Also on the Microsoft front, there’s now a web site about migrationing MCMS 2002 and SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007.
Of course, SharePoint 2007 isn’t really called that - really, it’s called (ahem) ‘Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007′. SharePoint ‘07 it is then…
Microsoft have released the second beta of SharePoint 2007 today, and I’m going to be installing it by lunch time. We’re actually going to be building project on this (yes, even though it’s a beta).
There is also a new Windows SharePoint Services Developers Center. Shame about the spelling.
Yes. Simply. I tried today to find out how to mount my Windows partition on startup of Ubuntu. I looked it up - finding ubuntuguide.org en route - and had it sorted in 5 minutes.
When was the last time I looked up something like that about Windows and go an answer that quick? Um, never…
So I found that PowerPoint slide shows that had been added into MCMS were being retrieved as just plain PowerPoint files. What this really meant was that the file’s mime-type and extension had been changed from ‘PPS’ to ‘PPT’.
This was a pain - it’s just not as pretty as having the file open as a presentation.
It turns out the culprit for this was IIS - it didn’t have a mime-type defined for ‘.pps’. I fixed this using the advice from Microsoft’s support pages - PowerPoint Show (*.pps) file copies as a PowerPoint (.ppt) file from an IIS Web server.
What the article doesn’t mention, though, is that for MCMS, this change needs applied not to the website, but to the ‘NR/rdonlyres’ directory within the MCMS site.
I was asked today to add a file to a page. The file itself was only 6Mb, and MCMS was having none of it. Digging around, I found the problem wasn’t actually MCMS itself, but the underlying ASP.
It turns out you need to add the following to your web.config file, to change the maximum file size that ASP accepts:
<httpRuntime
executionTimeout="3600"
maxRequestLength="10240"
useFullyQualifiedRedirectUrl="false"
minFreeThreads="8"
minLocalRequestFreeThreads="4"
appRequestQueueLimit="100">
</httpRuntime>
I’m not sure what all the settings do - but the executionTimeout is in seconds, and the maxRequestLength is in Kb.
So, on a whim I decided to have a bit of a look at Ubuntu Linux. Boy did I get a surprise
Previously when I’ve had a look at linux distros, I’ve had some problems. My home PC is a fairly antique laptop, with AMD powersaving built in, and an even older PCMCIA wireless network card. What that meant in the past was 1)No wireless network, and 2) a blisteringly hot CPU as it didn’t throttle back when there was nothing going on. That made Mandrake Linux, for me, interesting but not usable.
Ubuntu - well, it picked up the wireless quite happily. I’m writing this on it. And the CPU is running cool - it is truly excellent. I downloaded the ‘live’ CD (bootable CD that loads Ubuntu), and it was painless.
Very Impressed. I shall be making my machine dual boot - there are some applications I don’t want to do without - but this is a VERY usable system. And who’d have thought that a faintly brown colour could look so good - why is Windows so grey?
Anyway, it gives me pause for thought - Sharepoint and all those things I’m being trained up in aside, what does Windows give me that Ubuntu doesn’t? Open office gives me a word processor. I can browse the web. I have email. Yup, it’s a no brainer - as a home user, I’m a convert. I’ll keep using Windows for now - like I say, I have a number of applications I just don’t want to leave yet - but long term, I think I’ll move away. ‘Course I’m stuck with it for work - that’s their problem.
Anyway, Ubuntu - good enough for a 
Comments from my old blog:
You know you’re really making me think about it too - I have an old laptop at home that *might* work too.
I’ve been doing some work in MCMS that involved building navigation controls; apparently this is much easier in Sharepoint 2007 as it uses .NET 2.0 navigation controls. I found a tutorial at 4GuysFromRolla
Three books I’ve been using lately…
Microsoft Content Management Server 2000 - Addison Wesley
This book covers a lot, and so is quite fat. I found the chapters a bit variable - some, especially those on planning your site, were excellent. Other missed steps when describing how to do things, which made it very confusing. I felt that some of the code examples lacked context too - the functions might have worked okay, but where in the project were they? Also, the chapter order confused me - I’d much rather have had intro, install, configure, develop, etc.. Instead, this seemed to have a bit here, a bit there. For example, I would have moved chapter 3 (CMS Architecture) before chapter 2 (Installation), and followed that up with the entire of section 4 (security). All in all, not bad, but not as good as…
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server - Packt
This book seems to me to have a much clearer layout. Introduction, Installation, Configuration - that’s what I like. Although a slimmer book, somehow this does seem to cover more ground. The text is distinctly techy, and it lacks some of the ‘planning’ chapters mentioned above, but it really gets in under the hood, and tells you how to do the sorts of things you’re bound to want to know. For example, I’d been annoyed by how the previous book hadn’t really described channel rendering scripts.
All in all, I was impressed by this and would recommend it, although…
Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development - Packt
…this is also a pretty good book. Aimed as an ‘advanced’ book, it tackles more advanced subjects (like SharePoint integration, Infopath, search, etc.). It also seems to be aimed at ‘making your life easier’ - I like books with title like ‘Useful Placeholder Controls’. It sort of falls into the ‘things you’ll probably want to know’
So, in summary, I’d recommend the last two books - they share some of the same authors. And if you haven’t had a question answered by Stefan Gossner, you haven’t worked with MCMS yet. It’s just a bit of a shame that these books will be redundant come Office 12
Hmm. So, IE7 Beta 2 is out. Some of the guys at work have been having a look. So, it has tabs. It has integrated searching. It has RSS feeds. A native XMLHTTPRequest object. Well, damn, doesn’t that sound another browser? Yup, IE7 - proving Firefox got it right.
So, who will win? Well, Microsoft clearly have an advantage as they’ll be shipping IE7 with their next OS - whenever that is. To be honest, though, the thing that interests me most is if this stimulates better standards across browsers. I just had a fight with aligning an image with a line of text - and I had to hack it to fix it - so here’s to hoping.
Personally, though, I’ll stick with Firefox for now.
Strictly, not a coding thing, but it’s about font style. How to Spot Arial and The Scourge of Arial are interesting reads.
For years now I’ve been interested in typography. It seems to me that it’s one of those overlooked things - that web page looks okay, until someone who knows about type works on it, and then it looks great.
I agree with the article, I don’t like Arial - the weight of the top of the ‘a’ seems wrong. Not sure what to use instead - at the moment I use Tahoma and Trebuchet a lot, but I’m not entirely happy with either. And yes, I’m sticking with the free fonts - I’m not a specialist, I ain’t paying for fonts (blimey but some of them cost…)
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