Application Pages Vs Site Pages

Remember the difference between them in SharePoint (MOSS 2007)

Yesterday, somebody asked me the difference between the application page and site page in Sharepoint. Having developed five custom site and application pages in Sharepoint, I couldn't explain what exactly it is. I really got confused over time, as usual my brain was blank.

In a second after opening a SharePoint VS solution file, I got it. Just remember as the name indicates, Application pages can be used across SharePoint Web Applications and the Site pages are used across the Site(s). When you remember this, then you wont get confused. If its across applications then its the only _layout folder which is helping us. Wherein the site pages are the ones what we want to be specific for a site or to its contents and OOB example are AllItems.aspx, default.aspx etc.

Yes, I agree that working in a dozen of pages will also help you to remember, but in the beginning, even after a year,  lot of things in SharePoint is confusing and time consuming. Main reason behind this is our lack of basic understanding and poor memory. I strongly recommend every SharePoint developer to read the Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and a SharePoint administrator to read Microsoft SharePoint Services Administrator's Pocket Consultant.

 Multiple Inboxes for GMail

Last month Gmail Team announced a new GMail Lab feature called Multiple Inboxes. I really thought its about having Multiple Inboxes. Its not so. It wont allow you to see multiple Inboxes at the sametime. Its just a Multi-view or Multi-pane view of messages in some order or pattern. ie., You can create a view and define that to display all the mails labeled something, or from some account etc.

I have five accounts in Gmail (my old Gmail Id, other 3 ids for three different reasons created in the Google Apps - Kiruthik.com account). All the four are forwarded to the id mail-at-kiruthik.com. So mails from those account would reach this mail@kiruthik inbox.

Free ASP.NET MVC eBook

Source : Hanselman & ScottGu

Twin Oscars for AR Rahman

A.R. Rahman, the Legend holds up his Oscars for best original song and best original score for 'Slumdog Millionaire' backstage at the 81st Academy Awards in Hollywood.

How to Find/Check the CRC ?

What is CRC ?

Cyclic Redundancy Checking is a method of checking for errors in data that has been transmitted.

The cyclic redundancy check, or CRC, is a technique for detecting errors in digital
data, but not for making corrections when errors are detected. [More]

How to find the CRC value?

There are lot of tools to find a CRC value. I use Microsoft CRC Verification Utility (7KB), which is available in the Tools and Resources section of MSDN Subscribers’ Download.

Why we need to check the CRC ?

We mostly download Gigabytes sized files frequently. Few weeks back I downloaded the 64bit Version of Windows Server 2008 R2 beta from the MSDN Download, and the size of the iso file is around 4.5GB.

Most of the time the downloaded file will not have any problem. Rarely, when we try to open,install or burn the downloaded file, we might end up with a message saying its corrupted. In that case, we need to check the CRC value published by the source of the file, in my case its MSDN Subscribers’ Download section. MSDN Subscribers’ Download section always shows the CRC Value of each and every file they allow you to download, even if its 1MB or less.

After burning the iso file, when the Windows Server 2008 R2 beta installation was half the way, I got this error, some .cab missing in the Source media. Then I checked the CRC of the file in MSDN and the file in my Download. Both were same.

Where is the problem then ?

Yes, its with the DVD. I checked the CRC of the DVD, well as expected it was wrong.

Then I burnt the same iso file with a Rewritable DVD, which then had the same CRC.

CSS Reference for SharePoint 2007

Most of the time we endup changing the CSS styles of an existing Sharepoint Page objects like Top Horizontal Navigation, Search, Site Actions etc.
The CSS for the same can be found IE Developer Toolbar, but we miss the list of those or atleast the frequently used ones. Heather Solomon haves it here.

ASP.Net MVC RC1

Few days back, ScottGu announced the shipment of ASP.Net MVC 's RC1. Check his blog post for more details.

And had couple of issues in installing it. One being uninstalling the ASP.Net MVC Beta. It didnt get removed immediately and stayed there for nearly an hour.

And the other was installing the new ASP.Net MVC RC1. The setup didnt respond for couple of times, so I installed it after few reboots. I also had some problem in the Virtual Server 2005 R2 & its KB948515. So after solving this with a re-boot, I brought ASP.Net MVC RC1 into my machine.