You may or may not be aware that you can force IE to render a web page is a specific document mode, which means that an IE9 browser can be forced to render a page as if it was IE8 or IE7. Why you'd do this is most likely due to the fact that forcing an newer browser to render like an older one (for instance, forcing IE9 to render like IE7) provides a convenient baseline when trying to style a page.
You do this by adding the X-UA-Compatible meta tag to the head block of a page as follows:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
This particular line forces IE to render using IE8 mode. You can read more about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx.
There are a couple of caveats to adding this meta tag. The first one is that it must be the first meta tag in the head block (there are a coupld of exceptions to this). The second one is not so obvious, and is the main reason for this article.
If you use conditional comments to render the opening HTML tag of a page (see http://paulirish.com/2008/conditional-stylesheets-vs-css-hacks-answer-neither/ for details about this) the meta tag just plain doesn't work. It doesn't matter where you place it in the head block, it just doesn't work. If you have the same issue, the way around it, as it turns out, is rather simple if a little weird: move it to before the conditional comments like so:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"/>
<!--[if lt IE 7 ]> <html class="ie6"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7 ]> <html class="ie7"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8 ]> <html class="ie8"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 9 ]> <html class="ie9"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if (gt IE 9)|!(IE)]><!--> <html class=""> <!--<![endif]-->
I've tested this and it appears to continue to work as expected with no downside (apart from ugly HTML). Hopefully this will help someone out there.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Cookies...and not the munching kind
What am I talking about? Well, due
to an amendment to the law (the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC
Directive) Regulations 2003, and the new Directive 2009/136/EC) in May last
year, the way information is stored by technology is being changed, and
primarily how cookies should and can be used and stored - hence the nick-name
for this amendment: "The Cookie Law".
The UK government has given businesses a year to comply with the changes, which means that as from May 2012, any organisation that does business in the UK (and EU) is affected.
To find out more: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/cookie_rules_prepare.aspx
Just so you don't panic too much, this doesn't appear to affect intranets! It only applies to public-facing websites.
The UK government has given businesses a year to comply with the changes, which means that as from May 2012, any organisation that does business in the UK (and EU) is affected.
To find out more: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/cookie_rules_prepare.aspx
Just so you don't panic too much, this doesn't appear to affect intranets! It only applies to public-facing websites.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Learning jQuery
If you ever wanted to learn jQuery
but couldn't find the time or the discipline to do so, you can get some daily
force-fed lessons by visiting http://learnjquery.tutsplus.com/ and signing up for the "30 days to Learn jQuery"
course from Tuts+.
If you're starting out learning this stuff it should provide some structure (hopefully) to your initial learning. Have fun.
If you're starting out learning this stuff it should provide some structure (hopefully) to your initial learning. Have fun.
Monday, 30 January 2012
SharePoint Formatted String Control
I've come to the conclusion that a
little known but widely used control, the FormattedString control in the
Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls namespace, is a very useful control. Any
search through the Control Templates delivered with SharePoint shows how often
this control is used when rendering output through SharePoint. It works in the
same way a String.Format would in code, only it's something that can be added to
an ASCX or ASPX asset.
Let's have a closer look.
In a publishing scenario, if you have some HTML into which you need to inject a value from the current page then you may be able to use the FormattedString control to create the HTML, as you might using String.Format. This can include HTML (i.e. ">p<" instead of "<p>") and any other server-side control output.
In a simple example, to do this you simply add in the usual "{0}" indexed tokens and then, as child controls, you add in the field values. Here's an example, after which I'll explain a little more:
The 2 child controls (FieldValue) render out the value of the 2 page field values as strings which are then used by the FormattedString control to replace the 2 tokens respectively. You could, as child controls, use any server control to output more complex examples should you wish, or your own custom controls. The render sequence always processes child controls first, so whatever the output is from the child control is used. You can have as many tokens as required. Another scenario might be to get the server-relative URL of the site, which you can do by using the SPUrl function in an ASP Literal control.
Going back to my example, the FieldValue control itself, is another little-documented control which I frequently use as it renders the value of a field without much or any of the surrounding HTML, which results in cleaner markup. Using it in the above context makes sense as we only want the actual values, not the additional HTML a control might output.
More information can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.formattedstring.aspx and for the FieldValue control, some limited information can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.fieldvalue.aspx.
Let's have a closer look.
In a publishing scenario, if you have some HTML into which you need to inject a value from the current page then you may be able to use the FormattedString control to create the HTML, as you might using String.Format. This can include HTML (i.e. ">p<" instead of "<p>") and any other server-side control output.
In a simple example, to do this you simply add in the usual "{0}" indexed tokens and then, as child controls, you add in the field values. Here's an example, after which I'll explain a little more:
<SharePointWebControls:FormattedString runat="server"
FormatText="<p>{0}</p><p>{1}</p>"
EncodeMethod="NoEncode">
<SharePointWebControls:FieldValue
runat="server" FieldName="Title" />
<SharePointWebControls:FieldValue runat="server"
FieldName="Description" />
</SharePointWebControls:FormattedString>
The 2 child controls (FieldValue) render out the value of the 2 page field values as strings which are then used by the FormattedString control to replace the 2 tokens respectively. You could, as child controls, use any server control to output more complex examples should you wish, or your own custom controls. The render sequence always processes child controls first, so whatever the output is from the child control is used. You can have as many tokens as required. Another scenario might be to get the server-relative URL of the site, which you can do by using the SPUrl function in an ASP Literal control.
Going back to my example, the FieldValue control itself, is another little-documented control which I frequently use as it renders the value of a field without much or any of the surrounding HTML, which results in cleaner markup. Using it in the above context makes sense as we only want the actual values, not the additional HTML a control might output.
More information can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.formattedstring.aspx and for the FieldValue control, some limited information can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.fieldvalue.aspx.
Friday, 23 December 2011
Problem restoring a PowerShell backup
I had a problem today attempting to
restore a backup I had taken using PowerShell. I received the following error in PowerShell when running thr
Restore-SPSite command:
"Restore-SPSite : Your backup is from a different version of Microsoft SharePoint Foundation and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version '4.1.10.0' or later."
I checked my SharePoint version numbers against the server where I had taken the backup and it all looked fine. I took another backup in case the first one had become corrupt (even though I had already restored it successfully several times before). I rebooted and restarted my VM, but all to no avail.
In a last ditch attempt, I decided to delete 2 empty content databases that were set up on my machine, and created a new one to replace them and tried again.
To my surprise, it worked. So, if you have the same problem, try removing content databases (if you can).
"Restore-SPSite : Your backup is from a different version of Microsoft SharePoint Foundation and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version '4.1.10.0' or later."
I checked my SharePoint version numbers against the server where I had taken the backup and it all looked fine. I took another backup in case the first one had become corrupt (even though I had already restored it successfully several times before). I rebooted and restarted my VM, but all to no avail.
In a last ditch attempt, I decided to delete 2 empty content databases that were set up on my machine, and created a new one to replace them and tried again.
To my surprise, it worked. So, if you have the same problem, try removing content databases (if you can).
Friday, 2 December 2011
Usability Testing
Browsing through some of the SPC2011
conference materials, I came upon a useful website that provides usability
testing from the perspective of how a user would interact with your web design.
You simply provide a web design image or HTML I believe and a series of tests are run to assess
how your design is used by real-world users.
The click responses to questions about the design are grouped and displayed so you can see whether what you thought was a prominent design for something important actually does the job of attracting user interest.
It's not a free site, but a test is only $9 (about £5.70 at today's price) which is possibly well worth the pay-out to get some useful design feedback upfront of any development work.
Check out http://www.intuitionhq.com.
The click responses to questions about the design are grouped and displayed so you can see whether what you thought was a prominent design for something important actually does the job of attracting user interest.
It's not a free site, but a test is only $9 (about £5.70 at today's price) which is possibly well worth the pay-out to get some useful design feedback upfront of any development work.
Check out http://www.intuitionhq.com.
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Search Refiners and the Search Box
Something that isn't normally the
case is to remove the Search Box from the out-of-the-box search results page.
More often than not, it's a requirement to have it present so the user can see
the query they're currently searching with. However, recently, a client
insisted on removing this from their search results page.
Now, I've already given the game away here in the title of this article: some of the search refiners functionality stopped working. Which bit? Well, nothing overly important - simply the "show more" option that appears in the refiners when more than a specified number of refiners are present. More to the point is why it happens?
Having examined pages with and without the Search Box, it appears the Search Box Web Part is responsible for adding a JavaScript function and a reference to the search.js file. The function is effectively a check for the search.js, but without it the "show more" option will fail as it calls this function first and as it can't find it, it doesn't work.
The following was an extract I added to my Search Results Xslt to get the page to function correctly:
Now, I've already given the game away here in the title of this article: some of the search refiners functionality stopped working. Which bit? Well, nothing overly important - simply the "show more" option that appears in the refiners when more than a specified number of refiners are present. More to the point is why it happens?
Having examined pages with and without the Search Box, it appears the Search Box Web Part is responsible for adding a JavaScript function and a reference to the search.js file. The function is effectively a check for the search.js, but without it the "show more" option will fail as it calls this function first and as it can't find it, it doesn't work.
The following was an extract I added to my Search Results Xslt to get the page to function correctly:
function SearchEnsureSOD() {
EnsureScript('search.js', typeof(RenderTaggingControl));
}
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('SearchEnsureSOD');
EnsureScript('search.js', typeof(RenderTaggingControl));
}
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('SearchEnsureSOD');
The "typeof" used by
the EnsureScript function call is usually against GoSearch but this is present
only when the Search Box Web Part is present. I've used RenderTaggingControl
instead as this is present when the refiners are present.
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