Innovation Matters

Essays on AI, developer tools, and thoughtful software.

  • SharePoint Programmatically: Provisioning Lookup Fields

    Provisioning Content Type’s fields is quite straight forward when using Solutions: using Element Manifests you can define your own Content Types and their properties among which fields. Unfortunately there is one serious con to the solution Microsoft has offered: you simply cannot provision any Lookup Field using the Element Manifest.

  • Imtech Random Image and Imtech Site Members (Free Web Parts)

    Imtech Random Image Web Part displays randomly chosen Image. The Web Part takes as parameters URL of the Image Library containing images you would like to display. It is also possible to input multiple URL's separated by comma. Additional parameters you can set are: image width and height, in-line CSS style (like border, etc.), image link (you can make image point to the library where all the images are being shown) and the alternate text.

  • Imtech C# String Converter (Free .NET Tool)

    Once in a while you need to paste one of these long strings into your C\# code. I've set recently a record by pasting an exported SharePoint 2007 RSS Viewer Web Part: more than 400 lines! If it's only once during the solution development it's doable: you could get it well formatted using some Search and Replace with Regular Expressions. But what if you have to paste a dozen of such strings in your code?

  • Using ~SiteCollection prefix in SharePoint CSS files

    Using CSS files is the recommended way for incorporating the chrome in a SharePoint WCM solution. Among the various definitions of the layout pieces there are also images' references. Each such reference can be defined using an absolute of relative URL. As long as you use images in the same directory as the CSS file there is no problem at all: you can manage all the paths easily by simply using one of the URL kinds. Unfortunately a problem occurs when you would like to use images from other directories for example the PublishingImages folder. They should be referenced via relative URLs. Using absolute URLs results in problems when a Site Collection doesn't reside in the root or /sites directory. Also sharing a CSS file among different Site Collections isn't possible while using PublishingImages folder: there is no simple way to make the images' paths be defined dynamically based on the Site Collection calling the CSS file.