IColloquialize<chris>

The Hybrid Provider 3.0 - Released On CodePlex

2008-12-25T17:27:41Z

The true power of the ASP.NET SQL membership infrastructure is fully felt as a triumvirate: authentication, authorization, and profiles. Until now, the Hybrid Provider has only manifested two-thirds of this possible functionality; indeed, a "biumvirate." Allowing SharePoint authentication and profiling simultaneously against AD and SQL has been the extent of what it can do. But now I'm very happy to finally bring the Hybrid Provider full circle in its third release, incorporating...(read more)

Silverlight Circle Animation - Animate Any UIElement Over A (NOT Bezier) Curve

2008-11-28T00:10:44Z

The Problem Animation in Silverlight certainly gets us (“us” being .NET developers) further than we’d ever thought we’d go in terms of sexiness on our web sites. With a few lines of XAML, and a few more lines of C#, I can do what all those Flash hippies have been doing for years. Unfortunately, WPF and Silverlight animation is missing something, and of course, it’s the first thing I wanted to play with. This missing something is animation along a curve. Now by “missing”...(read more)

I'm Speaking At LCNUG This Thursday! (11.20.8)

2008-11-17T23:17:07Z

If anyone lives in the Chicagoland area and really really really wants to haul it up to Grays Lake, IL, I'm going to be giving my first-ever keynote at the Lake County .NET Users Group! My talk is going to be about the Hybrid Provider , and how it facilitates using SharePoint as an extranet. Here's a link to the LCNUG site with all the details and registration. Come out if you can! (And yes, there will be free food!)...(read more)

SharePoint Developers Needed!

2008-11-11T18:51:39Z

Catalyst is hiring! We have a lot of SharePoint projects closing, and my boss won't let me work over 90 hours a week...something about my diminishing productivity after 5 AM or smelling funny at status meetings after pulling an all-nighter. Whatever. Anyways, for serious, we are looking for SharePoint developers who have at least one year of experience working with WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007 in any of the following areas: SharePoint Development Knowledge of the SharePoint APIs Consumption of...(read more)

The Hybrid Profiler - Picture Support

2008-11-03T17:51:30Z

I've added a new control to the Hybrid Profiler that supports pictures for SQL users. What it does is gets the images from a Picture Library, and loads them into a drop down for selection when the profile page is in "Edit" mode. There's also a thumbnail next to the drop down to make the user experience a little richer. In addition, when you save changes to your profile, UserInfo.aspx will attempt to sync your properties with the WSS profile created for your SPUser object. ...(read more)

The Hybrid Provider 2.0 - Some Sweet Updates

2008-11-03T17:49:25Z

After seeing all of the amazing technologies at PDC that are coming out from Microsoft, I've decided to fly though all of the side projects on my plate so I can start playing! This includes a round of updates I've been meaning to make to the Hybrid Provider 2.0 . Here are some of the highlights: Automatic provisioning of the "HybridProvider_ResetPassword" stored procedure on installation. Read more about that here . Added a button on the installer that launches the aspnet_regsql...(read more)

SharePoint Online - Thoughts On PDC 2008 Talk

2008-10-29T00:09:11Z

Okay so yesterday I got really excited about Microsoft Azure , especially when SharePoint was one of five highlighted technologies that would be natively hosted in the cloud. These technologies are the "services" that make up, well, the could, and are Microsoft's bet that the current software development paradigm trend shift from SOA to services will really take off. These services are: .NET Services SQL Services (renamed from SQL Data Services) SharePoint Services Live Services Dynamics...(read more)

Windows Azure Announced At PDC 2008!

2008-10-27T20:16:00Z

Windows Azure was just announced, seriously, like fifty one minutes ago at PDC 2008 by Ray Ozzie at Microsoft. It is a new operating system that implements the whole “cloud” environment for hosted services and applications. The first few times I’ve heard or read about the cloud (in general) I had the same reaction I always do when I hear about new development trends or paradigm shifts. That reaction is, best case, I’m going to have to un-learn then re-learn what I know. Whatever I’ve finally mastered...(read more)

Hybrid Provider - Power Tools

2008-10-24T19:04:00Z

Something that's been passed over in all of my Hybrid Provider work has been some of the cool little tweaks I've come up with to get some of the "supporting characters" to work. If custom SharePoint authentication plays the lead role, then login pages, administrative web parts, and SQL user management tools might not be center stage, but they are certainly crucial. I've uploaded a ZIP file called "Hybrid Provider - Power Tools" to the Hybrid Provider CodePlex project site . So what I'd like to do...(read more)

Getting Accurate JavaScript Scrolling Information In SharePoint

2008-10-18T18:24:11Z

If I were a SharePoint psychiatrist, (which indeed I may very well be...) I would have a list of panaceas tantamount to what a therapist might actually tell a real patient. For example: To a patient: "You have a lot to live for!" "She wasn't the right girl..." "Yes, I can prescribe something for that rash..." To a SharePoint developer: "Remember, it's just an ASP.NET 2.0 web app hosted in IIS! It's just HTML!" "That's only supported in MOSS..."...(read more)

SharePoint Web Part Zone / Page Manager - Released On CodePlex

2008-10-16T02:27:05Z

Have you ever tried to use custom layouts to programmatically provision web part pages via the SharePoint API? F that! It seems to me like you need to take a dependency on MOSS and the Office Server publishing infrastructure. All this just to modify a web part zone? There has to be an easier way to get tasks like these done! Well there are a few possibilities, but nothing that pans out to be feasible. The first thing I tried was the "right way" by which you...(read more)

Assigning Custom Permission Levels On-The-Fly In SharePoint 2007

2008-10-09T20:56:00Z

The SharePoint API has, for the most port, elegantly deprecated obsolete functionality from 2003 to 2007. This allows legacy code to continue to compile, but still urges you forward to use new methods and procedures. One of the areas of the API that has been heavily overhauled is the permission classes. The two new ones, SPRoleAssignment and SPRoleDefinition , are more complicated - and therefore more robust - than their predecessors. They allow you to create a new permission level (a "role definition")...(read more)

Yeah? Well your padding is invalid and cannot be removed!

2008-09-24T19:30:00Z

This little error seems to poke its ugly little head in several different areas around the .NET world. In my little corner of this world, SharePoint, and more specifically custom authentication with my Hybrid Provider , this error almost brought my portal to its knees. I’ve finally gotten enough of a grasp on one of the causes of this error; even if this doesn’t match your situation, hopefully my description will point you in the right direction. The problem is encryption. Among all the different...(read more)

The Hybrid Provider 2.0 - Released On CodePlex

2008-09-22T02:35:00Z

I've finally completed the 2.0 Code Plex release of the Hybrid Provider . There are three major areas in which I have made improvements. Profiles Support for multiple web apps on the same farm Better and more WPF-er installer. Profiles I've added the Hybrid Profiler, which in the same spirit as the Hybrid Provider, maintains user profile information for both AD and SQL accounts. The documentation for the Hybrid Profiler is here . Multiple Web Apps There have been some issues that have resulted in...(read more)

The Hybrid Profiler - Aggregating AD and SQL User Profile Properties For SharePoint 2007

2008-09-22T02:34:00Z

Introduction After two years, I think I have all the kinks worked out of the Hybrid Provider , not to mention a new WPF installer that has pretty gradients and spinning animations (still no dancing monkey buttons...sorry) that eliminates the two hours needed (on a good day) to configure the Hybrid Provider on your 2007 SharePoint server. Read more about version 2.0 here . So now that I know more than I ever though I'd care to know about SharePoint authentication, I decided to tackle the next logical...(read more)