Google is my number one and favorit search machine and thanks to Mark Wagner i can put it in my SharePoint environment. :)

Mark Wagner has created a custom Google WebPart for a demo SharePoint site. He has provided two downloads. One for the WebPart package and the other containing the source code. As het stated this Google seacrch WebPart is not a replacement for the search feature of SharePoint itself.

    

There are three search options:

• Standard Google search
• Local Site Search
• Custom Site URL search

http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/1009.aspx

At Microsoft there is a top 10 list of benefits using SharePoint Portal 2003. From that list i think there are some benefits which could be used as reasons for your customer for deployment of SharePoint Portal 2003. They are:

• Put relevant information at your fingertips
• Share knowledge across the organization.
• Find and make the most of organization's intellectual capital.
• Create self-service portals.
• Automate business processes.
• Reduce development time and cost with out-of-the-box portal services

Explaination of these benefits are found in the following MSDN article:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/sharepoint/prodinfo/topten.mspx

A lot of us SharePoint developers know the differences of features between Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 but it never hurts to point them out again for those who don't know.

As stated in MSDN:

Windows SharePoint Services
is a collection of services for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 that you can use to share information, collaborate with other users on documents, and create lists and Web Part pages. You can also use Windows SharePoint Services as a development platform to create collaboration applications and information-sharing applications.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003
is a scalable, enterprise portal server that is built on Windows SharePoint Services. You can use SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to aggregate Windows SharePoint Services sites, information, and applications in your organization to a single portal.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 includes all features of Windows SharePoint Services and has some additional features. The following table compares the features between the two:

Feature	Windows SharePoint Services	SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Alerts	Yes	Yes
Browser-based customization	Yes	Yes
Discussion boards	Yes	Yes
Document libraries	Yes	Yes
Document Workspace	Yes	Yes
Meeting Workspace	Yes	Yes
Lists	Yes	Yes
BizTalk integration	No	Yes
Microsoft FrontPage 2003 integration	Yes	Yes
Microsoft InfoPath 2003 integration	Yes	Yes
Surveys	Yes	Yes
Templates	Yes	Yes
Web Part pages	Yes	Yes
Automatic categorization	No	Yes
Audiences	No	Yes
Topic areas	No	Yes
News	No	Yes
Personal sites	No	Yes
Shared services	No	Yes
Single sign-on	No	Yes
Site directory	No	Yes
User profiles	No	Yes

This information came from the following MSDN article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;830320

If you need more information for your decision of deployment read the following white paper: "Deciding When to Deploy Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003"

Patrick Tisseghem was going to speak about SharePoint site definitions and templates on the TechEd 2005 in Amsterdam, but his session agenda has changed. He will be speaking about another very interesting session:

Creating Dynamic Web Sites with ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts
"Drill down on the new Web Parts infrastructure in ASP.NET 2.0. Learn how you can use Web Parts to build rich Web sites-enabling end users to dynamically control the layout of pages-and customize the properties of server controls."

We already had a session internally about this subject given by Mart. I will certainly be there as SharePoint Geek! :)

http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/06/09/4311.aspx

On the blog of Eric Javri we can read that November 7th is going to be the official launch date of Team System. The rest of the products like SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and Biztalk Server 2006 will be launched during the week of November 7th according to Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Server Applications at Microsoft.

MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/launch2005/

Presspass:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jun05/TechEd2005Day2PR.mspx

FTPOnline:
http://www.ftponline.com/weblogger/forum.aspx?ID=1&DATE=06/07/2005&blog=#385

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/ejarvi/archive/2005/06/07/426490.aspx

I found a cool article at Mads's thoughts about setting a custom WebPart property in the dwp file. Setting the initial value for a custom property is mostly done by hardcoding the value in your control. He describes a way to to this through the dwp file of the WebPart. As he stated:

You've got to annotate the webpartclass with a reasonable namespace like this:

[DefaultProperty("Text"), ToolboxData("<{0}:SearchForm runat=server></{0}:SearchForm>"),
XmlRoot(Namespace="Some.Reasonable.Namespace")]
public class SearchForm : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart
{
   ...
}

And then tag your property elements in the dwp file with the same xmlns:

<UserControl xmlns="Some.Reasonable.Namespace">URI</UserControl>

And your webpart has an initial propertyvalue after deployment.

http://weblogs.asp.net/mnissen/archive/2004/05/20/135744.aspx

The ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) responsible for management and control of domain names has reported that at the end of this year the extension xxx is going to be available for the use of porn sites.

I'm curious... does this mean that porn sites are going to use this extension instead of the current sites? I don't believe that.

At the other hand it would be better for the internet and easier to filter these types of sites out. Especially with children on the internet.

Lets wait and see, it is good start for a cleaner internet :)

 

In one of the portals we removed the "Site settings" link from the page to prevent users clicking on it. For some additional users which have administrator rights we created a WebPart containing links to the most needed functionality. This custom WebPart contains a direct link to the settings of the current page, a direct link to the settings of users of the current page and a link to delete the current page and its children.

When designing websites and no texts are yet delivered by your customer you need "Lorem Ipsum"

"Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. "

I found a site which generates "Lorem Ipsum" texts for you :)

http://www.lipsum.com/

I got a question from someone if it is possible to remove the help link from the webpart menu. And if possible to remove the whole webpart menu itself. The answer the first question i did some digging and found out the following stuff.

If we take a custom webpart, to remove the menu, or one or more menu items it is relative very easy. I wrote already an article about this. This can be easily accomplished by overriding the CreateWebPartMenu() method. and if needed setting the this.WebPartMenu = null;

To remove the Help from the menu you could also go into "Modify Shared WebPart" and clear the "Help Link" field under the "Advanced" category.

If we take a default webpart like a list or event, it seems that it does not work that way. These default webpart have already a "Help Link" filled in. Clearing the "Help Link" will not do anything and going into the "Modify Shared WebPart" will return the original url. It is possible to change it and it is reflected when you select the help from the menu but as soon as you go into "Modify Shared WebPart" it is returned to its original state. Meaning that when OK or Apply is pressed you back to start.

Why? I don't know. Feature or bug? I also don't know