novolocus.com

Previously I’d posted about SharePoint Breadcrumbs and how they were confusing as hell. I’d discussed how SharePoint publishing pages override the ‘PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb’ content control, filling it with blankness, and then supplying their own breadcrumb as part of the page content. That seemed pretty dumb to me… …much more sensible would be to override the ‘PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb’ with the breadcrumb we want.

Well, it transpires that I was wrong. What I’ve described is true for some page layouts… and not for others. The Default Master page defines its PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb ContentPlaceHolder control as:

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb" runat="server">
<asp:SiteMapPath SiteMapProvider="SPContentMapProvider" id="ContentMap" SkipLinkText="" NodeStyle-CssClass="ms-sitemapdirectional" runat="server"/>
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

This is defining the default breadcrumb on the master page.

For the DefaultLayout.aspx layout page, it defines the content for the page to have:

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb" runat="server"/>

That will empty the placeholder on the master page, so no breadcrumb will appear in the usual location - in fact, nothing will. (Note: you will probably want to reduce the blank space that the breadcrumb occupied - otherwise you’ll have a bit gap above your main content area). It then goes on to define (in the PlaceHolderMain Content control):

<td class="ms-pagebreadcrumb" colspan="2">
<asp:SiteMapPath ID="ContentMap" Runat="server" SiteMapProvider="CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode" RenderCurrentNodeAsLink="false" SkipLinkText="" NodeStyle-CssClass="ms-sitemapdirectional"/></td>
</tr>

There we can see the breadcrumb that appears in the page content.

However, if we look at a different page layout, such as BlankWebPartPage.aspx, we see:

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb" runat="server">

<div class="breadcrumb">
<asp:SiteMapPath ID="siteMapPath" Runat="server" SiteMapProvider="CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode" RenderCurrentNodeAsLink="false" SkipLinkText="" CurrentNodeStyle-CssClass="breadcrumbCurrent" NodeStyle-CssClass="ms-sitemapdirectional"/>

</div>

</asp:Content>

Okay, interesting. So, what’s different about the breadcrumbs? Well, a few things, but the point relevant to whether or not the “> Pages > default.aspx” is displayed in the breadcrumbs - the SiteMapProvider. The CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode provider doesn’t seem to include the ‘Pages’ bit of the path - hence it is used by the page layouts. The Default.master’s SPContentMapProvider provides a breadcrumb that includes the ‘Pages’.

It is a bit mystifying why some page layouts blank the PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb while other override it - it would have been really nice if they worked consistently. And, as a side note, if you create a page layout and find that your breadcrumbs include the “> Pages > default.aspx” bit, then 1) make sure you’re providing content to override the PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb, and 2) make sure that it uses the CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode navigation provider.

Tags: Breadcrumbs, Navigation, Page Layouts

One of the neat features of SharePoint that doesn’t get a lot of press is the Document Conversion Service. This is a feature that takes a document (e.g. a Word document) and converts it to a Page for publishing (provided your servers are setup and your content types are configured set up for it, and this whole process is called Smart Client Authoring. It’s a lot like the Authoring Connector in MCMS - it gives users a ‘friendly’ way of authoring (although given that SharePoint uses a rich text control that is almost the same as a Word toolbar, I’m not sure how much of a sell it is. People do seem to like authoring web page content in Word though).

When I was testing it here I found that I kept getting an error whenever I was trying to convert a document:

Converting the document to a page failed. The converter framework returned the following error: CE_OTHER

Another nice, descriptive error from SharePoint. The logs didn’t really give me much of a clue either. However, I did find a nice explanation on the SharePoint ECM blog by Robert Orleth.

CE_OTHER is a fairly generic error code (not covered by the more explicit error code, hence the name). It means that something went wrong trying to fire up the converter. I’ve seen this in two major cases:
1. when trying to do the conversion on a DC (domain controller) - that’s not supported because the converter is executed in the context of a very unprivileged local account, and there are no local accounts on DCs.
2. when the server is locked down and the users group doesn’t have the privilege to logon locally. In order not to have to undo your lockdown, go to the group policy settings and allow the local account “HVU_” to logon locally. The password to that account is set randomly every time the document conversion services start and the account has no rights to see anything except the directory that the conversion is happening in, so that’s not exposing your server to a big risk.

I tried setting up the conversion on another machine which is not a domain controller - and it worked nicely. I guess that I need to investigate whether the converter can be run as a more privileged account - a single machine setup including domain controller is very useful for demos. I’ll investigate sometime… …comment here if you try it and get it working like that.

Tags: Document Conversion

Like many web applications, SharePoint uses ‘Breadcrumbs’ for navigation. This is a set of links that both tell you where in a hierarchy you are, and were you can go to. SharePoint, though, uses two:

You can see them here at the top left, and then above the word ‘Documents’. But wait, the master page shows us two breadcrumbs? You’re only in one hierarchy, so how does that work? The Planning & Architecture documentation on Technet says:

The default.master master page, which displays form and view pages, includes two breadcrumb controls, a global breadcrumb which contains sites only, and a content breadcrumb, which contains sites and the current page. Some collaboration site templates, such as the Team Site template, also include two breadcrumbs on all Web pages

However, this isn’t quite the complete story. Read more »

Tags: Breadcrumbs, Navigation

A really neat tip by Andrew Woodward - Vista contains a screen capture tool - type ‘Snip’ into the Start Menu’s search box…

Okay, so I’ve been tasked with looking at branding in SharePoint - again! What do I know about branding? I can change some colours and CSS, but that isn’t the same thing.

Anyway, I’m increasingly taken with Themes over Master Pages. You can do a lot with a theme, and one of it’s main disadvantages as far as I’m concerned (the inability to apply a theme across a hierarchy) can be overcome with extensions (though I’d prefer a Site Admin page option).

Another thing that I recently realised (and then discovered that I’ve probably read about too) is that you can ‘apply’ a theme to all subsites by setting the ‘Alternate CSS URL’ on the Site Settings > Master Page page. You can find the URL to a theme on a site that has that theme applied, and then paste it into the alternate CSS URL field, and apply to all children. Cool! And if you apply a theme to one of these children? Well, the theme will override the Alternate CSS - so your theme will apply.

All of which kind of confuses the heck outta people. You’ve got styles coming from, potentially, the CORE.CSS, alternate CSS, themes, masterpage’s CSS files, the master page itself, and the page. I think it works out as:

…where the lower items win. It’s worth noting that the overriding of styles isn’t that fixed - your master page could pull in the themes, core.css, etc. in a different order if you wanted it to, but this is typically how it seems to be. Just remember that last wins.

And the best bit - generating Themes now has tools, such as SharePoint Skinner, and Serves SharePoint Theme Generator (though it’s more about just the colours).

New Master Pages are just awkward, though - so many required placeholders, CSS and structural quirks, controls generating things that they shouldn’t. I don’t think I’d go there again unless 1) it’s a WCM site or 2) I really need to change the page structure.

Tags: Branding, CSS, Master Pages, Themes

Well, okay, night-time has little to do with it.

When I try to save aWord document, I get shown the ‘Save As’ dialog.

On it there is the ‘Favorite’ panel (UK English clearly doesn’t apply) and the option of ‘My SharePoint Sites’. Great! Wrong! If I click on the the ‘My Site’ shortcut, it changes the name of my document (’fixer.docx’ in this case’), and if I double click, it tries to save the document as a file called .docx. The error I then get it ‘Word did not save the document.http://moss:4000/personal/burnsaw/.docx’.

Well, I can see why the error in saving, but huh? What happened to the file name? It wasn’t even the wrong file name of ‘My Site’ - there was no file name at all!

Step two was to repeat, but try using the Word’s ‘Publish > Document Management System’, but got the same result.

Step three was to open up a new document from the library, and try saving back. This highlighted another problem we’ve got - users getting prompted for network credentials when opening a document from SharePoint (this doesn’t happen every time, just the first time each user session). That accepted, it worked and opened a Word document. I typed some text, and did a ‘Save As’. I was shown this dialog:

Hmm. That’s more promising, and it does save to that library correctly. So what do I notice? Well, the address bar is quite different, which is unsurprising as the top one is looking at a folder of local shortcuts. But the URL it’s pointing to is correct.

I don’t know what is going on here, but it has that irritating WebDav feel to it.

I have some curious blanks in my memory when dealing with SharePoint, such as the meaning ‘ghosted’ and ‘unghosted’ - please use ‘customized’ or ‘uncustomized’. (I don’t see where the undead enter into it all). One such blank is Site Templates vs Site Definitions. It’s discussed a bit on MSDN (for 2003, but the same applies for 2007) where the bottom section is most useful, and Robert Bogue has written a very good article. The short of it:

Must have a go at doing some of this sometime

Previously, I’d posted about people and risk - and how we’re bad at judging it. The second part of the thoughts I’d had while driving to work was how risk applies to software development. Read more »

Installer projects in Visual Studio are for creating the Setup.exe and the MSI for installing the other projects in a solution. However, I discovered an oddity that caused havoc with our source control system. Read more »