Jan Tielens' Bloggings

I'm looking for a SharePoint hosting provider which runs WSS SP2 and .NET 2.0, anybody knows such a company? My current hosting provider hasn't deployed SP2 yet because they have a "conflict" between SP2 and their "current system settings". Btw don't see this as negative comments, they have offer cheap SharePoint hosting: $9.95 per month, 2GB space, unlimited bandwith traffic and up to two WSS sites! (more info @ WebHost4Life).

One of the many new features in ASP.NET 2.0 is called Web Resources. Basically this allows you to store resources like images, scripts and so on, in an assembly. You can do this by using the WebResource attribute. This attribute can be applied on assembly level like this

Do you want to create web parts for SharePoint, but you don't want to buy/install a full blown Visual Studio? Well there is some good news! With the free Visual Web Developer 2005 you can create ASP.NET 2.0 Web User Controls, just like in Visual Studio 2005. So if you use the new Son of SmartPart (also free), you can show them in your SharePoint sites. There is however one limitation in Visual Web Developer, when you create the Web User Control all the server side code (C# or VB.NET) will be put in the ASCX file as well. So don't look for .CS/.VB files or DLL's, just copy the .ASCX to the UserControls folder and you're good to go.

When I talk to BizTalk developers about the new Windows Workflow Foundation I always have to explain the difference between BTS and WWF. There are a couple of good blog posts discussing the differences:

This article will show you how you can create your first .NET 2.0 user control and show it in a SharePoint site. First you need to deploy the Son of SmartPart to your SharePoint server of course. Check the Installation Guide which you can find in the zip file that can be downloaded from www.smartpart.info, or watch this installation screencast. When this is done, open up your brand new Visual Studio 2005 and create a new ASP.NET Website. In the Website menu choose “Add new item”, and add a new Web User Control to the project, named DemoControl.asxc.

This is very cool: now you can host email for your own domain(s) for free at domains.live.com. Just register a domain somewhere, add an MX record so it points to a Microsoft DNS server and you're ready to go (detailed instructions are available when you subscribe). The result is that you can read/send/manage email for whateveryouwant@yourdomain.com in a Hotmail-style interface. Domain names are pretty cheap nowadays, with this service on live.com having your own custom email address will be accessible for everybody.

Last week I was in Denmark to deliver an intensive training/coaching session for WM-Data. The topics included SharePoint, VSTO, Office, BizTalk, … and the combination of all of them. There are a couple of things that I learned over there:

Here’s some good news for everybody that has been waiting for it: I’ve just uploaded the brand new Son of SmartPart to the GotDotNet site! First of all, what is the Son of SmartPart? This version of the SmartPart will allow you to run ASP.NET 2.0 Web User Controls and ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in SharePoint sites. Since WSS SP2 you can run your SharePoint sites on the .NET Framework version 2.0, and from now on you can use the power of the new platform to extend SharePoint.