Displaying the First N Words of Announcement Bodies with XSL in a DVWP

I got a ping yesterday from someone who had come across one of my old posts about Displaying the First N Words of a Long Rich Text Column with XSL. While the bits and pieces are there in the post, without a decent knowledge of XSL, it wasn’t obvious to them how you’d actually using the XSL templates. …

"SharePoint The Reality Series 4: Benchmarks for success" by Marc Solomon

Back in May, I posted about a couple of articles on “SharePoint: The Reality Series” that Marc Solomon had written which included some quotes from a discussion I had with him back in January.  Marc was kind enough to ping me today about a new installment in the series. This installment is entitled SharePoint The…

What’s That Lorem Ipsum Text and How Do I Get It?

Have you ever wondered what this text that you see in mockups, wireframes, or sample data is? Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure…

Should You Use a CDN for jQuery Libraries?

I frequently have people ask me whether they should store jQuery libraries in house or reference external Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) instead. I see plusses and minuses for using the various CDNs out there. (There are several big ones: Google, Microsoft, etc.)  Reducing the ‘hits on the server’ thing is potentially one plus, but unless…

SharePoint ‘Customization’ vs. ‘Development’, aka ‘Is It Code?’

One of the great things about being on the faculty at the USPJ Academy is getting to engage in the type of discussions that I recall as being so rewarding in my academic career.  There’s no immediate business crisis at hand, just a bunch of motivated, interested people kicking around ideas to see what makes…

jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices) v0.5.6 Released

Tonight I’m releasing SPServices v0.5.6.  The changes in this release aren’t major, but they are still important. Jaap Vossers (that’s a link to Jaap’s SharePointOverflow profile because his blog seems to have gone missing as I write this) spotted a bug in the core SPServices function that I hadn’t ever caught.  If he supplied a…

BASPUG Meeting Tonight (9 June) in Cambridge, MA, USA

If you’re in the Boston, MA, USA area tonight, come to the second meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group at the Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center, located in Cambridge.  The first meeting was a great gathering, with almost 100 attendees.  Even if the topic for each meeting isn’t of prime…