Hi, I’m Brandon Anderson, and I make SharePoint not look like SharePoint.  I will be using this site as a forum for documenting my experience with various aspects of SharePoint UI and look-and-feel customization.  Why?  Well, in case I get hit by the proverbial bus, of course, but I anticipate it will become much more than that.

In brainstorming this blog I came up with the following topics I may address over the coming months.  It’s a draft list, with no particular order or priority, but please do take a gander and let me know if there is a particular post you’d like to see now.  The list:

1. Dissecting SharePoint: The Scalpel
2. How to create a custom master page in SharePoint 2007
3. How to create a custom master page in SharePoint 2010
4. How to add custom CSS to your SharePoint master page
5. How to add jQuery to your SharePoint site
6. Anatomy of a SharePoint 2007 web part
7. Anatomy of a SharePoint 2010 web part
8. Why can’t I select my page layout for a new page?
9. Why does SharePoint Designer say my file is checked out when it is not?
10. Print style sheet for SharePoint 2007
11. Print style sheet for SharePoint 2010
12. Where to store images and why
13. The magic of AdditionalPageHead
14. The alternative CSS file in site settings
15. You think you’re so !important
16. Styling the ribbon in SharePoint 2010
17. Putting SilverLight in it’s place
18. Multi-Column navigation flyouts in SharePoint 2007
19. Shoo, left nav! Shoo!
20. Using jQuery to wrap web parts to achieve the unachievable
21. Creating custom select boxes
22. Changing the arrow image for the welcome menu
23. How to make the Title column of a list view clickable using jQuery
24. Should you put references to custom JavaScript in the head or at the bottom of the body?
25. Add a favicon for spizazz
26. How to center a page in the browser window in SharePoint 2007
27. How to center a page in the browser window in SharePoint 2010
28. What are the UI considerations for a public SharePoint site?
29. You must use Advanced Edit in SharePoint Designer 2010

“Make it not look like SharePoint.” « SPUIGuy

Sometimes you want the default value of a field to be dependent upon a condition. However, there isn’t any direct functionality to support IF statements in the default values of fields. Substituting a rule for a default value only gets you so far, as the rule is only applied when that field that changes, not the fields that the rule depends on. Updating the field whenever any dependent field is changed would require you to copy the rule to each field.  This is not very maintainable, so below I will describe two approaches to avoiding this.

InfoPath Team Blog : Conditional Default Values

Adil Baig’s Tech Blog: Get Current User for Infopath and set file name – PART II

Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Office 2010 Technical Preview Screens, Part 1

Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence.

Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendlyness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.

This project is mature. However, there may be still some bugs and missing features that are being worked on. If you have any questions or suggestions about this project, please post them in the forums. Also, if you wish to make a feature request, you can post it there as well. But there’s no guarantee that I’ll implement your request.

You’re encouraged to translate Notepad++ into your native tongue if there’s not already a translation present in the Download Section. And if you want, help translating Notepad++ official site into your native tongue would be greatly appreciated.

I hope you enjoy Notepad++ as much as I enjoy coding it.

NOTEPAD++

If, like me, you happen to encounter the following user experience when attempting to edit a master page…

Figure 1: SharePoint Designer – “Error Creating Control”

See full-sized image.

…then follow these steps to resolve the issue:

1. Start Control Panel and then open Administrative Tools.
2. In Windows Vista, right-click Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration and click Run as administrator. If you are not using Windows Vista, then right-click and select Run as… and specify an account that is a member of the local Administrators group (because you don’t normally login with an administrative account, right?). Enter the appropriate credentials to start the configuration console.
3. In the .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration console, in the tree on the left, expand My Computer, and click Runtime Security Policy.
4. In the Code Access Security Policy window on the right, in the Tasks section, click Adjust Zone Security.
5. In the Security Adjustment Wizard, ensure Make changes to this computer is selected and then click Next.
6. Select Local Intranet, in the Choose the level of trust for assemblies from this zone section, click and drag the slider to Full Trust, and then click Next.
7. Confirm the setting in the Summary of changes and then click Finish.

Restart SharePoint Designer and you should be “good-to-go.”

http://blogs.msdn.com/jjameson/archive/2007/03/22/error-creating-control-when-using-microsoft-office-sharepoint-designer-2007.aspx

Flash Vars

One of the most frequently asked questions for Crystal Xcelsius customers that are integrating their dashboards with a portal or web sites is: “How can I pass parameters to the Dashboard when it loads?” This document will take a look at a feature in Crystal Xcelsius called Flash Variables. This feature allows Dashboard Designers to define ranges of information in Crystal Xcelsius that are to be replaced on load from an html page. The html page will set the Flash Vars variable, call the SWF, and push the ranges of information from the html page to the SWF file. This functionality will allow a portal or web site to pass user information, configuration parameters, or pre-defined criteria to the SWF.

This document contains three sections:

1.�
A description of how Flash Vars work.

2.�
A sample scenario of when one would use Flash Vars with Crystal Xcelsius.

3.�
A step-by-step directions on how to define Flash Vars within a dashboard.

Xcelsius – June Newsletter – Advanced Topic: Using Flash Vars with Crystal Xcelsius

Windows Installer installed the product. Product Name: Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management – Server. Product Version: 3.0. Product Language: 1033. Installation success or error status: 1603.

To fix this, I ran setup again, and unchecked the box to add an exception to the firewall. The Windows Firewall Service is not running on this server, and obviously the installer does not know how to handle this

Deploying Forefront Client Security Using SCCM 2007 – Step-By-Step

This is a Step-By-Step guide for using SCCM2007 to Deploy Forefront Client Security Client Agents.

Pre-Requisites:

1. Installed and configured FCS management server.

2. FCS Policy configured and deployed on client machines.

3. Windows Update policy Configured and deployed on client machines.

4. Client Installation Files (the Client directory on the installation CD) on a shared directory on the FCS server (only read permissions needed).

Deploying Forefront Client Security Using SCCM 2007 – Step-By-Step – The Security Wizard