TariqAyad.com

I've been pondering about the lack of a more efficent process for developing  MOSS/WSS Solutions (I mean a solution to a business probelm and not a wsp) lately, because believe it or not, when your MOSS Solution contains more than just one component, e.g. WebParts, Features, ASPX pages, Workflows etc, there is no Solution template in Visual Studio where you can add all these project types and have them compile to a single wsp. Its kind of a pain to develop without this functionality.

Serge pointed me out to WSPBuilder by Carsten the other day (man was I so out of it :( ). But wait Rich Finn has done a number on the WSPBuilder and introduced it as a Visual Studio Template. Which should be a help, but doesnt really solve the problem of multiple projects.

So here is whats spinning around in my head. A Visual Studio Project type (Setup and Deployment or any other kind) which you can add to your Solution, and to which you will add references from your other projects. The project would be intelligent enough to determine the output type of the referred projects and place the output in the appropriate folder structure as per WSPBuilder, and on compile time call wsp builder.

I think its an interesting idea that would ease a bit of pain from the developent chores involved with MOSS Solutions, but implementing it might be a bit of a challenge.

Does anyone else have any other ideas? or recommendations/tips on this or  how they go about developing MOSS/WSS Solutions.

Nothing important here. Move along :)

For quite some time I have wondered what was the meaning of my name. "Tariq" or "Tarek". Everybody kept telling me that it was a star, a very bright star.

Well if so what or where is it?

Well I kinda found out the other day. It doesnt mean star. It means a Pulsar. The direct translation of Tariq means "the knocker"; i.e. as in the sound made by a Radio Pulsar.

'The Arabic word "Thukb" means a hole; "Thakeb" means the one who makes the hole. '

More info here - http://www.speed-light.info/

Nothing much in this post.

Just some intersting MOSS/WSS resources on the web.

WCM

Andrew Connells SharePoint WCM Resources - http://andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/MossWcmResources.aspx

Localisation

Mikhail Dikov's post on Feature localisation - http://www.mikhaildikov.com/2007/03/sharepoint-resources-types-use-and_2163.html

Troubleshooting

Dan Attis's post EventReciever example on changing absolute urls to relative ones - http://devcow.com/blogs/jdattis/archive/2007/09/27/11463.aspx

"Such and Such a grid should not be blank when there is no data, it should show the column headers with no rows."

How many times have you heard that?

Yeah, I've seen it as bugs in the change request system!! Seems like a simple enough request, but trying to deliver it sends you straight into the land of GridView hacking. Oh why was such a simple feature not incorporated into the GridView. Microsoft are you listening.

Instead you have to jump hoops.

Here are some of those hoops that help you solve the problem

http://forums.asp.net/p/960167/1892125.aspx#1892125

http://mattberseth.com/blog/2007/07/how_to_show_header_and_footer.html

Infact let google guide you through all the numerous posts on this topic.

This seems like a pretty nifty utility, specially when you can say Santas Gray instead of #9C99AD :)

Here is a link that a friend sent me.

A little risky (heck I wouldnt do it with  a DSLR) but with a point and shoot maybe.

http://cameratoss.blogspot.com/2005/10/camera-toss-mini-howto.html