Book Review: SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple

SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple is a "SEE-HOW guide to SharePoint" and a good book for IT Pros or developers who are absolute beginners to SharePoint 2010. The book assumes that you already have all the required software installed & some Features activated.

It shows how to perform the following 140+ Tasks with step-by-step instructions and screen-shots -

• Create a Site Based on the Team Site Template
• Create a Document Workspace 
• Change the Title and Description of Your Site
• Turn Off the Quick Launch Bar
• Change the Color Theme of the Site
• View All Site Content
• Save a Site as a Template
• Open Site Columns
• Browse Site Columns
• Create a Site Column
• Edit Site Columns
• Access Content Types
• Inspect Content Types
• Associate a Document Template with a Content Type
• Associate a Workflow with a Library
• Start a Workflow
• Check the Status of a Running Workflow
• Create a List or Library
• Delete a List or Library
• Add a List Item
• Edit a List Item
• Delete a List Item
• Create a Folder to Organize Items in a List
• Create a Column in a List
• Edit Column Settings
• Add a Validation Rule to a Column
• Add a Validation Rule to a List
• Sort a List
• Filter a List
• Create a List View
• Select a List View
• Sort a List View
• Filter a List View
• Create a Document Library
• Modify the Document Template  for a Document Library
• Modify the Document Template for a Content Type
• Upload Multiple Files with Internet Explorer
• Upload Multiple Files with Windows Explorer
• Display the Check Out Status on a Document Library View
• Check Out a Document
• Check In a Document
• Require Document Check Out on a Library
• Enable the Document ID Service for tracking Documents
• Configure Document ID Settings
• Locate the Document ID on a Document
• Use the Find By Document ID Web  Part to search for a document
• Use the Send To Menu
• Add a Custom Send To Location
• Enable the Document Sets Site Collection Feature
• Configure Document Set Options
• Enable Document Sets on a Document Library
• Create a Document Set
• Enable the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure Feature
• Enable the SharePoint Server Publishing Feature
• Create an Asset Library
• Enable Enterprise Keywords
• Enable Metadata Navigation
• Tag Files with Windows Explorer
• Upload Files to an Asset Library
• Connect an Asset Library to Office
• Insert Pictures or Video into PowerPoint
• Insert a Picture from SharePoint
• Insert a Video with the Media  Web Part
• Enable Auditing
• View an Audit Report
• Enable Document Labels
• Insert a Label in a Document
• Enable Document Bar Codes
• Insert a Barcode in a Document
• Enable an Expiration Policy
• Create a Project Task List
• Add a Project Task
• Update Multiple Tasks with the Datasheet
• Zoom the Gantt View
• Configure Task Columns
• Create a Calendar List
• Switch Calendar Views
• Schedule a Meeting
• Create an Issues List
• Configure Issue Categories
• Create a Discussion List 
• Start a Discussion Thread
• Reply to a Discussion Thread
• Sync MS Project 2010 with a Tasks List
• Manage Synchronization Fields
• Add a Quick Link to a SharePoint Site
• Save a Document to a SharePoint Site
• Manage SharePoint Site Quick Links
• Connect a Calendar List to Outlook
• Copy or Move SharePoint Calendar Items to Outlook
• Add Outlook E-Mail Messages to a Discussion List
• Create a Slide Library
• Publish Slides from PowerPoint
• Copy Slides from a slide library to a PowerPoint Presentation
• Broadcast a Slide Show
• Import a Spreadsheet to SharePoint
• Export a List to Excel from SharePoint
• Export a Table from Excel to SharePoint
• Opening a SharePoint List in Access
• Create a SharePoint Workspace Account
• Sync to SharePoint Workspace
• Create a Blog Site from Your SharePoint Profile
• Change Your Blog Picture
• Edit Your Blog Description
• Create a New Category within a Blog
• Edit a Category
• Create a Blog Post
• Publish a Blog Post Previously Saved as a Draft
• Add a Comment for a Blog Post
• View, Edit, or Delete Comments
• Publish a Blog Post from  Microsoft Word
• Add People to Groups
• Create a Group
• Grant an Individual  Permissions
• Break Inheritance to change an object’s permissions 
• Grant Access to a List or  Library
• Grant Access to Individual  Items
• Remove Someone from a  Group
• Remove a Group’s Site Permissions
• View Permissions on a Library
• Upload Content to Your My Site Shared Documents
• Upload Content to Your My Site Personal Documents
• Add a Colleague to My Site
• Edit Colleague Information
• Remove a Colleague
• Update Your Status
• View Colleague Status
• Create a Note on Content Within SharePoint
• Add the SharePoint Tags And Notes Tool to Your Favorites
• Add a Note to Content on an External Site
• View Notes
• Create a Search Center
• Access a Search Center
• Perform a Search with Search Center
• Create a Search Scope
• Add Rules to a Search Scope
• Use Refiners
• Create a Best Bet
• Subscribe to Search Results as an RSS Feed
• View Search Feeds in Internet Explorer 8
• View Search Feed in Outlook 2010
• Use Advanced Search

It doesn't get into the details of what practical scenarios these tasks could be useful for.

At 250+ pages, this is probably the slimmest book on SharePoint 2010. It does a good job of explaining the commonly used out-of-the-box features in SharePoint 2010 in plain-English. I recommend this book to beginners who may be daunted by the complexity of SharePoint 2010.  It provides enough information to find your way ahead.

Read More

HOW TO make columns in an ASP.NET GridView sortable with jQuery

• Use the jQuery Tablesorter Plugin - see article with demo 
• Note that the jQuery Tablesorter Plugin requires the table generated by the GridView to have thead and tbody tags
• Assuming the Id of the GridView server control is set to grdEmployee, you can access the dynamically generated table's ID and build the selector like this -

         gridId = $("table[id$='grdEmployee']").attr("id");
         $('#' + gridid).tablesorter(); 

• If you have a checkbox in the column header to implement Select All/De-select All functionality for items in that GridView, that will fail as the Tablesorter plugin will override the click event. To overcome that, use this trick -

         $("#tablesorter").tablesorter({headers:{0:{sorter:false}}}); 


Also see:
Yours declaratively, GridView 
Beware of breaking changes in jQuery library versions 

Read More

The first 20 employees of Google

List of the first 20 employees of Google, posted by an anonymous user on Quora -

7 of the first 20 employees are still at Google. Here are all the first 20 and what they're doing now. Current employees are in bold.

1. Sergey Brin: Google
2. Larry Page: Google
3. Craig Silverstein: Khan Academy [1]
4. Heather Cairns: angel investing [2]
5. Ray Sidney: Big George Ventures [3]
6. Harry Cheung: angel investing [4]
7. Amit Patel: Sunfire [5]
8. Urs Hölzle: Google
9. Georges Harik: imo.im, angel investing [6]
10. Salar Kamangar: Google
11. Omid Kordestani: Google
12. Steve Schimmel: angel investing [7]
13. Chris Skarakis: Blip.fm [8]
14. Joan Braddi: Google
15. Susan Wojcicki: Google
16. Gerald Aigner
17. Jim Reese
18. Larry Schwimmer
19. Kendra DiGirolamo: Driscoll's [9]
20. Marissa Mayer: Yahoo! [10]

Also see:

The History of Microsoft

The History of Apple

Read More

Power Searching with Google (and Bing)

Did you know, you can even search with images of objects and not just textual keywords on Google (a feature probably first introduced in Google Goggles). Let's say you found an interesting looking object in your attic but didn't know what it is, you can take a photo of it and use it to search.

And did you know, Google queries cannot include most special characters:

You may have read the book 20000 Leagues Below the Sea but have you ever tried to visualize how much is 20000 Leagues? It's 69046.7669 miles!

These are tips I picked from the free online course Power Searching in Google conducted by Daniel Russell, Senior Research Scientist at Google.

You can attend it as well & apply some of the learning on Bing too.

Read More

What is the difference between Browser Mode & Document Mode in IE

If you're a web developer and your job actively involves building web pages that work the same in all browsers including the last three versions of IE, you'll be no stranger to Browser  & Document Mode in Internet Explorer

These options are available with IE Developer Tools (F12 keyboard shortcut). In IE9, these modes let you emulate older versions of IE8 & IE7. Microsoft provides these modes so that websites that were built to target IE7 & lower versions don't fail hopelessly in the newer & more standards-based versions. IE provides a fallback in the form of the Compatibility View button which allows content designed for older web browsers to render well in newer versions of Internet Explorer 9. 

Here are the differences between Browser Mode & Document Mode -
Browser Mode determines the User Agent sent to the server & the Document Mode IE defaults to.
Document Mode determines the layout (rendering engine) and the JavaScript engine. Document Mode allows you to manually choose which rendering engine you want IE to render the page with; choosing the Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode uses the IE8 rendering engine, Internet Explorer 7 Standards Mode uses the IE7 rendering engine, or Quirks Mode uses the quirky, IE5.5 rendering engine. The Chakra JavaScript engine in IE9 is not the same as that shipped in IE8.

Changing the Browser Mode refreshes the page and  changes both the Document Mode and the User Agent string, which allows Internet Explorer to lie to a server about who it says it is.
Changing the Document Mode through IE’s Developer Tools refreshes the page, but does not resend the UA string or retrieve new markup from the server.

Sites cannot choose a Browser Mode.
Site developers can choose a Document Mode for their site, which overrides IE’s defaults and declares how a website is rendered. If a site does not specify a document mode then IE assumes the default document mode, which is IE9’s standards mode in IE9.

Here's how the User Agent string looks for different combinations of  Browser Mode & Document Mode in IE9 on a Windows 7 64-bit PC -
Browser Mode:IE9, Document Mode:IE9 standards
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)

Browser Mode:IE9 Compat View, Document Mode:IE9 standards
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; MS-RTC LM 8)

Browser Mode:IE8, Document Mode:IE8 standards
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; MS-RTC LM 8)

Browser Mode:IE7, Document Mode:IE7 standards
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; MS-RTC LM 8)

Browser Mode:IE7, Document Mode:Quirks
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; MS-RTC LM 8)

Browser Mode:IE9, Document Mode:Quirks
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)

Source: MSDN & StackOverflow

Related:
How IE determines Document Mode
Using X-UA-Compatible to Create Durable Enterprise Web Applications

Read More

HOW TO find what movies two film personalities have in common

1) Use this special Search page on IMDb to find information about common cast/crew between two titles or two people who have worked together

See what movies A R Rahman & Mani Ratnam have worked on

(Source: How do I query IMDb for movies that two actors have in common?)

2) WolframAlpha can find movies two actors were in, if you try a query like this - movies with adam sandler and drew barrymore


Also see:
Does IMDb provide an API?

Read More

Google institutes MVP/GDE award to recognize developer community contributions

Possibly inspired by Microsoft's MVP award, Google has started a Google Developers Expert (GDE) program "that recognizes and rewards outstanding developers". There are lots of similarities to Microsoft's MVP award - the GDE award too is annual, it provides awardees access to Product teams & developer releases, and an invitation to an annual summit at Google headquarters (MS has it in Seattle/Redmond). There is similarly even a member directory & a badge for winners.

There is no mention of any material rewards though. Microsoft gifts MVP awardees an MSDN/Technet Subscription & other goodies now & then.

The GDE awards will be given out in the areas of Android, Cloud, HTML5, Chrome, and Google Maps to experts who contribute to the developer community.

Also see:
MS MVP Authors from India

Read More