SuperBranding

If you’ve ever modified a WSS/MOSS master page only to be frustrated that some pages never change their look you'll want to look into a solution to this that Ted Pattison posted on CodePlex.  The reason for this disparity is that SharePoint has two master pages: Default.master and Application.master.  Default.master is what you'll be editing from within the SharePoint Designer and is something that can be customized from the site definition.  Conversely, anything that lives in the _layouts directory are called application pages and cannot be customized for each site.  These pages are accessible by any SharePoint site and are usually used for settings pages like /_layouts/settings.aspx.  These application pages all point to a master page that is different than the customizable master page and is called application.master.  The way Ted's solution works is to intercept the request using an HttpModule and determine if the page is pointing to application.master.  If so, it swaps out the reference to default.master instead.  I would expect that the next version/service pack should take care of this little nuisance.

KY Day of .NET

Yesterday we had a day-long code camp in Louisville.  It was a great success with about 70 people attending.  We covered topics from WCF, to SQL 2008, to LINQ.  I had the privilege of covering WCF.  It was a good preparation for me since I'll be doing the September DevCares on WCF on the 28th.  A summary of all the sessions can be found here: kydayof.net.

Sample SharePoint Master Pages

To the person new to SharePoint (MOSS and WSS), the UI out of the box is pretty darn cool looking.  It is very functional and is polished.  However, if you've seen it on more than one site then you're probably already sick of it.  When I got in to styling SharePoint, I wanted to just do something simple.  What I needed then was a set of samples, complete with images and stylesheets and a master page.  I finally found something that I can use and implement in about 10 minutes with SharePoint Designer.  On the Microsoft Office site, you'll find a set of 4 master pages with several color schemes each.

Hosting WCF in WAS

WAS (Windows Activation Service) is a technology developed primarily for web service hosting that gives you many of the benefits of hosting a web service in IIS, without actually using IIS.  It is a stand-alone service that is meant to be "activated" when requests come in.  These requests could be HTTP or some other protocol such as TCP or Named Pipes, which IIS doesn't support.  Since the next generation of distributed computing technology (WCF) is protocol-agnostic, these two technologies seem to be made for one another.  Gee what a coincidence.

If you're curious how to host a WCF service in WAS, I found a great article here.  This is something to keep an eye on because it's geared up for WCF hosting.  This is already available in Vista and it's clearly something you'll want in your bag of tricks when Server 2008 is released.

My First Post

So what in the world would I need a blog for?  I can tell you.  I can't remember all this stuff and I need a place to write it down.  So what better place than a blog, where the entire world can see it.  I hope you find it interesting.  Now, hopefully people will get off my case for not having a blog.
By the way, I'm using Windows Live Writer for my blog tool.  Very cool.