Wictor Wilen

SharePoint 2010 contains functionality for rating documents and items using a classic five-star rating approach. But those starts looks a little bit like the Google stars, right? Wouldn’t it be cool to brand the rating and use custom icons like this: The solution is quite easy actually. You need to create a set of images and then set a few properties on the SPWeb object of the top-level site in the Site Collection.

The release SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 is imminent and I can already smell them! Microsoft Sweden with André Henriksson will take a tour around our beautiful country and show all the good stuff that is coming for us developers called SharePoint 2010 - The Developer Tour. Me and my awesome MVP mate Tobias Zimmergren will help out during some stops of the tour. It’s a half day full with developer goodies that you can’t miss out on! The tour will stop in Umeå, Göteborg, Sundsvall, Malmö and Stockholm. I will be doing the last stop and that one is after RTM and general availability of SharePoint 2010 so be sure that I will show you the latest and coolest bits of the fantastic SharePoint platform!

I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you about some of my upcoming engagements this spring. SharePoint 2010 - the Developer Tour - May 17th, Stockholm A half day introduction to SharePoint 2010 development arranged by Microsoft in Stockholm. If you are new to SharePoint development or a skilled SharePoint 2007 developer you should not miss this out. Together with Microsoft we will dive into the wonderful world of the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools and SharePoint Designer 2010.

While commuting home this beautiful afternoon I received an e-mail from Microsoft containing the following: Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in SharePoint Server technical communities during the past year. I am very, very proud of receiving this award and it gives me a real boost to continue exploring the SharePoint world…

SharePoint 2010 the logging has been extended with a new Correlation ID which is unique for each request or operation. The Correlation ID makes it very easy to track down any unexpected errors since you can search for the id in the trace logs. This unique ID is also maintained between servers for instance when making a call to a service application. The SharePoint 2010 error page also shows this Correlation ID so that any end-users seeing the message can contact support and give the the Correlation ID. Using the ID the support team can then track down the cause of the error.

In SharePoint 2010 there are more ways to deploy custom code than in its predecessors, the reason is the introduction of the Sandboxed solutions. There are basically now three different ways to deploy custom assemblies: Full trust solutions, aka Farm solutions - The assemblies are registered in the GAC and runs under full trust Partial trust solutions, aka Web Application solutions - The assemblies are deployed to the bin folder of a specific Web Application Sandboxed solutions, aka User code solutions - The assemblies (solutions) are deployed to the Site Collection gallery These are the basic variants of how to deploy custom assemblies. There are actually a few variants of them, but more about them later. So which one should I use and when? Let’s go through them all and look at the pros and cons.

If you have been developing with SharePoint for the last few years you probably are very aware of the SPWeb and SPSite naming is a bit confusing. SPWeb is actually a site and SPSite is a site collection. It’s always fun explaining this to new SharePoint developers… In SharePoint 2010 this naming convention confusion continues and now expands to the administration of SharePoint. Let’s for example take the example when you are activating or deactivating features. In the web interface of SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007 it is called Activate and Deactivate.

As some of you know I’m writing a book on SharePoint 2010 Web Parts development to be published by Manning Publications. I have set up a site dedicated to this book project where you can follow the progress of it. You can find the site at http://www.sharepointwebpartsinaction.com/ I am currently half way through the writing and we are closing in on the Manning MEAP program. So if you are interested in the latest news on the book head on over to the site…

The CssRegistration class (in Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls namespace) is one of the most useful controls in SharePoint 2010. It existed in SharePoint 2007 but was fairly limited then. I thought I should guide you through why it is so useful in SharePoint 2010 and why and when you should use it. I briefly mentioned the CssRegistration control in my previous post on SharePoint 2010 themable CSS files. But first some background. Why the CssRegistration control? There are plenty of times when you need to add custom CSS definitions to your SharePoint projects, for instance in pages and Web Parts. There are several methods of adding CSSes to your projects. You could use inline CSS styles - which results in a lot of markup which may slow your page/site down. Another approach is creating a CSS file and include it in your master page - better but the CSS is always loaded.