Blogging point...

I was looking a back at my site and the blog I've put together over the last couple years, and I'm starting to notice a trend. Anymore, I generally post to announce events and when I've got resources from a webcast or something I've presented that people might want to link to. Sure, it's all good, but it seems painfully one dimensional compared to what I intended when I started doing this.

What is it that I had planned for this space? For this digital ink that shows up in your reader or on my site? Originally I had hoped to make it a site where I can share my perspective on the world of technology as seen thru the glasses of someone who's been in it for a while. Tell stories about people I've met on the road from different places, what they're seeing and doing, and what inspires 'em to do what they do. I thought maybe people would be interested to hear what's new in the tools and technologies that are changing the work landscape so dramatically. I had also hoped to share insight that might be useful to help people not make the same mistakes and avoid the interesting opportunities for growth that sometimes aren't so interesting as annoying.

So I created my site (www.BenkoTips.com) a couple years ago to serve as a repository for articles and downloads as a resource for developers. It's very cool when I meet people who've been on my site before they met me, and they put it together and say "oh yeah, benkoTips...I've been to that site!". Those days make me feel like this has all been worth it. I've had grand plans for expanding it since it began, and one of these days I'll get around to implementing them...things like a book review section of titles I've found interesting. Another on the events that we're offering as part of my job, with maybe a little more information and links. I've even begun playing around with posting some demo-screencasts, but I'm not sure if I've found the right mix yet...

So then we come to the blog part. It's separate from BenkoTips and is hosted at work - http://blogs.msdn.com/benko. This is the part where I'm trying to figure out what it is I want the blog to be. Should it be a place for posting resources after a presentation? Or should I make it something deeper, more personal. More of a view of the world and include all that stuff that I'm interested in and playing with that doesn't quite fit the profile of technical blog? What is it that I can offer that would be useful like the site, and yet is something that is easier to sit down and put down in digital ink?

It's a new year (fiscal), and I'm looking at what I want to do in the next year. What can you expect from me? How about more posts on books I've read. Some insight or observations of what's going on in the developer community, both from the organized stuff to personal thoughts about how to succeed in this business. Maybe a couple ideas on how to fail as well...it will be a mix of ideas, thoughts, links, tidbits and advice that you can take for what they're worth. I'll even start using categories to help differentiate between them so you can tell what are rants.

Yep...I think I need to reinvent this thing. It's a job whose time has come.

Enjoy

Mike

Elvis has left the building

Wow. I know I played the video (Bill Gates Last Day) for fun a my events this spring, but it’s official now. Bill Gates has left the building. After three decades of working in the business, he is moving onto the next thing. Some skeptics are still in the wings wondering if it would really happen. But strangely enough time goes by and stuff happens. Things change. People change. It’s what we’re all about. Dealing with change.

Good luck Bill. I hope your next chapter is as good as the last. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

SharePoint Code Camp anyone?

I'm excited about all the opportunities to see what's going on in this rapidly changing technology world. Recently we saw the start of the Silverlight User Group in the Twin Cities. This weekend we saw the genesis of yet another group!

The SharePoint code camp was huge! What a day! We had over 140 people attend on Saturday’s all day first ever code camp for SharePoint in the Twin Cities. With over 6 tracks to choose from and 20+ sessions the crowd was big, loud and having fun from start to finish. A lot of excitement and enthusiasm not only from attendees but also from the partners who worked so hard to pull it off. It’s amazing how ready the community is for this type of event.

Sometimes it's just fun to be there. Saturday was one of those days! By the way, if you're interested in other upcoming conferences and events, check out the updated list of links on my website www.BenkoTIPS.com

Enjoy!

Updated the sidebar on BenkoTIPS...

I've been running this site (www.benkoTips.com) for 3 years now, and I finally got around to updating the links on the left hand side of the screen. You will now be able to find a (more) complete list of bloggers, conferences, regional User Groups as well as some links of interest to help you find what you're looking for. If you'd like to add your user group or conference to the list, please let me know. Click the link "Talk to me" on the sidebar and you can send me a direct email.

Enjoy!

Mike

Twin Cities Silverlight User Group is LAUNCHED!

This week on Tuesday I had the great pleasure of attending the charter meeting of a new User Group in Minneapolis focused on Silverlight. Many thanks to Farhan and all the people who worked so hard to make this event a success.

Scheduled to run the third Tuesday of each month, it was standing room only with more than 100 people in attendance. Jerry Sevier presented on an overview topic on Silverlight 2.0 and showed the various tools available to the developer to take advantage of this new technology. The crowd was very lively and the conversation was a lot of fun. Check it out!

See you next time!

Shawn Hargreaves Speaking in Mpls at XNA User Group

Calling all XNA Developers in the Twin Cities area and beyond.

This May 15th, the Twin Cities XNA User Group is pulling out all the stops to bring you a Shawn Hargreaves (Microsoft, XNA Team) Double Feature! Shawn is flying in from Redmond for one night and while we have him here, he'll be answering YOUR questions and presenting on the following topics: 1. Defeating the Network Game Gremlins and 2. Understanding Shaders. 

For more information and to register, please visit http://www.twincitiesxnausergroup.com.
Meetings are held at Magenic (4150 Olson Memorial Hwy, Suite 400, Golden Valley, MN 55422) on the Third Thursday of each month at 6pm.

Launch Demo Code Posted

I have been on the Visual Studio Launch Tour visiting Chicago, Des Moines, Madison, Omaha, Kansas City and St. Louis over the last couple months. As part of that we've been showing new features of Visual Studio for web development.

I've uploaded the sample web site code from the Visual Studio Launch events onto http://www.benkoTips.com/code. This includes the examples showing style sheets, LINQ and Ajax. If you were able to join me at the launch you've seen the demos, but I'm also working on some screencasts of these which registered users can view by clicking in the link  below (note that you will need to have Silverlight installed to view the demos).

Enjoy!

Encrypting the Web.config in VB

I got a request for how to do the encryption of the web.config but this time in VB, so I thought I'd post it here on the blog as well. The logic is about the same, although I found that in VB I had to add a line to the configuration to save the new settings.  The code for this in vb.net (adding to the global.asax file in the "Session_Start" subroutine:

Sub Session_Start(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)

    ' Code that runs when a new session is started

    EncryptSection("appSettings")

End Sub

 

Private Sub EncryptSection(ByVal sSection As String)

    Dim config As Configuration = System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(Context.Request.ApplicationPath)

 

    Dim configSection As ConfigurationSection = config.GetSection(sSection)

 

    If configSection.SectionInformation.IsProtected = False Then

        configSection.SectionInformation.ProtectSection("DataProtectionConfigurationProvider")

        config.Save()

    End If

 

End Sub

How to encrypt the Web.Config

In the security session we did I showed in one of the sample how you can encrypt the web.config file by adding code to the global.asax file. The cool part of this is that using this technique you can secure application specific settings like connection strings and other data in the unlikely event that someone is able to get a copy of the configuration file (like by copying it to a thumb drive from the host machine or something similar).

The basic logic is to create a variable that points to a configuration section, then checking that the section is protected (i.e. encrypted). If it isn't, then call the ProtectSection method to encrypt the contents.  The server uses the local DPAPI (Data Protection API) to encrypt the configuration section with a machine specific key, so only that machine can decrypt the contents. The code for this is:

public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication     {         protected void Session_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             EncryptSection("appSettings");         }              private void EncryptSection(string sSection)         {             Configuration config = System.Web.Configuration                                    .WebConfigurationManager                                    .OpenWebConfiguration                               (Context.Request.ApplicationPath);             ConfigurationSection configSection =                                config.GetSection(sSection);             if (!configSection.SectionInformation.IsProtected)             {                configSection.SectionInformation.ProtectSection                          ("DataProtectionConfigurationProvider");                 config.Save();             }         }

Happy Coding!

Silverprint a webcast on the SharePoint Silverlight Blueprint

Here's some links from today's webcast...

• Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint
• Silverlight 2 beta 1 - download
• Silverlight 2 SDK
• Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008
• Ian Morrish's blog post on Blueprint configuration
• Patrick Tisseghems blog post on Silverlight 2 and the Blueprint
• The Grumpy Wookie's post on same subject
• Code from the Webcast

Notes from what it takes to get the Blueprint working on a typical SharePoint installation

1. Install the Silverlight 2 add-in
2. On a server only installation add the Silverlight 2 SDK...
   - or - For a developer environment with Visual Studio 2008 install the Silverlight 2 tools
3. Run GacUtil to install the 'system.web.silverlight.dll' assembly into the global assembly cache
   
       c:\> cd \prog*\*sdk*\sil*\v*\li*\ser*
       c:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Server> gacutil /i system.web.silverlight.dll
   
4. Start the Windows SharePoint Administration Service (used by the installers for the BluePrint)
5. In WSS Central Admin create a site/application and site collection to test the web parts in
6. Download the package from the Blueprint you're interested in...in our webcast we looked at the code from HelloSilverlight1 and HelloSilverlight2
   - To run HelloSilverlight1 simply run the setup in the download
   - To run SilverLight2 demos we need to make some changes to the web.config of the target site

Configuration changes to build & run HelloSilverlight2

1. Open code solution
2. Edit Install.bat to fix gacutil locations & set correct target site
3. Modify site web.config to include settings from sample web.config on Patrick Tisseghems post

I'm still working out some of the bugs, but that's where I'm at.

Good luck & hope this helped!

Mike

SharePoint and AJAX Style Web Parts

In yesterday's webcast I had the pleasure of having an expert on SharePoint and AJAX talk about bringing these two compelling technologies together. Todd Bleeker (from MindSharp, a SharePoint consulting firm based in Minneapolis) when thru the various steps required to create AJAX web parts in SharePoint. We looked at the basics of how to build web parts, as well as deployment steps to make sure it works. This included:

1. Compile the code into an assembly
2. Make sure the assembly is signed (using sn.exe as needed to create keys)
3. Mark the assembly as Safe in the web config of the app
4. Make sure it's Trusted
5. Deploy the assembly to the site

There were some great questions around how to work with Code Access Security with these and Todd suggests looking at a white paper by Brett Lonsdale.

I just posted the code Todd created on www.BenkoTIPS.com/code, so go ahead and check it out.

Enjoy!

SharePoint for Developers Webcast Series

Because building it just got easier!

What's the deal with Windows SharePoint Server (WSS 3.0) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services?Lynn Langit and I are doing a webcast series on Windows SharePoint 3.0 as a platform for developers and looking at the tools and technologies available for customizing portals and sites.

In April we are on Mondays, but it looks like May we will be switching to a Friday format. As always I will post the links and code as they become available. Here is our schedule so far:

New Stuff!

• 3/6/2008 - Part 13 - Customizing SharePoint: Ever wondered how you can use SharePoint but have your own custom look and feel? In this webcast we will look at the site customization techniques of creating custom MasterPages, Themes and Layouts to give your web site your own look and feel.
• 3/13/2008 - Part 14 - SharePoint and Authentication: In this  session we cover the basics and how to use the Authentication and Membership Providers. We look at creating a custom provider and CardSpace can be used to login to your SharePoint site. This session will look at the advanced tools available in IIS 7.0 for configuring and deploying SharePoint.
• 3/20/2008 - Part 15 - SharePoint and AJAX: Explore the world of modern web development techniques by looking at how Microsoft’s AJAX library and SharePoint can be used together to deliver compelling user experience. In this webcast we show the various approaches to integrating AJAX in WSS 3.0 and then cover what’s improved in sp1.
• 3/27/2008 - Part 16 - SharePoint and SilverLight: Rich User Experience is getting easier to create with the release of Silverlight. In this session we show how Silverlight takes advantage of XAML and provides an easy way to build compelling user interfaces. We will demonstrate using the 1.0 version of Silverlight as well as what’s new in 2.0 that allows the developer and designer to collaborate to build exciting new applications.

Links to the original 12 webcasts:

• Part 1 – SharePoint for Developers 4/13/2007 1 pm PST: Join the first webcast of this four-part series to find out what you need to know about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as a developer. We cover the basics of SharePoint Server 2007, and we show how you can use this new product to simplify collaboration, development, and management of your software projects. Learn what it takes to set up SharePoint Server 2007, customize the master pages, and how you can use other tools to develop custom applications. Attend this session to discover compelling reasons for choosing the new 2007 Microsoft Office system and SharePoint Server 2007 for your solution development needs.
• Part 2 – SharePoint Designer 2007 4/16/2006 1 pm PST: There are many tools to choose from for developing Web sites; in this second installment of our series, we look at Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, a new product for creating standards-based Web sites. See how you can build powerful applications on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies platform to enhance your productivity and deliver rich-looking sites. Join this session to learn how you can use SharePoint Designer 2007 to take advantage of Microsoft ASP.NET version 2.0, Web Parts, and integration with SharePoint Products and Technologies.
• Part 3 – Migrating to SharePoint 4/23/2006 1 pm PST: Do you have a portal site that you would like to host in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services? In this third installment of our series on Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies for developers, see what is involved in the process of moving a portal site to Windows SharePoint Services. Topics we cover include: using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to customize the master page, creating new content types, and working with workflow.
• Part 4 – SharePoint and Access 2007 4/30/2007 1 pm PST: So far in this webcast series, we covered how Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies serve as powerful collaboration tools. In this final session, we take a look at how Microsoft Office Access 2007 integrates with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Join this session to learn how Access 2007, the popular data management application, and Windows SharePoint Services enable you to centralize and simplify data management, and share data across your organization.
• Part 5 – SharePoint and Workflow 5/11/2007 1 pm PST: In this webcast, we discuss the ability to use, update, and create custom workflows that you can employ in your Windows SharePoint Services site. We show the built-in workflow capabilities in Windows SharePoint Services, and we also demonstrate what customizations are available. In addition, we describe how to use Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to open, view, and modify included workflows. We conclude the presentation with a detailed demonstration of the capabilities of the Workflow Designer in SharePoint Designer 2007.
• Part 6 – SharePoint and Content Types 5/18/2007 1 pm PST:  Join this webcast as we review the concept of content types as they relate to Windows SharePoint Services sites. We explain the default (included) content types first. We then discuss why you may want to update the built-in content types or create your own. We also demonstrate how to create custom content types and provide several business examples of why and where you might wish to do this. We conclude this session by showing some of the newly created content types in action on a Windows SharePoint Services site.
• Part 7 – SharePoint and Forms Services 5/25/2007 1 pm PST:  In this webcast, we explore Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 as a form tool and describe how you can host forms centrally via the InfoPath Forms Services feature of Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. We provide an overview of InfoPath 2007, demonstrating both how to customize an included template form and how to create a custom form that connects to Microsoft SQL Server. Next, we illustrate how to configure the Windows SharePoint Services administrative Web site, which is required to set up appropriate permissions (and other settings) to use InfoPath Forms Services.
• Part 8 – SharePoint and the Business Data Catalog 6/1/2007 10 am PST: Join this webcast as we explain the concepts surrounding the Business Data Catalog (BDC), a new business integration feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. We demonstrate the use of an application definition file (ADF) to create the connection between your Windows SharePoint Services site and a custom data source, and we show you how to use an ADF creation tool. Learn to use BDC-derived data with included Web parts, such as the filtering Web part. We conclude this webcast with a discussion of the various ways we have worked with the BDC in production.
• Part 9 – Web Parts and Work Flows 6/8/2007 10 am PST: In this webcast, we discuss and demonstrate the creation of Web parts and workflows for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. We use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services and the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0 workflow extensions to customize and create both Web parts and workflows. Join us to learn about the concept of features as they relate to SharePoint Server 2007 Web Parts.
• Part 10 – Sites and Templates 6/15/2007 10 am PST: In this webcast, we dive into how the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services can enable you to take Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 even further. We start with an overview of project types and show how you can add event handlers, site definitions, and more into your tool belt. We look at creating site templates and master pages for SharePoint Server 2007, and we provide an example of how to customize and replace templates
• Part 11 – SharePoint and Business Intelligence 6/22/2007 10 am PST: In this webcast, we discuss business intelligence (BI) (advanced reporting) integration with your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web site. We demonstrate configuration of Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2007, key performance indicators (KPIs), and more. We use the Report Center template and show you how you can easily integrate line-of-business (LOB) data into your site
• Part 12 – Developing SharePoint Workflows 7/6/2007 10 am PST: Windows SharePoint Services provides excellent facilities for working with business processes. In this "webcast by request," we review the workflow development processes associated with Windows SharePoint Services. We look at the included workflows, modifying workflows in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, and creating and modifying workflows in the Microsoft Visual Studio development system

SharePoint and AJAX Style Web Parts - A Webcast

For tomorrow's webcast as part of the series SharePoint for Developers (http://www.BenkoTIPS.com/wss) I will have a special guest joining me. Todd Bleeker is a SharePoint MVP who does a good amount of training around SharePoint and will be sharing what he's learned around web parts and working with AJAX in SharePoint. This session will be packed with lots of demos and concepts, so join us by clicking the link below:

• 3/20/2008 - Part 15 - SharePoint and AJAX: Explore the world of modern web development techniques by looking at how Microsoft’s AJAX library and SharePoint can be used together to deliver compelling user experience. In this webcast we show the various approaches to integrating AJAX in WSS 3.0 and then cover what’s improved in sp1.

Look to see you there!

Didn't make it to MIX?

Not a problem...you can watch the sessions online by going to VisitMIX and selecting the track you're interested in. Some great technical sessions are available for download, and there's even a cool Silverlight control for picking which ones.

Very cool site:  http://sessions.visitmix.com

SharePoint and Membership ... a Webcast

Today's webcast will deal with membership and SharePoint, how users are able to connect and use your SharePoint site. I'm adding a post that will provide links and additional information about this, but it's not quite ready yet. I'll update this post when I'm done.

MSDN: Implementing a Membership Provider