Virtual PC: Tab/Escape not working

Today, all of the sudden the tab and escape keys stopped working in Virtual PC.  Had never happened before.  I reinstalled VM Additions, restarted the VM, nothing worked.  I then found the solution in a form post:

“If you are running into this issue on Vista and Windows 7 you can get the TAB key back by creating a software allow policy. Go to administrative tools, local security policy, Software Restriction Policies, Additional Rules. Create a new rule for %appdata%\microsoft\vritual pc\vpckeyboard.dll and set it to Unrestricted. Restart Virtual PC.   If the variable doesn’t work, try using an explicit path i.e. c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\microsoft\virtualpc\vpckeyboard.dll”

Did that and it started working.  Note in the post that this applies to Vista and Windows 7 only.  I’m running Windows 7 x64.

Posted in general | No Comments »

SharePoint Top Nav Dividers

In a client project I’m working on, the design calls for dividers in between each navigation link. No problem. Here’s the CSS:

.ms-topnav a
{
	border-left-style:solid !important;
	border-left-color:#fff !important;
	border-left-width:1px !important;
	padding: 0 10px 0 10px;

}

However, this leaves the border on the first element of the navigation, which we don’t want. There’s no way to select that element using just CSS, so JQuery to the rescue:

$(document).ready(function(){

	$(".ms-topNavContainer").each(function() {

        var links = $(this).find("a");

        if (links.length > 0) {
            var link = links[0];
            $(link).addClass("navLast");
        }

    });

});

The CSS for “navLast”:

a.navLast
{
	border-left-style:none !important;
}

The interesting thing here is that it has to be “a.navLast”. For some reason, “.navLast” doesn’t work. Also, you can’t use “border-left” to add the dividers. You have to use the individual styles (most likely because of the inline styles on the element).

Posted in sharepoint | 1 Comment »

SharePoint base css

Here’s a simple stylesheet that I’m going to start using as a basis for customizing all of my Sharepoint team sites.

/* Top Bar */
.ms-globalbreadcrumb
{
	background-color:#7caf72;
}

/* Header */
.ms-globalTitleArea
{
	background:none !important;
}

/* Navigation */
.ms-bannerContainer, .ms-pagemargin, .ms-navframe, .ms-leftareacell
{
	background:none !important;
}
.ms-nav
{
	background-image:none !important;
}
.ms-topnavContainer, .ms-topnavselected, .ms-topnav {
	border: none;
	background: none;

}

table.ms-topnavselected, table.ms-topnav {
	height: 30px;
	margin-left: 1px;
	margin-right: 1px;
}
.ms-topnavContainer div
{
	background-color:transparent !important;	
}
.ms-topNavFlyOuts, .ms-topNavFlyOuts a:link
{
	background-color:transparent !important;
}
/* Body */
body {
	text-align: center; 
	margin: 0px auto;
}
body.ms-BuilderBackground {
    text-align: left !important;}
.ms-main
{	
    background: #fff;  
    width: 1020px !important;
    height: 100%; 
    margin: 0px auto !important;	
    border-bottom:10px #7caf72 solid;
}
table.ms-main 
{
	text-align: left;
}
/* Gets rid of default light blue background everywhere */
.ms-pagemargin, .ms-nav, .ms-pagebottommargin, .ms-pagebottommarginleft, 
.ms-pagebottommarginright, td.ms-rightareacell div.ms-pagemargin, .ms-titlearealeft,
.ms-titlearearight, .ms-titleareaframe, .ms-pagetitleareaframe, 
.ms-pagetitleareaframe TABLE, .ms-bodyareapagemargin, .ms-bodyareaframe, 
.ms-areaseparatorright, .ms-areaseparatorleft
{
	background: transparent !important;
	border: none;
}

.ms-pagebreadcrumb a {
	background-color: transparent;
	color:#fff;
}

Posted in sharepoint | 1 Comment »

Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 Boot to VHD

Found this great tutorial on creating bootable, sysprep’d VHD’s on the fly here.

I plan on trying this out later this week and posting my findings.

Posted in general | 1 Comment »

Big javascript post

All of this javascript goodness became useful while I was using jquery to call Sharepoint web services, specifically after I wrapped all of the functionality into a class.

1.  Context – this issue arose while using jquery’s .ajax() method as so:

$.ajax({
            url: "../_vti_bin/lists.asmx",
            type: "POST",
            dataType: "xml",
            data: soapEnv,
            complete: this.processResult,
            contentType: "text/xml; charset=\"utf-8\""
        });

I kept getting an error saying it couldn’t find the processResult() function. Turns out the “this” keyword wasn’t returning the context of the class. Instead, it was returning the context of the ajax() function call. After searching the intrawebs, I came accross this article. So, by adding the code and changing “this.processResult” to “$.context(this).callback(‘processResult’)” the problem was solved.

1A. Context and Recursion – this issue occurred while using a recursive function to write out a menu with child elements. Once again, this worked fine until I put everything into a class. However, once I did that, I started getting some weird issues with my for loop. The counter would increment twice while the recursive call was made. I wasn’t able to figure this one out, so I just unrolled the function.

2. Array sorting (mostly for my benefit) – a cool way to sort an xml array in descending order:

this.sortRows = function(a, b){
        return ($(a).attr("columnName") - $(b).attr("columnName"))
    }

Then call the function like this:

array.sort(this.sortRows);

Posted in general | No Comments »

Ensure Infopath Forms open in browser

Here’s a good way to ensure all of your Infopath Forms open in a browser, no matter where they’re linked from:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/koning53/archive/2009/06/10/ensuring-infopath-forms-to-open-in-forms-services.aspx

Posted in general | No Comments »

New site

A site I’ve been developing for my wife’s uncle’s business just went live:  tateinsurancegroup.com.

Pretty standard site so far.  The one cool thing is it was done using Umbraco, an open-source ASP.Net CMS system.   There were a few hiccups I encountered when first getting the site setup, but it’s proven to be a very capable CMS solution.  I would absolutely consider it in the future.

Posted in asp.net | No Comments »