events: SharePoint Saturday Perth...
-
Making InfoPath 2010 Preview/Debug work again
Quick blog. How I fixed InfoPath 2010 Debug/Preview error, after installing Office 2013. InfoPath cannot open the selected form because of an error in...
-
SharePoint Saturday Perth - Building SharePoint solutions with TypeScript: how and why.
I'll be presenting a new topic for SharePoint Saturday Perth this year, on SharePoint and TypeScript. While I had begin planning to work with...
-
TypeScript and SharePoint - definition files
One of TypeScript's strengths is that you can use the ability to define Interfaces to produce Type Definition files for JavaScript. These...
-
Example uses of SPServices, JavaScript and SharePoint
I wanted to write about spservices.codeplex.com from Marc D Anderson - we've found ourselves using this really special library time and again across...
-
InfoPath - Form stuck on Installing, Upgrading or Deleting
When you publish an InfoPath Form through Central Administration, a few things happen: Central Administration creates a WSP package for this form. Central...
-
Nintex Workflow - using all Regex options in your actions
Nintex Workflows supports a Regular Expression action. This action has a very simple configurable UI with only the "Ignore case" option. But...
-
Removing HomeGroup icon from Windows 8 desktop
This morning, I found a HomeGroup icon in my Windows 8 Deskotp. I'm not actually sure what happened and how it appeared. I am pretty sure it...
-
How to create your Windows 8 Start Button with PowerShell
Before I go on, I have to say I find the Start Menu unnecessary. There are already many ways to get to your Start Screen: Throw mouse to lower-left...
-
SharePoint Saturday Sydney 2012
Thank you all for attending SharePoint Saturday, giving up your time. Sydney marks the last of the 6 SharePoint Saturdays that I've had the privilege...
-
InfoPath form load rules and loading event order
A strange gotcha in InfoPath concerning which event runs first. Create an InfoPath form, with a field. Create a Form Load rule, that sets this field...
-
SharePoint Saturday Canberra 2012
I had the pleasure of presenting REST services and AJAX at Canberra again. It was a fun and sunny day that started at 4am in the morning, and packing...
-
SharePoint - showing Contacts in People Search results
Scenario: You have a working and functioning People Search page, and it's used to show information (and lovely photos) of your employees and acting...
-
XML deserialization - cannot have child contents to be deserialized as an object
Element MyValue from namespace http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Services cannot have child contents to be deserialized as an object. Please use...
-
InfoPath 2013 uses new Online Pictures instead of Clip Art
The InfoPath 2013 Preview doesn't really have many new features. But this one little one made me smile. In InfoPath 2013, the Clip Art ribbon...
-
SharePoint - The object has been updated by another user since it was last fetched - while updating Site Columns
This is the second time I've been bitten by this error. Exception: The object has been updated by another user since it was last fetched And both...
-
Windows 8
Windows 8 is coming, and I wanted to say something to set people's expectations right. I think it'll help people align their views and appreciate this...
-
SharePoint Saturday Melbourne 2012
I had a great time in Melbourne and presented my session on Building Custom REST services and consuming them with jQuery AJAX. Thank you for...
-
SP2013 Custom services deploys and runs on v15
I fired up my SP2013 VM to do some simple tests tonight, I wanted to know if the REST services that I've built and demo'ed for SharePoint 2010 would...
-
SP2013 - Pin your SharePoint Root 15 folder
First, pin your SharePoint Root (Folder 15) to Start screen Enjoy WinKey-15 productivity
-
The SharePoint Pinterest-style Image Library
A picture is worth a thousand words. In the latest version of spaspa.codeplex.com , I created a separate Knockout Template and bind the Images library...
-
Test your C#: Generic overloaded constructors
I love languages. Here's one for a language nut. public class Response<T> { private T result; private string...
-
SharePoint Saturday Adelaide update
Hope you enjoyed the session and all the wonderful sessions through out the day. I hope I've also given you plenty of ideas on how you can mix and...
-
SharePoint Saturday Brisbane update
Thank you for attending my session on Building Custom REST services and consuming them with jQuery AJAX. I hope you enjoyed the session and...
-
SharePoint, why is listdata service using strange names?
The wonders and pains of Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq.Util.GetFriendlyName I'm doing some more work with SharePoint as a Single Page Application (...
-
SharePoint Saturday Brisbane 02-June-2012
In little more than 3 more days, we'll be meeting up again in SharePoint Saturday Brisbane! I'll be presenting again on the Developer track on how to...
-
SharePoint in a single page, now with List Item edit
Here's the latest screenshot from this project on http://spaspa.codeplex.com I've put in buttons that allows you to edit a list item,...
-
VS.NET 2008, VSeWSS 1.3 and SafeControl
Oh VSeWSS how I've NOT missed you. I was compiling an old solution package for SharePoint 2007, this solution has 6 web parts but the WSP package's...
-
SharePoint Single Page Application day 4
Did a bit of clean up and finally I've got what I can call the first awesome screen shot. This is a Single Page Application deployed to SharePoint, and...
-
SharePoint 2010 as a Single Page Application (teaser)
What is a Single Page Application? Essentially, an application disguised as a single web page. Like the official "Twitter" web...
-
InfoPath - creating a custom FormServer page to embed your own JavaScript goodness
From time to time, people ask about how to embed JavaScript within InfoPath - there are all kinds of reasons why you'd want to do this, and in this...
-
InfoPath 2010 - query using the REST interface
This is an exercise to play with the REST interface, which works extremely well with InfoPath 2010. Scenario We have a postcode list. Filled...
-
SharePoint - stripping HTML tags in XSL
Sometimes, when working with XSL (for example, in a content query webpart), you would like to limit the number of characters returned in a field in the...
-
SPSPerth 2012 Update
This is my first time in Perth! Hello Perthites! I even took a train to Cottesloe beach - a very nice beach, I watched the sunset and did what any...
-
SharePoint - Recursive delete SPWeb PowerShell script
Or, what happens when you stuffed up and need to clean up a lot of sites created by accident. Story I have a feature receiver stapled to my site...
-
SharePoint Saturday 2012 public announcements
A new year means more SharePoint Saturdays! In Australia, first up, is SPS Perth . This will be held on April 21st. In just 3 weeks' time. This will also be...
-
InfoPath, custom WCF Service, Word and Open XML SDK (outline)
This upcoming series of articles promise to be far more exciting than the title. Scenario How do you use an InfoPath form document to populate a word...
-
InfoPath - disabling backspace key in browser form
How to disable the backspace key using Javascript/jQuery for an InfoPath browser form in SharePoint 2010. The problem One really troubling problem...
-
Re: Sorry dad, you'll understand, someday
This is a quick blog post, in response to Zac Gorman's excellent Magical Game Time comic. http://magicalgametime.com/post/19718347285/ill-stop-when-ive-saved...
-
AUSPC 2012 summary
I had an awesome time presenting Building your own custom REST Services and consuming them with jQuery AJAX in the Australian SharePoint Conference...
-
AUSPC 2012 quick update
I'm in the strange and calm interlude between day 1 and day 2 of awesomeness in the annual Australian SharePoint Conference (AUSPC) 2012. Day 1 has been a...
-
Dummy guide to install Win 8 on VHD for Boot to VHD
Summarized from: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/GuideToInstallingAndBootingWindows8DeveloperPreviewOffAVHDVirtualHardDisk.aspx...
-
Knockout binding formatters for date and currency
Dependency Requires Knockout jQuery (for setting text()) ASP.NET (for the formatting functions). ko.bindingHandlers.date = {...
-
InfoPath - creating sequential filenames without an extra column
Avid InfoPath form creators will no doubt know the trick to create sequential numbers for use in filenames. The steps typically includes: Create a field...
-
SSPUG retrospective: Creating Knockout user experiences in SharePoint with JavaScript
I had an absolute blast presenting Knockout , AJAX, jQuery, SP2010 REST services, and spservices tonight at the February 2012 Sydney SharePoint user...
-
Curiosity drives creativity. The only limit for your kid are there because you put them there.
I watched this YouTube recently, Neil DeGrasse Tyson was being interviewed and was asked a question: what would you do as a nation to increase scientific...
-
Creating Knockout User Experiences in SharePoint with JavaScript and REST services
Sydney SharePoint user group is 21st of February. Where I'll be presenting Knockout, AJAX and REST services. To many of us...
-
InfoPath how to copy a repeating section using rules
For years, we all thought this was impossible. You had to use code. I somehow woke up with an idea on how to do this, and set about testing and...
-
Pretty up SharePoint 2010 mysite with showModalDialog (updated)
[This is an updated article from /blog/2011/8/3/sp2010-pretty-up-mysite-with-showmodaldialog.html .] SharePoint 2010 My Site SharePoint 2010 ships with this...
-
SharePoint - JavaScript current page context info
Quick blog. On every SharePoint page there's a javascript context variable: _spPageContextInfo { webServerRelativeUrl : "/ProjectWeb", webLanguage : 1033,...
-
Australian SharePoint Conference 2012, March 20-21, Melbourne
2012 will be the third Australian SharePoint Conference [ agenda ], and my third time speaking at this fantastic event. In my opinion, the AUSPC conference...
-
InfoPath - LoadDocumentAndPlayEventLog NullReferenceException
Error: LoadDocumentAndPlayEventLog failed with unhandled exception System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an...
-
SharePoint - here is a REST service Project Item template
UPDATE: There seems to be an issue when loading this template in VS.NET - sometimes there's an error that prevents the rest of CKSDEV from working...
-
InfoPath - check leap year using expression
This is a fun one. Use the undocumented msxsl:utc function, which checks / converts a date into a normalized representation. So, what will happen if...
-
Pasting pictures from clipboard to SharePoint in browser, via Silverlight 5
Silverlight 5 was quietly released to the world to very little fanfare, considering the looming Windows 8 launch with WinRT next year, and the world (at...
-
The blogger's eternal struggle for blog reader comments
Sometimes, a rant (and warning, this particular blog post can only be classified as a rant) is just too long to be said in a 140 character tweet. A...
-
SharePoint - disguise your long running AJAX calls
I have to confess I haven't had so much laugh in SharePoint for a long time. OK, here's the problem: I'm calling a custom REST service that I've developed -...
-
InfoPath - removing newline (CRLF) using rules
In InfoPath (and in Windows in general), a newline is two characters \r\n (carriage return, followed by a newline character). You can't easily use \r...
-
InfoPath - Concat SharePoint list with the Eval function (aka Voodoo)
It really can't hurt to play with the crazy XPath capabilities within InfoPath. This is documented in many places, starting:...
-
InfoPath - managing lots of tooltip in your browser form
This is an idea that I've been brooding for a long time. Finally got a prototype implemented. We have a complicated looking InfoPath...
-
InfoPath - packaging site columns and content types
WARNING I do not recommend packaging and deploying content types . Site columns are fine, but it is best to leave InfoPath content type to SharePoint -...
-
SharePoint Saturday Melbourne update
I had a pleasure of flying down and presenting at the SharePoint Saturday Melbourne event. Had a great time, met many new people and presented my talk...
-
SSPUG - REST Service and jQuery AJAX
As promised, the PowerPoint and solution files for my session for the Sydney SharePoint User Group October session. Sorry I spelt "Summery"...
-
IANAL but I understand CC
I understand CC, I think, I am not a lawyer. I was encouraged by @aeoth's rant on twitter to add a license clarification to my blog, since I've always held...
-
SharePoint - Starting Site Workflows Manually
We probably all know that SharePoint 2010 allows you to create a new type of workflow: Site Workflow, these workflows are not bound to a list. Site...
-
Hacking SP.UI.ModalDialog to download ReportServer PDF
We have a situation where we want to let our users click a report server link, but the report can take (depending on parameters) anywhere between 5 to 30...
-
InfoPath - an example of using an XML file for special characters
This is an old trick relating to inserting special characters (such as carriage returns) and tricking InfoPath to stop removing them! ...
-
SPSCBR - REST Service and jQuery AJAX
Climbed out of bed at 4am and drove myself and colleague Jumpei on a laughter-filled trip down to Canberra, where we had lots of fun at the SharePoint...
-
InfoPath - abusing a secondary datasource as temporary variable
This is an InfoPath technique that I've recently started using, and is pretty awesome. Problem: InfoPath is great with rules and fields, but...
-
WindowsPhone 7.5 Mango and Office 365
Adding an account Go to settings | email + accounts | add an account | Outlook Provide Office 365 login email and password Once setup, the account...
-
InfoPath - how to do case-insensitive text compare
Because XML is case sensitive, in InfoPath you have the problem that field may not be equal to another field during text comparison due to their case. One...
-
InfoPath – designing verification form
I’m quite a fan of having a validation summary block in InfoPath, similar to how one would have validation in ASP.NET. To start, we can create sections...
-
SP2010 pretty up mysite with showModalDialog
Disclaimer: Totally, unsupported. OK, that's out of the way, let me describe the problem. SharePoint 2010 ships with this pretty mysite. Packed with...
-
My Geek Origin story, creativity meets engineering
It all started with… LEGO My brother and I grew up around LEGO, dad says that's because he wanted to play lots of LEGO but couldn't...
-
Changes in SharePoint Client Object Model Redistributable SP1
Summary: Enum Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.RecycleBinItemType.Web was added in Silverlight Client Object Model SP1. No other significant changes...
-
WindowsPhone 7.5 Mango is so GOOD
Now that a confirmation of the NDA situation seems to be in place, let me shout from the top of the rooftop....
-
InfoPath 2010 close the browser window
How do you close the browser window (or tab) completely when you close an InfoPath browser form? Quick steps: In your URL to open your form, specify the...
-
10 InfoPath tips for SharePoint developers
Here are 10 nice tips designed for someone that's familiar with SharePoint, but may be new to InfoPath. Having brooded over the idea for a...
-
REMIX thoughts: where HTML5 and Silverlight fits in with SharePoint
Congratulations to Microsoft Australia for pulling off another really great REMIX event. My biggest take-home thoughts came from the combined session...
-
InfoPath 2010 - embed HTML for rich and web forms
Do we like the SharePoint content editor web part? Yes! What if there's a way to add your own HTML in your InfoPath form, and have it appear for both...
-
InfoPath FormServer - initial view and parameters via URL
Form Server provides quite a few very interesting Query parameters to allow us to influence how it will behave when rendering the form in browser....
-
Rich and Reach - plenty of other successful ways
Having established that you need Silverlight to have a richer UX, let's look at how you can support other platforms. Cross-platform compilers...
-
SharePoint - Improve EditView Column Reordering with JQuery
This is a fun exercise to apply some simple Javascript DOM manipulation with JQuery to improve the reordering columns experience in SharePoint's Edit View....
-
SharePoint 2010 - Simple LightBox effect for large images
First of all, I know this solution exists. My particular attempt is to provide a much simpler solution Address large-image blowing up your page...
-
InfoPath rule based repeating section date validation
A question was asked in the SharePoint 2010 Infopath forums: "I am using Infopath2010 and developing a form where there are multiple sections. In each...
-
Rename multiple files in Office 365 via Silverlight Client Object Model
One of the first Silverlight "tools" I build for SharePoint 2010 was a tool to rename multiple files in a SharePoint document library with regular...
-
Rich or Reach, pick one
Martin Fowler 's latest article on CrossPlatformMobile is a great read, he argues based on history with Java and Smalltalk, that the best solution for Cross...
-
Line break in InfoPath web browser forms
Microsoft once mentioned a line break trick using rules in InfoPath. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2005/03/04/385577.aspx The main problem we're...
-
Script and Link in SharePoint CQWP XSL Style Sheet
Help! I added some script and link tags to my XSL style sheet for my Content Query Web Part, and now SharePoint has stopped working! Problem...
-
SharePoint 2010 loads hidden Silverlight?
A while back we had an email conversation where there was a Silverlight plugin crash on one of our publishing pages, this happens occasionally while running...
-
Setting up a draft save location for InfoPath web forms
This is a quick description of how you can set up a draft Forms Library for letting your users save their InfoPath web forms quickly. Create an...
-
Adding a warm-up step to your SharePoint project deploy action
VS.NET 2010 allows a lot of awesome control over the exact steps that occurs when you deploy your project to your development environment. Figure:...
-
InfoPath - Using preceding:: XPath expression to hide repeating row label
Use preceding:: XPath expression to hide the repeating row label after the first occurrence. Result: Rule: count(preceding::...
-
Silverlight and SharePoint
I did a bit of house keeping and tidied up all the collected blog posts on developing Silverlight applications on SharePoint 2010, and put them all under an...
-
Updating VS.NET 2008 Professional to use TFS 2010
We have some old virtual machines with VS.NET 2008 installed, used to build and maintain packages for WSS3 / MOSS 2007. Now that we have a nice new...
-
Installing TFS 2010 on 2008R2
System Checks: The .NET 3.5 Framework is not installed. You must install the .NET 3.5 Framework Feature before continuing. I love how TFS 2010...
-
Aussie WP7 App Hub - use the right Live ID
tl;dr When you sign up and register on the App Hub for Windows Phone 7, make sure you use your Australian LIVE ID. History I've had a LIVE ID forever...
-
Reminder: move your Windows Live Spaces blog
Just a reminder that before the end of this month (March 2011), you will need to migrate or download a copy of your Windows Live Spaces blog. For me, I had...
-
We Love Windows Phone - I really do
This is an emotional blog. But also a blog of acceptance since I found peace at the end. History I'm a long time listener of the Windows Weekly podcast ,...
-
SharePoint central administration tip - use those resource links
Some of the service application administration pages in SharePoint 2010 are incredibly hard to get to. Hands up who knows - in their head right now, without...
-
Can't save SharePoint 2010 site as template with a library called Forms
Error exporting the list named "Forms" at the URL: Forms I have problems this afternoon saving a very small site as a template for deploying, and was...
-
SPD 2010 conditional formatting to hide columns based on a related column in the list
I was discussing hiding columns using SharePoint Designer 2010 and thought I'd dig into the UI a bit more to see if there are any special tricks, as well as...
-
Windows 7 SP1 login screen
In my opinion, if the Windows 7 SP1 login screen had looked like this, it’d be a lot better. Microsoft seems so… uncool sometimes. For comparison,...
-
Office - fixing the repairing problem when opening Word or Access
I spend the evening hunting down why every time I run Office 2010 in my demo machine, it would first launch configuration... Always configuring......
-
SharePoint 2010 Branding tools
About to head off to a client to do about a week’s branding work. I was loading my SharePoint laptop with all the tools that I think I’ll need. ...
-
InfoPath exception occurred during loading of business logic for central published form
This is a really strange one. I can’t fully explain it, but I totally stumbled upon a workaround. I publish an InfoPath form with domain trust...
-
Space Crusade Resources - Reloaded
Years ago, I lost my Space Crusade manual. I combed the Internet to find people that had it, and could scan it for me. In return, I scanned most of my...
-
Giving SharePoint a Silverlight Metro UI facelift!
My little baby's coming together. I can't wait.
-
SharePoint's Silverlight webpart defaults to WindowlessMode
Because SharePoint’s Silverlight webpart defaults to windowless="true", there are some features of Silverlight that won’t work as you’d expect out of...
-
InfoPath 2010 COM Add-ins not available in Form Design
In a previous life, I wrote Outlook and Word Add-ins to automate/extend those office apps. I was looking up whether there’s a way to script or create a COM...
-
SharePoint 2010 WCF HelloWorld Service and InfoPath
Was looking for a quick tutorial for creating a Custom WCF Service for SharePoint 2010. For some reason couldn’t find one, so I sat down and try it...
-
SharePoint and Reporting Services Integration, the good, the bad, and the ugly
Benefits of using Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode Version Control in SharePoint (vs. BIDS project saved in TFS). Having...
-
Automatic Relink InfoPath Forms Event Receiver
I’ve been working on an InfoPath solution that requires both Offline and Online capabilities. Problem and Background An InfoPath form has two components –...
-
Silverlight + SharePoint - add to web part gallery
This article covers how to go about packaging a webpart for the Silverlight XAP file and deploy it to Web Part Gallery. In the previous article I described...
-
Silverlight + SharePoint 2010 - package XAP file in a sandbox WSP Solution
This is a long series of blog posts on developing, debugging and deploying Silverlight and SharePoint solutions....
-
InfoPath - external data from SharePoint List error
I had this error "The operation could not be completed" when trying to connect to a SharePoint List as an external data connection in InfoPath today. Show...
-
SharePoint: automatically sign in with my Windows User Account in IE and FireFox
Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a concept of security zones. It can guess which servers that you are visiting belongs to the corporate...
-
Write blogs with Windows Live Writer, and schedule publish to look like a PRO!
A blog post a day keeps writer's block away. I sat down to write a bunch of blog posts tonight, but instead of having everything published at once, I...
-
PowerPoint is for code too
This is a follow up post to Outlook (and blogs) are for code , from my colleague Peter Gfader . I have this problem with PowerPoint I paste code into...
-
OneNote - screen clipping + OCR
I have to admit that I'm really new to OneNote, but more and more I realize I don't know how I get by without it before. Here is a OneNote special...
-
SharePoint and Office 365 - Joel Oleson predicts 2011.
https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/itpro/Pages/SharePoint-2011-Predictions.aspx I echo strongly Joel's excitement in the cloud space regarding...
-
SharePoint 2010 - Quick Fix for Ribbon Page Layout switch JavaScript error
1. Your content editor is trying to change page layout via the Ribbon in SharePoint 2010 Figure: Click Page Layout in the Ribbon 2. But they get a...
-
Windows Phone 7 - enabling wireless sync
Wireless sync is configured via the Zune software. Have your phone join the wireless While plugged into the PC, navigate to: Zune | Settings | Phone |...
-
Silverlight is for Business Apps, HTML5 is for Flash
Silverlight has always been about Business Apps since version 2. HTML 5 - well I don't think this will ever be suitable for Business Apps. ...
-
Windows Phone 7: Exchange with Self-Signed Certificate
I wonder if this is a game breaker. Many corporate Exchange servers use a self-signed certificate, and push that certificate into client PC's root CA...
-
Windows Phone 7 - can I switch off the iPhone yet?
One final check-list before turning the iPhone off: Contacts - via Exchange - OK Mail - via Exchange / Gmail - OK Safari - will be so glad to see it...
-
Windows Phone 7 - SharePoint and Exchange
This post is going to be a bit negative. For users looking for Enterprise features in the first version of Windows Phone 7, I think I have to...
-
Windows Phone 7 - need Zune
I love Zune software - it is so much better than iTunes. But actually to use and synchronize your Windows Phone 7 you don't really need Zune at all....
-
Windows Phone 7 : Facebook error 85FB4400
Connecting and synchronizing my Windows Phone 7 - most things are smooth, but not everything. Here's a few posts quickly listing my issues: My...
-
Silverlight + SharePoint 2010 - did you just deploy customizations to SharePoint via the document upload?
Just finished my presentation earlier tonight in SDDN regarding Silverlight and SharePoint. I had some initial reservations whether true Silverlight...
-
Microsoft Live Spaces goes to WordPress
I've used and hated Microsoft Live Spaces for blogging. Finally Microsoft did what they should have done years ago, they killed it. They are getting...
-
Silverlight - gzip compression for your Domain and Duplex service(s)
I've been pretty unhappy with the data that's been thrown back and forth between a RIA DomainService and the Silverlight client. I feel it's too big,...
-
Silverlight GeocodeLocation SerializationException when calling RouteService CalculateRoute
I was doing some geocoding via the Bingmap service, and received results of GeocodeLocation type. I incorrectly assumed that since these...
-
MVC2 - File upload with HttpPostedFileBase
ASP.NET MVC2 makes it extremely easy to upload a file to your controller. Scott Hanselman blogged about this in detail...
-
VB.NET - there are times when you have to keep an open mind
I suddenly found myself needing to write a very simple upload method in our MVC controller. The uploaded file is in CSV format. The question that...
-
TIP - Silverlight - InitParams and ApplicationLifeTimeService(s)
I have this love-hate relationship with InitParams Like Pre-download values to Silverlight, so it's available to the client before Silverlight even starts...
-
Silverlight - sharing a common class between Silverlight and .NET
Because Silverlight is compiled against a separate set of Silverlight runtime, we can not reference or share a common library between a Silverlight project...
-
Silverlight - the magic of Silverlight RIA Toolkit
I checked in some code. Moments later, my colleague asked me: "did you check in the service reference for this...
-
Silverlight - RadScheduler and required field data validation
In my current project I'm having the pleasure of working with the Silverlight RadScheduler control. While you may read and feel it is a very bloated...
-
SharePoint enable iFilter for TIFF OCR
In some companies, paper documents are scanned into TIFF formats and stored electronically. To search for them, you'll need to enable the TIFF OCR iFilter...
-
SharePoint Saturday Sydney
Hi again. This is a rather delayed blog post summarizing SharePoint Saturday Sydney #SPSSydney that was held last weekend on 7th August 2010. This was...
-
SharePoint 2010 GlobalNavigationNodes Moved
This is a very short blog, but it appears that the GlobalNavigationNodes member on the PublishingWeb class has moved in SharePoint 2010....
-
SharePoint 2010 with IIS URL Rewrite 2.0
Or, how do you remove /Pages/ from SharePoint URL. Almost all the hard work is done by Waldek Mastykarz (@waldekm)...
-
Sydney SharePoint User Group 20 July 2010
Presented an updated version of my Silverlight and SharePoint solutions talk in the Sydney user group tonight. I don't think I timed the presentation well...
-
Silverlight - code behind back to MVVM
Philosophical difference between code-behind and the ViewModel Because VS.NET is firstly a visual tool, it tries very hard to give developers an easy...
-
SharePoint ClientContext.List is missing?
The SharePoint Object Model has: SPContext Members SPContext.Current (static) SPContext.Site SPContext.Web SPContext.List By comparison, the SharePoint...
-
SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight 4.0 Webcam
Tonight's Silverlight play involves Silverlight 4 Web Cam API, and SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model. SILVERLIGHT 4 WEBCAM API Silverlight 4's WebCam API...
-
SharePoint 2010 - Update All List Items SharePoint Designer Workflow Action
Out of the box - SharePoint provides quite a few different Workflow Actions, but strangely missing was a Workflow action that can loop through and update...
-
Silverlight - merging detached object back to the attached data context
This is a short post on something that we did in the days of Silverlight 2~3, before we have RIA services. Consider two method signatures on the service:...
-
SharePoint 2010 - Configuring List Item Permissions with Workflow
The client had a pretty "simple" situation where: We want to create a Request list where different people in the company can add requests, but assign it to...
-
Windows Live Messenger wave 4 - redir.us freaks me out
Colleagues send me links via MSN to a web page, and I see Immediately started freaking out - what is rdir.us? Not many people have written about this - the...
-
Silverlight PivotViewer and SharePoint
Microsoft just released a new control PivotViewer for Silverlight. http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/pivotviewer/ If you haven't seen this yet - go check...
-
Silverlight Unit Testing - adding a timeout to EnqueueConditional
Since a lot of Silverlight work is asynchronous in nature, the Silverlight testing framework has many helper functions to essentially do "non blocking wait...
-
Silverlight first asynchronous test run twice
I'm observing a pretty odd behaviour - the first test of my MVVM is running twice. Exhibit Original code: [TestMethod, Asynchronous] public void...
-
Silverlight Unit Testing Framework - modify/remove Tag Expressions dialog
The default Silverlight Unit Testing framework project has a lovely Tag Expressions welcome dialog that lets you decide (within 5 seconds), whether you want...
-
C# Anonymous Delegate Syntax
In the effort to save key strokes, sometimes I wonder if C# code is becoming a bit unreadable. Exhibit Original: private void VMIsConnected() {...
-
Windows Live Photo Gallery (beta)
The nastiest part of the whole Windows Live Wave 4 Beta experience so far has been concentrated on the installer - though not all Microsoft's fault, I did...
-
Windows Live Wave 4 Beta - Error 0x8104000b WaitForCatalog
0x8104000b Source: WaitForCatalog. Couldn't setup the installer. Check to make sure you are connected to the internet. Had this nasty installer bug that hit...
-
Develop and deploy Silverlight + SharePoint 2010 Solutions (part 3 - light it up)
A quick summary of part 2 : How to attach debugger, check network traffic with Fiddler Do your VIEWFIELDS, FILTER and SORT on the server LINQ is converted...
-
SharePoint: Do you turn off auto update on your SharePoint servers?
Cross Posted from Do you turn off auto update on your SharePoint servers? A recent Security Hotfix has broken SharePoint WSS3 stand-alone installations....
-
SharePoint MOSS 2007 - Style Library - File Not Found
A client called up - after they performed a site collection export and import (in order to duplicate a site), the Publishing features we developed for them...
-
Develop and deploy Silverlight + SharePoint 2010 Solutions (part 2)
A quick summary of part 1 : Environment (tools) Creating Silverlight project Creating XAML Hooking up Silverlight databinding to mock data Implement real...
-
Develop and deploy Silverlight + SharePoint 2010 Solutions
I had the pleasure of presenting at the Australian SharePoint Conference on Develop and deploy Silverlight + SharePoint 2010 Solutions . I had a blast,...
-
Silverlight + SharePoint: helper classes
While composing my earlier blog about Silverlight + SharePoint +CAML best practices , it dawns on me that it would be quite possible to build a helper...
-
Silverlight + SharePoint + CAML - best practices
I was reviewing http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/PR07 regarding SharePoint client object model tonight, in consideration of how the client object model...
-
MCTS exams - what are these certification trying to solve exactly?
Just walked out of a MCTS exam, the one in question is actually 70-630, after 30minutes. The exam was allocated 2hours. I'm full of mixed feelings. Relief,...
-
Outlook (and blogs) are for code
After being annoyed with Outlook... well, forever... for always autocorrecting my code in my emails, it suddenly strikes me to find the auto correct...
-
Windows 7 Troubleshooting Wizard is not a myth
I know this sounds crazy. The network troubleshooting wizard actually works. So I was on a designer’s machine and she was really having trouble...
-
Certified Scrum Developer
John Sonmez made some comments that scrum had become all about money in his post: http://simpleprogrammer.com/2010/03/31/scrum-for-the-money/ I highly...
-
For the love of SharePoint
Did quite a bit of blog reading tonight, mostly related to SharePoint, and it has prompted me to reflect the last 3 years and how my attitude towards...
-
SharePoint 2010 CAML List Joins
SharePoint 2010, you can finally do List Joins in CAML. This would be a great boon to the type of views that you can create in SharePoint and in code....
-
Apple iPhone drivers are pos
Exhibit A: Windows Explorer looking at the pictures in my iPhone. Notice that almost ALL of them are upside down, this happens very often when...
-
SharePoint 2010 beta TaxonomyPicker in EventLog
Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed: Could not load type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.TaxonomyPicker' from...
-
SharePoint: referencing SCRIPT done right
Our scenario is pretty simple – we have a package that includes some JavaScript files. We had them deployed to /Style Library/ similar to our CSS...
-
SharePoint 2010 missing Alert Me
Was at UTS teaching SharePoint when an interesting problem striked. The students couldn't see Alert Me on their ribbon bar. My initial thought was that the...
-
SharePoint – download file size missing and document library
Noticed something odd with SharePoint today – was downloading two zip files from the same SharePoint document library. I’m told the sizes are 25mb and...
-
iShare is free. Get it now.
Tim Kremer's iPhone SharePoint client is currently free. Get it now. More details in my next post. Here's a picture of it with our intranet:
-
SharePoint 2010 vs. 2007 comparison chart (ongoing effort)
This would be an on-going effort as I gather more details. But at the moment I'm publishing what I have. Different capabilities 2007 WSS3 2007 MOSS...
-
WindowsCE – deploying to the device
A very quick blog on some pointers when deploying your .NET Compact Framework application to a device. Assuming that you've got your windows mobile...
-
Windows CE – building a transparent picturebox
Surprise! PictureBox in Windows CE doesn't support transparency. Diving into yet another old forgotten corner of the .NET compact framework. And just...
-
Buying games from PopCap - I am required to tick newsletter
I'm quite used to ticking Terms and Conditions. This PopCap checkbox has additional strings attached: You are required to receive the...
-
XP vs. Scrum
This question comes up a lot when people have heard both buzzwords and have trouble working out which one is better for them. One good chart I found is this...
-
VirtualBox – actually quite nice
I actually learn of VirtualBox via Twitter. That's one of the things I realize from Twitter – people talk about things they like. One person...
-
Always blog it if you had to write anything down
Martin said something recently in an email that really echoed with what I think. Always blog it if you had to do it… it serves as both a reminder to...
-
SharePoint 2010 – renaming features and web parts in VS.NET 2010 SharePoint Solutions
In solution, select the Feature. Change the Folder Name property to new name. Press Enter - VS.NET will try to help you rename everything...
-
SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight
Was working on a presentation on SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight. Finally, I get to marry my two favourite technologies in one awesome demo. There's...
-
ASP.NET "5.7.1 Unable to relay for email" when SmtpClient.UseDefaultCredentials = true
Was looking at a problem with Andy regarding using SmtpClient.UserDefaultCredentials = true, and sending emails within an authenticated WCF service. We can...
-
SharePoint 2010 Speed, and Boot to VHD
Been pouring through all the new goodies in SharePoint 2010 like a kid opening his first Christmas present - So much fun, so little time. A few people have...
-
ATI x64 driver fail - Catalyst Install Manager has stopped working
This could possibly be the last ATI product that I'd purchase. For almost as long as I could remember I can not get the ATI drivers to install. Download...
-
The iPhone design flaw
Hi Apple, When I first got my iPhone it truly was a thing of joy. New apps were being created and continued to blew away my expectations of what a phone can...
-
SharePoint 2010 – sneak peek
Microsoft has begin to move and has blasted off with the SharePoint 2010 sneak peek website – I can't help but think the timing was strategic...
-
Google hates Bing and is evil? Surely not!
So Microsoft has an outage in their data centre for Bing travel. I've heard great amazing stories over the grapevine about this one, but...
-
WOW - WTB a guild airship
Dear Blizzard, All I want for Chrismas is a giant guild airship. It is well understood that Blizzard's response to player housing (or guild halls) in WOW...
-
SharePoint – Blank IIS manager, events 6398, 6482, 7076
Working on a client’s SharePoint site – I wanted to pop into the IIS configuration screen: Now when your IIS manager shows you a blank page – you know...
-
Facebook – tattoo ad and privacy?
So I was looking at my wife Lina using her Facebook and saw this ad on the right: I exclaimed oh wow – Facebook told the advertiser what her husband’s name...
-
A lot of regrets for one evening
Interrupting the usual tech blog to talk about an awful thing that happened tonight. I got home around 8pm – we got ready to head out for a quick dinner out...
-
Ah another weekend is upon us…
And I’m well equipped for this weekend, I’ve got two fun activities to do: Go camp out in http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointgeneral/...
-
serverfault.com hasn't launched and I hate it already
http://serverfault.com/ launched , and I hate it already. edit : SF.com is Open to Public, so this should have read: serverfault.com hasn't launched yet and...
-
FreeRealms TCG - the nature starter deck
I'm playing a nature starter deck and have no trouble beating the npcs - currently going around collecting more cards. Here's the general idea to have a...
-
FreeRealms TCG notes
Name location Trick1 Tournament2 Creature3 Resource4 - Ernie MorningGlory Sam Potts Sanctuary Order Creature Wolf companion x3 Order Resource Sports Shades...
-
SharePoint: MOSS SP2 Major Bug
The SharePoint Team blog announced a major bug with SharePoint MOSS SP2: This is funny, but extremely serious and important. During the installation of SP2,...
-
SharePoint – InfoPath /cache clearall
So continuing my InfoPath self education. I publish a new version of the InfoPath form to the Forms Library I then create a new form based on this template...
-
SharePoint – InfoPath / Forms Library missing
Testing InfoPath, I try to do the simplest thing – publishing an InfoPath form to a SharePoint as a template, and allowing it to create a new library...
-
SharePoint – how do you stay on top of all this stuff?
SharePoint is a big product – and getting bigger. People have wondered – how do you stay on top of all the new developments? This is one trick...
-
SharePoint – thoughts on sharepoint.microsoft.com
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com had a face lift. I decided to go have a quick look and make some comments. Nice bits The site looks cleaner It is running on...
-
SharePoint – Microsoft Certified Masters, and why I should care
A couple of weeks ago, the first batch of MCM: SharePoint were announced. Curiously, I went to see what it takes to be a SharePoint master. Initially, I had...
-
Migrating from Windows Live Spaces to SquareSpace - outline
This is going to be a series of blogs, and hopefully release source code for getting your blog out of Windows Live Spaces. I want to split this into two...
-
SharePoint: Groove assimilated by the Borg (aka SharePoint)
Prepare to be assimilated by the Borg. http://blogs.msdn.com/groove_development_team/archive/2009/05/13/makeover-for-groove-sharepoint-workspace-2010.aspx...
-
What am I looking for in SquareSpace
Going to spend this next week seriously giving SquareSpace a twirl. I'm looking for: Easy maintenance Import from spaces.live.com without doing something...
-
SharePoint - service pack 2 thoughts
SharePoint service pack 2 came out a couple of days ago, for some reason I was really excited about it and even woke up checking twitter regarding any...
-
IIS7 WCF .SVC 404
This is a tip for myself: For the weird reasons I could not understand – if your IIS7/Vista doesn’t have a handler for .svc all of a sudden – you can...
-
SharePoint - On the verge of launching a new release of a SharePoint site
On the verge of launching a new release of a public SharePoint website and I came across this list (from shanselman's twitter actually). 15 Essential...
-
SharePoint – thoughts on MSDN “Configuring and Deploying Anonymous Publishing Sites for SharePoint Server 2007”
Andrew Connell 's white paper on Configuring and Deploying Anonymous Publishing Sites for SharePoint Server 2007 just went up on MSDN. The following...
-
SharePoint – IE8 standards mode causes trouble in SharePoint
Running SharePoint on IE8 – JavaScript errors when using the rich text editor. 'null' is null or not an object – in form.js The...
-
So you want to be a SharePoint architect
Someone asked what is a SharePoint architect: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/654318/what-knowledge-should-a-software-architect-have-about-sharepoint/...
-
Bad Microsoft (System.Web) code got owned by StackOverflow
Here’s an amazing question asked by Diadistis on StackOverflow. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/653730/gc-collect-in-a-loop Won’t go into details you got...
-
SharePoint – Name ActiveX Control error.
This error pops up on SharePoint MOSS publishing websites that are in the Internet security zone for IE browsers. This is because the core.js file wants to...
-
Javascript - jQuery + ASP.NET – post-AJAX events
From jQuery, we get $(document).ready which is wonderful. From ASP.NET, we get the UpdatePanel control which is fantastic. One of the common problems that...
-
re: Dell Newsletter
After reading yet another Dell monthly newsletter, I decided to reply to it. I figure it’s rant-worthy. Hi Mr Dell, When I purchased my laptop, I was after...
-
SharePoint - Cannot get ghost document
We chased a fun bug in the afternoon after we deployed our new package to our staging server. Symptom: Our customized Content Query Web Parts stops...
-
SharePoint – for those times when you really got to kill a list
This is a simple tip. The list template stuffed up a list and you cannot get to it in site library and lists. The backdoor way to remove...
-
The new flood of stuff coming out of Windows Live are really nice
I do have FriendFeed, but I think too little people know about FriendFeed ( http://friendfeed.com/johnnliu ) - but it's a very techy solution. I think...
-
SharePoint - ContentQueryWebPart, CommonViewFields and Multi-value choices
When you add a choice or lookup to the CommonViewField for a ContentQueryWebPart, if you had ticked the allow multiple-values checkbox, the CQWP will return...
-
Lemmings 4D game
I'm pretty sure Lemmings stopped at 3D. But I think there's room to make a 4D game: Implement in SilverLight - Utilize the harddrive - add special tools...
-
Windows Live configuration sync
I had this idea that popped up when I was listening to the current .NET Rocks - The Future of Web Development Panel. I was listening to the panel lamenting...
-
I twit now (oh and I still blog)
I'm sorry I'm probably very very late to the bandwagon, but there's a few reasons for this: Just ain't very keen to login to Facebook all the time to just...
-
SharePoint: Error when adding a new page based on a customized (broken) page layout
Exception: No parameterless constructor defined for this object. at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean...
-
Didn't know it could be this difficult to pull something out of the GAC
So, a few days ago, one of my favorite TFS/Outlook add-on stopped working. Exception: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly...
-
Late blog (as in, not a live blog) Australia Power To Developers event
So there I was, sitting in the front row of the Power to Developers event in Sydney Convention Center. A really great place by the way - it's like 5 minutes...
-
SharePoint, WCF Service, .NET full/partial trust
Security Exception: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers Scenario: We wanted our SharePoint webpart to do some complex logic that took...
-
Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) has a nice new look
Most people probably have a Hotmail account, but like me, probably haven't visited it for quite a while. Anyway, they unleashed a new version recently that...
-
Consuming WCF WebService from jQuery AJAX (with JSON)
So the guys at work are pretty sold on jQuery now. Everybody who've used it don't want to go back to vanilla JavaScript (just as I predicted). One of the...
-
Seriously thinking to split this blog
I like blogging about what I'm doing, but in some aspect, there are different areas that I would like to blog about: Software Development Some really...
-
Software Architecture
An architect's work is to see a pattern through the mess of business (or software) processes and come up with the simplest design . - heard on .NET Rocks...
-
Code Archaeology
Define: Archaeology A discipline involving the study of the human past through its material remains. This is probably not an uncommon scenario: You have an...
-
iPhone special: No contacts in the contact list when I couldn't talk to my Microsoft Exchange server
I interrupt my usual rant about .NET (and Dell laptops) to bring you a rant about my iPhone. Story begins like this... So we had a bit of a DNS hiccup with...
-
An injustice
I went out and met a bunch of people over the farewell of a good friend and past colleague over a really fun project I was on. Over drinks I heard a really...
-
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException when opening a visual studio web project
I'm in the middle of installing everything to get my new laptop (still not working right) , and came across a problem where I couldn't open a particular web...
-
jQuery + Microsoft
I had the opportunity to work a lot with jQuery at a project during 2007-2008. Back in those days, we were mixing a lot of the jQuery code with ASP.NET...
-
Cheating Live ads
I try to use Live Search (people think I'm crazy). I figure if I use it enough it'll learn and become a better search engine. I was looking for Flight...
-
Sharing a little gem - ASP.NET Javascript String.format
When you are working with ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft injects quite a bit of Javascript framework stuff. Most ASP.NET developers don't dive into these libraries...
-
New MacBook to have glass trackpad (End of September)
Source http://blogs.computerworld.com/rumor_macbook_updates_to_include_glass_trackpad_other_goodies I've got to say the multi-touch glass screen on the...
-
HTML map and area tags not working for FireFox
Here was an interesting problem, what was wrong with the following code, which works fine in IE but not in FireFox < map id ="mymap" > < area ... /> < area...
-
Customizing CSSLink and ScriptLink for public Sharepoint site
MSDN has quite a thorough topic on optimizing a Sharepoint Server for public facing site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727371.aspx I would just...
-
The best way to learn to customizing Sharepoint for an ASP.NET guy - use Reflector
This is probably the best best tip I'm going to share so far with regards to Sharepoint. Think of Sharepoint as a pre-built framework on top of ASP.NET, if...
-
Tough to love Sharepoint
Recently started doing some work on Sharepoint, it's really tough to love Sharepoint. At a glance, it seems that this is just a technology that's build on...
-
Where is the DataRepeater for Silverlight?
I came across a really puzzling thing while playing with Silverlight tonight, try as I might, I couldn't find a DataRepeater style of control. Basically,...
-
Starting another journey, again
I've finished one leg of my journey at Oakton www.oakton.com.au and have decided to return to my old company www.ssw.com.au to continue my consultant dream....
-
Your windows service started and stopped
The name-of-your services on Local Computer started and stopped. Some services stop automatically if they have no work to do, for example, the Performance...
-
this.consulting.life
Being a consultant is: Walking on a tight rope Crazy business requirements people on one side Poor internal dev teams (the maintenance guys) on the other...
-
Quick tip: Initialising Dictionary inline
var dictionary = new Dictionary< string , string > { { "key1" , "value1" }, { "key2" , "value2" }, { "key3" , "value3" }, }; var list = new List< string > {...
-
Generic EventArgs implementation (but isn't really all that useful)
public class EventArgs<T> : EventArgs { private T t; public EventArgs(T t) { this .t = t; } public T Value { get { return t; } set { t = value ; } } } To...
-
A camera of the future
In the future, when you take a picture of something, the camera generates a 3D scene of it and stores it in memory. Camera will need 2 lens to work out the...
-
Missing entry: setting DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern across the entire ASP.NET application
This entry is about a week overdue, nonetheless I shall post it now: In the global.asax, before page execute, do this: protected override void...
-
Updating from SilverLight 2 Beta 1 to Beta 2
Cannot specify both Name and x:Name attributes I think this is a bug in Beta 2, where you can't set x:Name for a UserControl, and then in the parent XAML...
-
Modelling the system
Here's a nice pretty diagram of the various components of modelling a (any) world. In my case here, the world is a virtual world. You would noticed quickly:...
-
Inspiration strikes - RTS Chess
Chess is typically a turn-based game. You move, my move, your move again. I had this inspiration to make a RTS chess, how would it work? Take normal chess...
-
Do we really need that many controls in Silverlight?
I was digesting Scott Gutherie's blog on Silverlight 2 Beta 2 We ultimately expect to ship over a 100 controls for Silverlight. It really made me wonder, do...
-
Lack of statistics for Windows spaces.live.com
The statistics capabilities for Windows Live wetted my appetite for better statistics reporting. Why on earth: Record only up to the last 3 days No user...
-
Silverlight 2 Beta 2 coming really soon
All signs points to Silverlight 2 beta 2 coming within the week: http://blogs.msdn.com/swiss_dpe_team/archive/2008/06/03/silverlight-2-beta-2-available-later...
-
Polaroid Picture Add-On for Windows Live Writer
Ha ha look at this: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=6a125986-6550-4ce9-9c71-9a0fbbc3443f&bt=9&pl=8
-
Doing a simple timeout page with WebClientApplication
<%@ Application Language= "C#" Inherits= "Microsoft.Practices.CompositeWeb.WebClientApplication" %> <script Language= "C#" RunAt= "Server" > protected...
-
GMail getting slower and sloowweerr
There could literally be thousands of reasons for why GMail seems to be running slower and slower for me: FireFox Extensions? I use FireBug (which Google...
-
Laptop has three vertical lines now
Looks like my Dell Inspiron is really heading for the trash can. Dell customer care has got back to me with some model numbers that the out of warranty...
-
Nikhil Kothari's behaviour framework for SilverLight
Nikhil here describes a mini behaviour framework for SilverLight, and then proceed to implement a DefaultCommit, AutoComplete and TextFilter behaviours that...
-
Debugging a baby
Ok, baby won't sleep, keeps waking up every 15 minutes when we put him to bed. He screams so we do the usual checks: Is he comfortable? Diapers ok The cot...
-
Dell Support Australia called me back but sounded suspicious
I was talking initially to Murali - the first person that I chatted with regarding my defective Dell Inspiron laptop. When he could not authorize someone to...
-
Two more SilverLight links
http://silverlight.net/forums/t/3015.aspx A comparison of SilverLight 1.0 vs Flex/Flash Some of the SilverLight limitations no longer apply in SilverLight...
-
Removing a word from Windows Live Writer user dictionary
So I screwed up. In my zeal to make sure my blogs are fully spell-checked, I added a misspelt word to my Windows Live Writer user dictionary. There are no...
-
SilverLight is better than AJAX + DOM
I just got home from the Sydney .NET User Group tonight, where they talked about SilverLight and Flex in a session focused on RIA. I personally think the...
-
SL + Sockets
http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2008/03/07/silverlight-2-and-sockets.aspx http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2008/03/10/silverlight-socket-comme...
-
Avoiding my Dell laptop like the plague
I've had my Dell Inspiron laptop for over 2 years now. And I've always thought it was a pretty good machine and I'm pleased to have used Dell. I've pretty...
-
Oh noes! Dell Dead Line
Call you what you will, dead line pixels, LCD defect/failure. I woke up last night to use my laptop to do some emails, and behold, what's this wierd blue...
-
Car insurance is a joke?
This is an old story. About a year ago, I had someone who smash through my car's right side-mirror. I called up NRMA and asked about their policy "if it's...
-
Keith's birthday
Keith, my firstborn son, eh has been born. Lina had some issues over the entire weekend leading up to the birth, but finally contractions started just past...
-
.NET 3.5 sp 1 beta is sexy
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2008/05/05/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-sp1-beta.aspx Half way down - see the script combining feature. I...
-
This is what I would do if I ever quit IT
Hire out accessible office building balconies in Sydney, or park space Get a bunch of beach chairs Put up lots of beach umbrellas (for the sun and rain?)...
-
The workplace Wiki
I'm a pretty strong believer that anything related to the development should go on the project Wiki. Most people will agree on a few obvious topics: Rules &...
-
Enterprise security policy
I received an email reminder from the client recently. "Please don't plug external/personal laptops into the corporate network, this is against the...
-
Ad-hoc data structuring with anonymous types
I've been experimenting with the anonymous types we have in C# 3.0, here's my latest creation: var actions = new [] { new { Name = ActionSave, Type =...
-
IE, appendChild, setAttribute, CSS Class
I want to add a star to the end of a label for mandatory fields in the DOM. .mandatoryIndicator { font-color: red; } var star =...
-
Anonymous Type of an existing type
I find the .NET anonymous type a bit weak in terms of a few more features: Can't inherit/implement an existing type var x = new : IMyInterface { Number = 1,...
-
Embedded WebResource
The job of a framework library is to provide a basic package of necessary services and components. In ASP.NET, being a web application, the UI portion of...
-
Writing XML docs for JavaScript
One of the really nice thing about self-documenting code came from (as far as I'm aware, although they probably borrowed it from elsewhere) Java's javadoc....
-
Cool bits about Office Communicator
Our regular morning project scrum was cancelled for today, as I went back to my desk, I noticed that my Office Communicator has updated my status to "In a...
-
C# Generic TryParse Extension method
public static T? TryParse<T>( this object obj) where T : struct { if (obj == null ) return null ; T? result = null ; TypeConverter converter =...
-
Source code merge program
A good source code merge program is different from a basic text merge program. A source code merge program needs to understand that it is computer code it's...
-
Total disconnection in a large company
HR is an interesting business, here's how I see it (fails to) work: Client: Your consultant X is fantastic, he's a legend. Team Lead: He's an asset to the...
-
The funkiness that is LINQ.Contains
Ok, I'm running into brick walls. I'm trying to do this: from p in Products join i in new [] {1,2,3} on p.Id equals i select p I get NotSupportedException...
-
Keeping the data in the database clean
On this new project we've designed a database from the ground up. And we've done a lot of interesting design in the system, such as implementing one-to-one...
-
SQL Metal: No exclude table/view/sp functionality?
I like SQL Metal. Anything that can save me time to write more app is good in my book. I do find it extremely odd that I can't exclude tables/view/sp from...
-
Trying to perfect my Zoolander grin
But without hair it's pretty difficult.
-
Food for thought: C# Extension Methods
Disclaimer, I have not tested any of the following code. Write the following extension method: public static int ToInt( this A a) { return...
-
Having different scope for your property
C# 2.0 gave us this: private string _property; public string Property { get { return _property; } private set { _property = value; } } C# 3.0 gave us this:...
-
Love hate relationship with Asp:DropDownList.AppendDataBoundItems
Here's the deal. I want to bind the dropdownlist to a List<Blob>. But I want the dropdownlist to have an initial empty field. Most people do this:...
-
An interesting quit smoking help
A colleague mentioned a site quitext.com which is a quit smoking support website. They send you daily SMS' to help encourage you to quit smoking. You can...
-
MIX08
Everybody is blogging about it. I'm not there, but still the amount of betas rolling out from Microsoft is making me very happy. ASP.NET MVP beta 2 IE8 beta...
-
Watching news
Giving up caring about the US Election. Being following the US Election, and sadly I stopped caring when Ohio and Taxes voted for Hillary Clinton. With the...
-
New words
Went to a mandatory AGILE methodology meeting session currently being pushed by the client. Personally I consider myself already sold on Agile...
-
Silverlight 1.1: Feels very raw
I've been playing with Silverlight for perhaps 2 weeks now. Evaluating it for a business application, here are some findings: Silverlight 1.0 It's just...
-
PotBS: Playing the 'other' game, - the Economy game.
Nele (my wife) and I had a different view of the economy of the game. Her views are: costs = material + labour * wages (db/hr) price = sale price (on AH, or...
-
WOW: Raiding is a mixed thing (blessing/curse) for me
I'm continuing my love/loath relationship with raiding in WOW. Love Progression - see new stuff! Experience new content (I mean, I am paying for this...
-
Good by fish :-(
I went home last night and Wifey told me we've lost another fish. This is our second fish that we've lost since we've taken custody of the fish tank of a...
-
POTBS: Economy (cont).
Starting to build our facilities for producing goods to be sold on the Caribbean. Here are some notes I've noticed: Identify synergies. Resource and the...
-
POTBS: Economy
So here I continue my rant about pirates of the burning sea. Wifey spend most of yesterday working out which facilities we'll need to produce a ship between...
-
Foosball championships
We'll be needing a small web app to track office foosball championships. Currently it seems Ben and Roman are on the top. Zhilla is incredibly good too, but...
-
POTBS: Pirates of the burning sea
Wifey and I started playing pirates of the burning sea, we pre-ordered and as a result get to play in the pre-boarding party (11-day head start). Here are...
-
WOW: Stuck on Vashj
Vashj is really a painful fight, everyone has to be very clear what they are doing, dps, healers. On our best attempt last night we got into phase 3, but...
-
My wish for 2008
Is that I'd get a project where I don't need to touch ASP.NET or JavaScript or fiddle (something people use the less polite word f*ck) with AJAX for a whole...
-
A (near) perfect project for 2008
A (near) perfect project for 2008 would be: Use WPF for front-end (or WPF/E silverlight) Use LINQ for business tier (C# 3.5) Use SQL Server 2008 for the...
-
Undisciplined Software Development
When I was overseas in Asia I had an opportunity to observe some "undisciplined software development". I think it is a cultural issue. The project is driven...
-
My register lost johnliu.net domain and didn't even tell me
I don't know if I had blogged this before, anyway, I've owned johnliu.net for a couple of years. In 2006, It expired into redemption period (because I've...
-
December 2007
Is gone. Lina and I went to New Zealand for a visit, with our unborn child (the little guy is probably sleeping through the whole trip). I don't know if I...
-
Using Windows Live Writer now
After a bit of hiccups with installing windows live (the live version) as opposed to the beta I was using. I'm glad to report that it is now working...
-
Why should I specialize? Why should you specialize?
Was asked over a company coffee thing. "Oh you are interested in WPF" "Yea" "What are you planning to do with it?" "Eh?" "What is your next step?" I was...
-
Heaps and heaps of updates
Ok, heaps of update, stay with me. (This is what happens when you don't blog for a while - but you ain't getting no apologies from me!) .NET stuff Having...
-
I dream last night...
That everyone I know went back to playing WoW again, and we were having fun. I don't know what happened, but I think I miss WoW (or rather, the friends I...
-
What is hakia and why should I care
I was reading my web ad's again (because I turned adblock off - I'll talk about that some other time). There's this ad that hits me again and again. "Can't...
-
A really nice background picture
http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/1438/earth_lights_lrg.jpg This is a NASA image of the world at night, I'm guessing since you can't take the picture in one go,...
-
Farmers, farmers, wherefor are thou farmers
So over the weekend I noticed suddenly the lack of spam on chat over LOTRO. My inital thought was: Hmm, the third-world-country farmers are on a holiday for...
-
A scare
My wife told me something scary. We were cooking some eggs on our gas stove last night to add to our dinner. We had the fire on the smallest setting....
-
Virtual Blood Diamonds
These precious stones have various other names, conflict diamond , dirty diamond , etc. This blog post is about Blood Diamonds in a virtual game. First,...
-
Something Mark Dasco and I dug up
I'm just going to blog it so I don't need to remember it. powershell -nologo -command "& {c:\test.ps1}" executes the powershell script from old command...
-
Picked up Supreme Commander
Still wading through the game, given that I really liked Total Annihilation from way back, I think I'll end up liking Supreme Commander just as much. First...
-
PowerShell script for rebuilding ASP.NET
# build msbuild /t:Rebuild /v:q # kill aspnet get-process aspnet_wp | kill # reset iis iisreset # clear log4net logs del -force c:\logs\*.* # poke the...
-
Transformers
I realized what I need. A transformers desktop. When you double click a folder, it does a massive transformation sequence to open up! :-D The movie broke...
-
A "which command" cmdlet script
PS C:\> (get-item env:path).value.split("") | where { $_ -ne "" } | where { test-path( join-path $_ "msbuild.exe" ) }...
-
Plan: Wiki Bot
Many companies now have Wiki's. A lot of wiki's can do with a nice clean-up bot to do maintenance. So the plan is this: Write a wiki bot. Go from a...
-
Dell laptops in 8 colours
Nooooo they look so pretty. I need to get another Dell Inspiron soon. Last year I bought a DELL inspiron laptop, I had some initial problem with its LCD,...
-
How do I write a cmdlet script?
I was a bit shocked at how "difficult" it was to find how to create a cmdlet script. After all, it was pretty basic to write a cmd (or bat) file and just...
-
Write this cmdlet
# filter directories, look for cs files. $files = get-chilitem . -include *.cs -recurse $regex = new-object -type System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex...
-
Few bits of update
Quit WoW (raiding too stressful, RL work taking up too much time) Started playing LOTRO (no more raids this time) Workload is heavy but I'm having fun...
-
Google-whacking techniques for naming your jira tickets.
Because JIRA search just sucks that bad. We need extra help. Here's an idea. When you name a ticket for a task that you need to do in your project, pick a...
-
CommunityServer sucks?
I think I'm about to give up. I've spend the last 2 weeks of my life fighting with CommunityServer, and as far as I can determine, this is a product that is...
-
Posting with Windows Live Writer (beta)
So far so good, I like the very clean looking interface. It also makes posting pictures a lot easier (at least for me). Here's a sketch of a evil warlock in...
-
AJAX, Tooltip, World of Warcraft (WoW)
Spend a whole day trying to work around a simple issue. I give myself one html page. No server side code. Write a javascript/css based approach to pull data...
-
Be serious with the Lord
I got quite a bit out of brother Ron's memorial service. Although there was a strong sense of loss, I am extremely glad he has finished his course and ran...
-
Generics, Casting and Anonymous Delegates and the Where clause
I have a situation where the code looks like: ( ( TextBox ) ( _someParentControl.FindControl( "_childControlId" ) ) ).Text = "SomeText"; ( ( TextBox ) (...
-
10 April 2007
Write a GreeseMonkey filter for the new wow forums. kill list space hide signature work-safe
-
I'll see you again, brother Ron.
A small tribute to brother Ron Topsom. On Monday (April 2th 2007) afternoon, I lost a brother and a friend. Ron Topsom was someone that looked after me as I...
-
2 April 2007
Determination. I'm determined to get my unit of work completely finished by today and hand it in for review. It is a very big unit and I don't know when the...
-
Get it and Do something with it.
I wrote a much better version of the Get & Do that I'm happy with. Here's the code below. // Using this: private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)...
-
Using ForEach and Anonymous Delegates.
//a piece of testing code, I think there's plenty more work to do. private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { new List<Control>(new Control[] {...
-
Revenge of the developer!
How do you get even with the BA's for giving you a 14 page functional requirements specification? You give them back a 15 page testing script! ;-) Ah...
-
Playing as a monster
One of LOTRO's features: "Play as a monster!" strikes me as something that could see more development. In L2, the end-game is about capturing castles - a...
-
JQuery string formatting.
Need string formatting functions. http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-format/ Is the right direction to start, but it doesn't do it...
-
30 March 2007
Getting to work early has a very different feeling. Feels more relaxed, not rushed. And I could take time to enjoy the surroundings. I think I like it quite...
-
Infinite loop in a survey questionaire for acupuncture.
This is a true story that happened a few years ago. A church friend asked me to fill out a survey regarding acupuncture. The questions were like this. Have...
-
29 March 2007
Rules to better code Unit Test everything! Refactor mercilessly. Go home early and get a good night's sleep. Use coffee but only if necessary (ie, writing...
-
Quiz: The default operator
Hot on the trail of the previous quiz. There's a default operator in C# (2.0) Do you know what this does: Type t = <anything>; object x = default ( t );...
-
Quiz: The ?? operator
There's a ?? operator in C# (2.0) Do you know what it does? Answer: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173224.aspx
-
MSN Javascript errors.
I hate javascript errors. I don't understand why MSN spaces has so many of them. It reflects really poorly on people reading your blog if it keeps throwing...
-
C&C3 updates
The installer sucked, but the game actually is quite nice. There are a LOT of full-motion videos. And unlike the videos for the earlier versions of C&C (I...
-
28 March 2007
I wanted to do a search of comparison of different numbers of users vs each blog service. Possibly over time. Pitty I don't have this data - need to search...
-
27 March 2007
It has been a very hectic few days. A lot of changes from staging that had to be merged in. Didn't have much to blog - got lots of little notes here and...
-
C & C 3 impressions
The installer is wrong. I put the DVD in, ran auto play (because I have it turned off) and an ugly window pop'ed up. Considering that this is the first...
-
22 March 2007
Commit early, Commit often. We're nearly the end of one build phase. And a lot of people are committing their changes into version control. For each person...
-
21 March 2007
Strange happenings. SVN died pretty bad for me last night. The issue? I wasn't using the latest version 1.4.3 (I was still on 1.4.2). Honestly, I was not...
-
Surely my car is towed away again.
I parked it on the main street outside my home. I didn't take it to work this morning. I'm sure I have to go look for it again tonight, must be towed away...
-
19 March 2007
No blog for the weekend. Having a quiet morning to prepare my tasks. Got back a review - I think there was a lot of miscommunication between the parties...
-
TiddlyWiki to Spaces!
did some quick javascript to send tw articles to spaces via the blogit interface (if it can be called that...) anyway, it's working and I'm not going to...
-
16 March 2007
Bad start to a day sucks a lot. Every morning I have to make a choice of which bus stop to go to, to catch my bus. Let's ID them as bus stop A and bus stop...
-
Hey what's going on!
I am cheating, I post three blogs on the same date but just title them differently. After being addicted to TiddlyWiki and using it as my notepad...
-
15 March 2007
New day, new croissant. I'm really thinking whether to go out and buy a USB drive, I wonder how much they cost now per Mb. Blend being unusable for WPF/E...
-
14 March 2007
New day, new craziness. Dinner overnight was pretty good, it was great to catch up with a new couple. Having lunch with wife rocks, I'm really looking...
-
13 March 2007
I think I'm in love. It came across to me that I would benefit from having a private wiki (I often use one of the free .NET wiki packages anyway)....
-
Oh well, so much for my own blog...
There's pros and cons to everything. I own a static IP address. This is a good thing. It allows me to use a really old Pentium 2 computer to run my own...
-
A place holder entry
There's a redirection to my real blog that I have had for quite a while. It is on my main website at johnliu.net The blog is here: johnliu.net/blog/