Hi All,

Its a long time that a posted a blog at this blogsite. Since end of 2007 i started blogging again over SharePoint, WSS, MOSS 2007 and "The new world of work". If you are still interested in my blog, please change the link or your RSS feed in the following:

http://www.bloggix.com/blogs/microsoft

http://www.bloggix.com/blogs/microsoft/rss.aspx

Thanks all!!

I got this from a collegea: Steve Ballmer in action. This Remix is made of two earlier movie clips of presentations of Steve Balmer.

Fun to watch :)

http://www.flamingmailbox.com/maccomedy/movies/balmer.html

Microsoft has a toolbar introduced which is helpfull to web developers. They can check compatiblity with W3C standards for html and CSS. As stated on their website:

"The IE Developer Toolbar provides several features for deeply exploring and understanding Web pages.

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
• View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to 800x600 or a custom size.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages"

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E59C3964-672D-4511-BB3E-2D5E1DB91038&displaylang=en

It seems that Microsoft started their own virtual earth as an attack on Google Maps. As stated on the blog of the Virtual Earth team:

"Why Would I use VE? isn't it just like Google maps?
 
A lot of bloggers are taking their first look at VE and wondering why thy would use it instead of Google maps and Google Local. Why? Because our amps go to 11. Seriously, I guess it’s really a matter of taste and utility. At Virtual Earth our goal isn’t just to build an impressive feature list. More importantly to us, we want to enable our users to carry out everyday useful tasks REALLY well. Sure, we’ve built monster features like Autolocate and Autorefresh into VE, but it’s the user scenarios they enable that will keep people coming back to MSN Virtual Earth day after day. Let’s take a quick tour of how we have enabled you to carry out some of these most common tasks."

http://spaces.msn.com/members/virtualEarth/

http://virtualearth.msn.com/

Mark Harrison did a post containing some usefull links to documentation for the new Business Scorecard Manager 2005. It seems that this tool is not gonna be a free tool like the previous version and that the licenses are not that cheap. :( We have to see...

Business Scorecard Manager 2005 documentation includes the following:

Scorecard Manager Server Planning and Administration Guide
The Planning and Administration Guide contains information that system administrators use to install, configure and manage a Business Scorecard Manager server deployment.

Business Scorecard Builder Help Documentation
The Business Scorecard Builder Help includes conceptual and procedural information that users need to build scorecards using the Scorecard Builder application.

SharePoint Web Part Help
The SharePoint Web Part Help is written for end users who use Business Scorecard Manager scorecards and reports in SharePoint.

Business Scorecard Manager API Reference
The Application Programming Interface (API) reference provides developers with the complete reference for the Business Scorecard Manager 2005 Beta 2 API

Article by Mark Harrison:
http://markharrison.co.uk/blog/2005/07/documentation-for-business-scorecard.htm

Microsoft has a nice collection of controls bundled into a package called "IE Web Controls". Except for the fact that they are fully unsupported some controls are very handy.

I have used the TreeView in a custom WebPart and had some difficulty setting the styles. It seems you have to set the styles DefaultStyle, HoverStyle and SelectedStyle. The DefaultStyle is used when no action takes place, the HoverStyle is set when you hover with your mouse over an item and the SelectedStyle is the style of a selected item. Here are two examples of setting the style in a TreeView.

<mytree:treeview runat="server" 
    ID="tvwResources" 
   defaultStyle="font-family:Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;color:#000000;font-size:11px;" 
   hoverStyle="font-family:Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;color:#000000;font-size:11px;" 
   selectedStyle="font-family:Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;color:#000000;font-size:11px;>
</mytree:treeview>

Or programmatically

mytree.DefaultStyle["font-family"] = "Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif";
mytree.DefaultStyle["color"] = "#000000";
mytree.DefaultStyle["font-size"] = "11px";

mytree.HoverStyle["font-family"] = "Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif";
mytree.HoverStyle["color"] = "#000000";
mytree.HoverStyle["font-size"] = "11px";

mytree.SelectedStyle["font-family"] = "Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif";
mytree.SelectedStyle["color"] = "#000000";
mytree.SelectedStyle["font-size"] = "11px";

Patrick Tisseghem pointed out to us a nice article by Christophe Lauer which has created a sample application demonstrating the concept of programming against the Desktop Search API. I'm using the Desktop Search myself and find it incredible usefull. You can download the sample application at Christophe Lauer his site.

http://blogs.microsoft.fr/clauer/archive/2005/07/09/4563.aspx

One of my collegea pointed out a link to "patterns & practices Enterprise Library - June 2005" containing the following as stated on the website of Microsoft:

"The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of Application Blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application Blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code, that can be used as-is, extended or modified by developers for use on enterprise development projects. The June 2005 release of Enterprise Library is a minor update of the original version released in January 2005. Enterprise Library features new and updated versions of application blocks that were previously available as stand-alone blocks. All blocks included in Enterprise Library have been updated with a particular focus on consistency, extensibility, ease of use and integration."

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A7D2A109-660E-444E-945A-6B32AF1581B3&displaylang=en

A must have for every developer :) Thanks Stef !!

Tim Heurer pointed out to us that there are free virtual labs and webcasts available for during your lunch hours. You can find them at www.lunchwithmicrosoft.com .