David Cumps
#region .Net Blog
-
Blogging
Blogs are a new communication medium, mainly used as a single-direction information channel. On a blog, the owner publishes new posts, which can be read and commented on by readers.
This model looks a lot like a forum where treads are started and replies are given, expect on a blog, only the blog owner creates new posts. Some compare this model to an online diary or the private newspaper of an amateur journalist.
The greatest strength of blogs is the fact that they are very personal and contain a lot of valuable information. They also show the human side of companies when employees are blogging.
Another great advantage of a blog is syndication. This is the use of a particular XML file, using a described schema, called an RSS-feed or an ATOM-feed, to display all the information on a particular blog. By using so called feed-readers, it is possible to read several blogs from one application.
As a part of my internship, I had to post articles about what I did on my blog. Most of these articles correspond with the content of this report.
-
Virtual PC
Another tool I had at my disposal was Microsoft Virtual PC. This is a product that enables you to run several operating systems inside your existing one, each one of them acting as a real PC.
This was very useful when I needed to test some of the things I created on a different server, a Windows 2003 server running Windows SharePoint Services for example.
After I had created my Windows 2003 image, I could use it on any PC I wanted to work on, on my laptop and on my desktop as well. This proved very useful when having to test against a specific machine.
A virtual PC can share its network with the host operating system, making it possible to run several virtual machines at one, simulating a complete network, acting as if it were unique servers on the network. This was a very nice feature before deploying something to the real production servers.
-
SharePoint
-
NSurvey - Pie Charts
-
NSurvey - MapPoint Integration
-
NSurvey - Belgian Regions
-
NSurvey - Microsoft Layout
As this application was going to collect feedback from Microsoft events, it had to look like it belonged to Microsoft, and it had to be designed professionally. To do this, I visited the Microsoft site, and saved the page to my dev pc. There I stripped all the content and created a template with two user controls, SiteHeader and SiteFooter.
The next step was to include the previously created SurveyListControlOverview on the Default.aspx page to provide a starting point for the user.
When they user selected a survey and clicked the button, the OverviewSurveyId property was retrieved and forwarded to the Survey.aspx page, which displayed the survey in the same layout, together with the survey title.
If an error occurs, the user gets redirected to a generic error page and an email gets dispatched to the site administrators.
A contact page was also added to provide a contact person for users having problems or questions.
The last step in creating the layout was testing if it worked the same in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Luckily it worked the same from the first time and the layout was finished. -
NSurvey - Answer Types
-
NSurvey - Matrix Questions
-
NSurvey - Survey Overview
The first thing I noticed is the small dropdown in the admin section listing all available surveys. This would become my starting point for users, a perfect place to choose the survey they want to take.
I tracked this down to the SurveyListControl user control which I inherited to create SurveyListControlOverview. This user control removes to automatic postback when it’s in overview mode and also provides an OverviewSurveyId property to indicate the selected survey. It also displays all surveys, because it had to run in anonymous mode, without users having to log on before being able to answer. A shared password would be provided on the event, giving access to the survey.
After this, the user could select a survey from the dropdown list. The only problem was that the choices were ordered by creation date, which would become a problem in the long run when a lot of surveys would be available. To change this I added a simple ORDER BY Title in the vts_spSurveyGetList stored procedure.
At this point, I had a dropdown list with all surveys listed alphabetically to add to any aspx page I wanted.