Buta no Ie

Microsoft has announced they’re busy working away on the next version of Internet Explorer. Some of the more interesting things included:

• Much better JavaScript performance! IE8 was a nice first step at improving JS performance on IE but still woefully behind the JS profilers and JIT compilers of Firefox, Safari, et al. Early builds of IE9 are already 4 times faster in the SunSpider benchmark than that of IE8 and putting it about par with Firefox 3.5.
• CSS Level 3! Again early builds apparently are able to pass the majority of the CSS3 Selectors Testsuite, 41 out of 43. Of course, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 already completely pass this test. IE8 only passed 22 of these tests by the way.

Where’s more HTML5?

Microsoft was very non-committal about this. They made a good start in IE8 with things like DOM storage, cross document messaging (XDM) and have a built in JSON API, but where’s <video> or more importantly <canvas>?

It’s a promising start for Microsoft with news about IE9’s JS performance and CSS3 compliance. Here’s hoping to Microsoft finding time to implement some of the HTML elements that competitors have already integrated into their browsers. Don’t need IE10 to STILL be playing catch-up.

To those that have fought, and continue to fight, for the freedoms we enjoy everyday.

Excuse the really bad screen cap to the right… the Status Bar and Notifications are two UI elements in SharePoint 2010 which allow us to give the user information in context without distracting them. The Status Bar and Notifications are both exposed as client-side JavaScript APIs.

Status Bar

The Status Bar lives below the Ribbon and displays persistent information such as page status or web site alerts. It already existed in SharePoint 2007 as an UI element but it’s functionality was not exposed as an API. It will display an HTML message, which can include links and/or images, on 1 of 4 pre-set background colours depending on the importance of the status defined.

There is a Server API to set statuses at page render time as well as a JavaScript API to dynamically add/remove messages.

The JavaScript API is in the SP.UI.Status namespace and is as follows:

SP.UI.Status.addStatus(strTitle, strHtml, atBeginning)
SP.UI.Status.updateStatus(sid, strHtml)
SP.UI.Status.removeStatus(sid)
SP.UI.Status.removeAllStatus(hide)
SP.UI.Status.setStatusPriColor(sid, strColor)

Notifications

Notifications are brand new to SharePoint 2010 and they are used for transient or semi-transient messages such as action confirmations. Notifications appear on the right side of the page below the ribbon and default to a 5 second display period. Like the Status Bar, the message format is HTML with the ability of including links and/or images.

There is a JavaScript API to add/remove messages. You also have the option to make a Notification “sticky” which means it will continue to display until you manually remove it through the API.

Notifications are in the SP.UI.Notify namespace:

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification(strTitle, bSticky, tooltip, onclickHandler)
SP.UI.Notify.removeNotification(id)

Scored a free copy of Ninja Gaiden II for free when I went to get Grand Theft Auto IV (which I haven’t even touched other than watching the intro). The final boss battle with the Archfiend is really a expletive spewing, controller-throwing exercise in frustration. I know, I know, shoot the head with the arrow, shoot the orb in his chest, dodge stuff, rinse repeat…

First, if I load the save the game when I boot up the 360, I have to watch the intro video of Hayabusa unlocking the giant black gate and then have to battle the high priest just to get back to the battle with the archfiend! Then I get pummelled by archfiend over and over again.

I must suck… this is way to much effort to put into what could be a shitty ending video.

Some of the modules from the Hands-on Labs at SPC are available at the SharePoint Developer Center.

Here’s the list of the modules:

• Module 1: Getting Started Building Web Parts in SharePoint 2010
• Module 2: What Developers Need to Know About SharePoint 2010
• Module 3: Building Blocks for Web Part Development in SharePoint 2010
• Module 4: Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data with Server-Side APIs
• Module 5: Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data with Client-Side APIs
• Module 6: Accessing External Data with Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010
• Module 7: Developing Business Processes with SharePoint 2010 Workflows
• Module 8: Creating Silverlight User Interfaces for SharePoint 2010 Solutions
• Module 9: Sandboxed Solutions for Web Parts in SharePoint 2010
• Module 10: Creating Dialog Boxes and Ribbon Controls for SharePoint 2010

I only had the opportunity to try out a few restaurants in Vegas last week. Here’s are two of them for you meat lovers out there: one good; one not so good.

Let’s begin with the not so good…

Burger Bar

Located at Mandalay Place in the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Resort, Burger Bar is Chef’s Hubert Keller’s take on the “upscale” burger. You can get burgers made with Ridgefield, Black Angus, American Kobe or even buffalo and they will be cooked to a temperature of your liking. Chef’s burgers range from a classic bacon cheeseburger to the Rossini, a $60USD burger made with Kobe beef, foie gras, truffles and madeira sauce.

So what went wrong? I ordered the Surf & Turf Burger, made with Black Angus, grilled lobster and asparagus. The lobster was overcooked, tough and chewy. The burger itself was done to the correct temperature but completely bland. None of the burger components seemed to have been seasoned in the slightest. I was told when I asked about the lack of seasoning that it was because they wanted to showcase the quality of the beef. I’m sorry, but your beef is bland.

My friend’s had both gotten black pepper corn burgers which they seemed to enjoy, and I would have asked for the black peppercorn sauce on the side. Unfortunately, the lobster was way overdone, so I ended up sending the whole thing back and was done for the night.

I would have liked to link to the official website, but it’s completely in Flash and a mess. Here’s the link the Chef Keller’s main site.

Now onto the good stuff!

StripSteak

Okay, I can’t get myself to capitalize STRIPSTEAK in the heading. STRIPSTEAK is Michael Mina’s steakhouse. It’s located with all the other fine dining establishments at the Mandalay Bay, on the way from the casino to the convention center. I must say that someone could’ve done a better job with that particular section of the hotel as all the restaurants look like they’re in the middle of a food court.

First impressions aside, the food itself was fantastic. We were treated to a trio of french fries, each seasoned differently with accompanying sauces as well as an incredible iron skillet flat bread.

I think we all ordered variations of the sirloin cap steak and I asked for mine black and blue. I have to say that this has to be one of my best steak experiences I’ve ever had. The steak itself was perfectly done, just the right amount of seasoning, completely seared on the outside and a marblely (sic) purple on the inside. Garnishing was simple and elegant, a roasted shallot and a roasted pepper.

The only stumble for that evening was the roasted marrow bones I had ordered. Not enough and it was way too much effort to dig out the marrow. So avoid the marrow bones and order some mac & cheese or creamed spinach instead!

Here’s the menu in PDF format.

I guess this could be called a “Tale of two websites” as well. Mina’s website is much easier to navigate and link to.

A quickie: no more application.master!

In Microsoft SharePoint Foundation, application pages can now inherit a customized site master page through the DynamicMasterPageFile attribute.

In addition, there are a few pages which have been designated as Safeguarded Application Pages. These are the application pages that have safeguards against a broken master page. If these pages encounter an error when loading the dynamic master page, a safe master page in the _layouts folder is loaded instead.

• AccessDenied.aspx
• MngSiteAdmin.aspx
• People.aspx
• RecycleBin.aspx
• ReGhost.aspx
• ReqAcc.aspx
• Settings.aspx
• UserDisp.aspx
• ViewLsts.aspx

Check out the documentation on MSDN regarding master pages in SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint Designer 2010

It will be interesting to see how SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2010 fits into our development work flow.

For SharePoint 2007, we had basically avoided SPD 2007 like the plague. It didn’t fit into our Visual Studio development work flow.  Almost everything you did from a client-side development perspective was not easily reproducible across sites as the artifacts were basically all unghosted/customized. The actual SharePoint functionality was limited just seemed to be tacked on top of the FrontPage. The HTML editing around customizing master pages and page layouts was slow, buggy and heavy handed as it would arbitrarily change our code.

The interface has been completely overhauled in SPD 2010. Instead of the HTML editing centric interface in SPD 2007, we now have an interface that instead focuses on exposing various SharePoint capabilities to users with less technical expertise. It’s still not something you would deploy to all your users. It really is for your SharePoint power user or site administrator to manage their sites and lists.

SharePoint 2010 sites now have settings to determine what SPD is allowed to do or not do. There are settings to enable SharePoint Designer, enable detaching pages from their site definition, enable customizing master pages and layout pages, and enable managing of the web site URL structure.

The other big thing about SPD 2010 is the ability for it to now create reusable work flows. You can create a work flow and then package it up as a WSP and import it into Visual Studio 2010 for further development. You can also design your work flow in Visio 2010 which is quite interesting.

Check out the SharePoint Designer Team Blog for detailed info on all the new SPD 2010 features.

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon

A busy first day at the SharePoint Conference so I’ll start off with a quickie.

As most of you know already, SharePoint 2010 will use the ribbon interface for editing. I personally like the ribbon from an UI perspective compared with the old editing UI for SharePoint 2007. Some might argue that it’s a bit cluttered and the context sensitive editing may be confusing to new users. I think it’s something that users can grasp in short fashion especially if they use Office 2007 or 2010 as well.

Something that’s new to me in 2010 are the AJAX form dialogs. Pretty much any new item creation is now done in a modal dialog now instead of taking the user to a different form page in 2007. This is great as it keeps everything in context for the user.

An added benefit of the ribbon and form dialogs is that in most cases we no longer have to design for or make design decisions regarding these edit mode elements anymore. They are pretty much separate from the rest of the page from a design perspective.

UPDATE:
I’ll be putting up another post regarding the dialog creation API which is exposed as a JavaScript library in a later post.

The ribbon is extensible as well, you’re able to create new button elements, replace existing elements with customized functionality or remove an element all together.

Dusting off the old blog… expect to see posts on food, jQuery, and SharePoint branding and UI customizations in the near future!

In the mean time, I’ll be heading off to the SharePoint Conference next week.

SharePoint Conference 2009 - October 19-22

Hope to see you there!