February 6, 2012

Parsing the Sharepoint Site Actions menu with jQuery

On recent Sharepoint (WSS3) sites I use jQuery extensively.  One of the things I often do is to remove the default Site Actions menu and draw those same links at the bottom of each page in the site.  I had found a way to successfully parse the Site Actions menu using some trickery:

$(‘#siteactions ie\\:menuitem’).each(function(){

(Note: my Site Actions Menu lives in a div called #siteactions in my master page)

This seemed to work well until I wanted to take advantage of the latest SPServices release which is now compatible with the latest jQuery.  I suspect (though I haven’t done extensive testing to be sure) is that some of the same issues with the new jQuery that were incompatible with the earlier release of SPServices were causing my issues.  After a bit of head-scratching I decided to sidestep the issue alltogether.  I couldn’t quite find a way to select the ie:menuitem nodes and step through them with an ‘each’ so instead I opted to simply use:

$(‘#siteactions menu’).children().each(function(){

I suppose this may have been obvious to some but for some reason I was determined to get the selector right.  If you know how to select elements with namespaces across-browsers in jQuery 1.7 I would be very interested to hear.

 

 

Stop the annoying Adobe Dreamweaver prompt for Alt field text

Yes, I still use image maps.  They are nifty, and don’t require Flash to pull off things like interactive maps.  But suppose you are trying to add 70ish links to an image map and Dreamweaver insists on prompting you EVERY SINGLE TIME to add an ALT tag.  Before you slit your wrists or kill your computer, there is hope.  This can quite easily be disabled by:

Go to  Edit menu > Preferences > Accessibility > and remove checkmark from the Images box.

This is not to suggest you should ignore accessibility, just that you don’t have to have Dreamweaver drill it into your skull 70 times to get the point across.

Downloading past purchases from iTunes (or your other devices)

It has been awhile since I felt the desire to blog, things have been really busy.  But this tip was just too good not to share!

Have you ever wanted to re-download something from iTunes?  I sure have.  One example was a TV Season I bought for the kids a while back, Backyardigans Season 3.  I opted for the HD variety but once we tried to view it, it was awful.  It averaged something like 3 frames per second.    Apple doesn’t exactly make it obvious how to report a problem or get help with such things.  At least it wasn’t obvious to me, and I looked for awhile.

So with the upcoming release of iCloud Apple has introduced a neat new feature, you can download all of your past purchases!  This seems like one of those features that have been there since day one.  But unless you were some high-profile celebrity or got lucky, you couldn’t technically do this in the past.

So here you go, go get those accidentally deleted episodes you have been missing.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519

Reset the Windows Home Server (WHS) backup database

I was in the final stages of migrating to a newer, quieter server and was finally ready to move my drives to the new machine.  However, I could not seem to get the old server to remove the old backups.  After trying to get the console to do it for me I still was staring out 30% usage towards backups that should not exist anymore.

This meant I couldn’t pull my two 1.5 gig drives that were slated for expansion in the new rig.

So I figured it was time to purge them manually.  Here is how you do it:

1. Run mstsc.exe to start a Remote Desktop Connection session to your home server.  Or if you are on a Mac (as I am) use the Remote Desktop Connection client for Mac.

2. Open a Command Prompt, Click StartRun and type CMD

3. Type net stop PDL.

4. Type net stop WHSBackup to stop the Windows Home Server Backup service.

5. Delete the contents of D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4}.  Do not delete the folder.

6. Type net start WHSBackup to restart the Windows Home Server Backup service.

7. Type net start PDL.

After deleting the backup database, you need to reinstall the Windows Home Server Connector software or run the Discovery.Exe program on each of your home computers to re-establish a relationship between your home computers and your home server so new backups will occur.

Thanks to James Clarke for the instructions.

Understanding the Sharepoint CAML query

Sharepoint allows you to utilize web service calls to retrieve and manipulate data.  To do this though you will need to be able to write CAML to create your queries.  I found this site pretty useful when it came time to really dig into creating my own custom CAML-based Sharepoint queries.

Google Apps business email hosting with MediaTemple DV server

E-mail is a fundamental part of any business today.  Unfortunately, not all web hosting provides adequate email service.  From SPAM to webmail, there leaves a lot to be desired depending on your provider.

MediaTemple’s DV server is a powerful option for any developer or business.  But the webmail and SPAM prevention just aren’t up to my (or my clients’) expectations.  The default Horde webmail is clunky, renders HTML poorly, and lacks many features that you might expect out of business email.

There are many different options these days for webmail and email hosting.   But what about free?

So this weekend I set out to do a little experiment.  I wanted to try out Google’s business email hosting service.  This has the benefit of not only being free (for the standard version) and comes with the niceties you might already be used to with using Gmail for your personal account.

The premise is to move all aspects of your server’s mail services to Google which will include some changes to your domain’s MX record (and CNAME records).  Keep in mind this could result in a short interuption of service.   The limited amount of effort thus far has proven to be well worth it.

Since I use a MediaTemple DV server for most of my hosting, I sought out some guidance and found some great instructions here.  Be sure to follow it completely as if you do not disable the mail service in Plesk it will not work.

Now as of today I have shiny new mail service, all backed by Google’s infrastructure.  This is hosting-independent, has Google’s famously awesome webmail, and is still accessible on all my devices using the native mail clients via IMAP.

This really is a great option for anyone wanting business class email (and all of the other Google apps).

Update: I have been using this service now for a couple months.  It has worked without a single hitch.  I run all my email through IMAP which keeps all my devices in sync, and don’t get a drop of spam.  I have to say that I highly recommend this to anyone, especially if you aren’t satisfied with your host’s webmail solution.