Here are the steps I took, and some mistakes I made during the process. Hopefully you can spare yourself from wasting precious minutes of your life like I did.

Step 1 – Create a Generic Windows Live ID

Any company that signs up for a service wants to be able to use a generic account to login with. People change jobs all the time, and you don’t want that account locked out or inaccessible because someone left the company, or their personal email address doesn’t work anymore.

My first step was to create a generic Windows Live ID account for Blue Rooster Inc. I started at the App Hub membership site and clicked the link to Join Now:

Then I clicked the link to Sign Up Now:

Next, I chose the option that says "Yes, use my email address".

At this point, I already had a generic company email alias working (something like apphub@mycompany.com), so I entered that and filled in the other information. Make sure to test this email address first, because otherwise you’ll be stuck if it can’t receive mail.

GOTCHA #1: The secret question options are all geared towards personal pieces of data. The only generic one I could use was Favorite Historical Person. I chose someone that made sense for our company, and wrote it down, along with the password.

GOTCHA #2: If you wait too long on this screen, it’ll kick you back to the previous screen.

GOTCHA #3: The CAPTCHA is hard to read. Took me a couple times to get it right.

Next I entered my profile data. Since this was a generic account, many of the fields on here were not applicable (Gender, Marital status, etc.). I entered what I thought was best. For birthdate, the company was founded in 2004, so I just put January 1 2004 as the birthdate.

WRONG!!!

GOTCHA #4 MAJOR! – Make sure your Birthdate is a valid legal age!

By specifying 2004 as the birth year, the Live ID system thought I was a minor, and wouldn’t let me proceed unless I got a parent to approve this and validate their own identity via credit card. This was a DEAD END, and I had to cancel this account and start over.

Next, I validated my email address.

Then I had to check my email address and validate the account by clicking the link in the email.

GOTHCA #5: This will open a new browser window. You will not be taken back to the App Hub after this (it takes you to www.msn.com), and will have to navigate back yourself.

Step 2 – Really Register at the Marketplace

Once you have your generic Live ID working, you can go back to the App Hub and start over. This time I signed in with my new Live ID. I filled out my country, selected Company as the account type, and accepted the terms of use:

On the next screen, I really screwed up, but didn’t know it for a while. When you enter your account details, there are two sections, Personal Details, and Company Details. I didn’t want to enter myself or another personal contact in the Personal Details section, as I didn’t know if that would show up in the marketplace when someone viewed one of our applications. I wanted the profile to be generic as well, so I entered "Blue" for the first name, "Rooster" for the last name, and used the Windows Live ID generic email as the email address.

Notice the arrow pointing to the message regarding the email address. I figured I was totally fine here, since my generic account can receive email successfully. Also, there is an Approver section at the bottom of the Company Details section that looked like the right place to put my own personal information.

WRONG!!!

GOTCHA #6: If you put generic information in the Personal Details section, GeoTrust will not be able to verify your identity.

Of course they won’t tell you this, and your account will be pending Tax ID Verification indefinitely, and you won’t be able to developer unlock your phone until someone gets back to you. I had to log a support ticket and harass until someone finally emailed me that my account was still pending because of this. I got an email from GeoTrust shortly after, which had a link to a Live Chat session. A gentleman at GeoTrust took my order ID, and changed my contact information, and a couple hours later my marketplace account was fully verified. This whole thing delayed me an entire week.

After this step, you are directed to fill out your profile. This is where you choose your XBox Live Gamer tag (another thing that really does not make sense if you are a generic company account), and setup some default information.

GOTCHA #7: I had a hard time finding a non-used XBox Live gamer tag. I tried "Blue Rooster", "BlueRooster", "Blue Rooster Marketing", and finally had to settle for "Blue Rooster, Inc.".

Unfortunately I’m missing screen shots of the next steps in the process, but I’ll note the process and some gotchas that I can remember.

After filling out the profile details, it was time to provide payment.

GOTCHA #8: The payment system had a hard time with a corporate AMEX card. It was really finicky about the Suite number in the address.

GOTCHA #9: If you want a receipt of the purchase, print the screen that shows the amount. There is no place in the marketplace afterwards to get a receipt, or to view the transaction.

Once you are done with the payment process, you’ll be taken to your App Hub dashboard. You’ll also soon get an email from GeoTrust. If you’ve done this right (and didn’t run into GOTCHA #6), then your email will contain contact information for an individual, not for a generic company account.

*** NOTE: This email was automatically generated from an unmonitored mailbox. ***

Dear Approver:

The person identified below requested a Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace developer account on behalf of Blue Rooster. GeoTrust, a Microsoft partner, needs more details to complete Marketplace registration. 

Applicant information:

  Name:   Blue Rooster

  Email:  xxx@xxx.com

  Phone:  xxxxxxxxxx

Successful Marketplace registration generates a code signing certificate that will identify Blue Rooster as the responsible publisher.

Blue Rooster identified you as someone who can authorize this request on behalf of Blue Rooster.  If you do not have this capability, then please notify Blue Rooster, then access the URL below and click "I Do Not Approve". 

***Note that canceling this account will require the requesting individual to create a new Marketplace account using a different Windows Live ID and pay an additional registration fee.*** 

Please follow the URL below to approve or not approve this request:

     https://products.geotrust.com/orders/Approval.do?pin=xxxxxxxxxxxx

If you have any questions, please consult the requestor, Blue Rooster, or contact GeoTrust Customer Support at:

     https://knowledge.geotrust.com/support/knowledge-base/index?page=content&id=SO14669&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US

Thank you.

GeoTrust Customer Support

http://www.geotrust.com/support

Hours of Operation: Mon - Fri 05:00 - 17:00 (PST)

Email:     cs-orders@geotrust.com

Web:       http://www.geotrust.com

Phone:     1-866-436-8787 or 1-678-366-8399 option 2

Live Chat: http://www.geotrust.com/support

After clicking the link, you’ll be taken to a simple page that basically lets you Accept or Cancel the verification process. After finishing this, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief and wait for the verification process to complete.

WRONG!!!

GOTCHA #10: You MUST navigate to the PAYEE DETAILS screen in the App Hub Dashboard, and fill in your bank account and Tax ID information in order to have your tax ID and identity validated. The process never took me there on its own, and there was no email or other communication that told me that I needed to do this.

That’s pretty much it, and much harder than I think it needed to be.

http://coding-paparazzi.sylvainlafontaine.com/2010/02/solving-connection-problems-wlw.html

I was able to fix it by editing my wp-config.php in notepad and saving with ANSI encoding instead of UTF-8 and re-uploading to my site. That stripped out the byte order mark at the beginning, and fixed my connection issues.

So I don’t forget it, here are the details about our 2010 Riesling:

• Picked on 11/13/10.
• 17 crates, about 30 pounds/crate.
• Crushed on 11/13/10 late afternoon.
• Pressed on 11/14/10 late morning.
• Yield – 25 gallons

Some additional info on sugar content:

Started out with Brix of 20,
Added 10 cups of corn sugar which brought the brix up to 22
Added 20 teaspoons of Yeast Nutrient
and the starter yeast was Lalvin, kv1-1116 a good all around white wine yeast. 

A project I am working on called for a custom implementation of the SharePoint Welcome menu control. The replacement control needed to provide the following:

• Implement the look and behaviors that the designers created.
• Exclude some default SharePoint menu items (such as My Regional Settings).
• Reuse some existing SharePoint menu items (such as Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User).
• Allow for the addition of other custom menu items in the future.
• Display thumbnail of the user’s profile picture.

I had to create a control that looked and behaved like the following:

The designers came up with some clean, semantic markup married with some jquery, for me to start from:

<div class="header">

    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />

    <div class="header-bar">

        <div class="profile_menu">

            <a href="#" class="profile_btn">

                <span class="image"><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px" /></span>

                <span class="name">John Doe</span>

                <span class="arrow"></span>

            </a>

            <div class="profile_dropdown">

                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

                    <ul>

                        <li>Edit Profile</li> 

                        <li>My Site</li>

                        <li>Log Out</li>                        

                        <li>Sign in as a Different User</li>

                    </ul>

                </div>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

This is part 3 of a three part series.

1. Part 1 – Overview, Profile Picture, and User Name
2. Part 2 – Edit Profile and My Site links
3. Part 3 – Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User

Building the Sign Out Links

The Sign Out and Sign in as a Different User menu items are rendered by the PersonalActions control, in two methods (from Reflector):

private void SetLoginAsDifferentUserMenuItemGoToPageUrl()

{

    MenuItemTemplate menuItem = base.GetMenuItem("ID_LoginAsDifferentUser");

    if (menuItem != null)

    {

        if (SPSecurity.AuthenticationMode == AuthenticationMode.None)

        {

            menuItem.Visible = false;

        }

        else

        {

            string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.Web.GetServerRelativeUrlFromUrl("_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true");

            menuItem.ClientOnClickScript = "javascript:LoginAsAnother('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "', 0)";

        }

    }

}

private void SetSignOutMenuItemGoToPageUrl()

{

    MenuItemTemplate menuItem = base.GetMenuItem("ID_Logout");

    if (menuItem != null)

    {

        if (SPSecurity.AuthenticationMode == AuthenticationMode.None)

        {

            menuItem.Visible = false;

        }

        else

        {

            menuItem.ClientOnClickNavigateUrl = this.Web.GetServerRelativeUrlFromUrl("_layouts/SignOut.aspx");

        }

    }

}

The “Sign Out” link points to “_layouts/SignOut.aspx”, and “Sign in as a Different User” points to “_layouts/closeConnection.aspx”.

To leverage this, I again adjusted the ASCX markup to include some PlaceHolder and LinkButton controls:

<div class="profile_dropdown">

<asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder>

    <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

        <ul>

            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder> 

            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder>

            <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLogOut" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign Out"></asp:LinkButton></li>                        

            <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign in as a Different User"></asp:LinkButton></li>

        </ul>

    </div>

</div>

And then here is some code-behind that re-creates the output from the PersonalActions control:

// Login as another user

string loginAsAnotherUserUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true");

linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser.OnClientClick = string.Format("LoginAsAnother('{0}', 0);return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(loginAsAnotherUserUrl));   

// Sign out

string signOutUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/SignOut.aspx");

linkButtonLogOut.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(signOutUrl) + "');return false;";

Summary

In this post, we deconstructed the PersonalActions control further to re-create the Sign Out and Sign in as a Different User menu items.

Our Final ASCX markup is:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>

<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>

<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %> 

<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomWelcomeMenuControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu.CustomWelcomeMenuControl" %>

<div class="header">

    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />

    <div class="header-bar">

        <div class="profile_menu">

        <a href="#" class="profile_btn">

            <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" /></span>

            <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder></span>

            <span class="arrow"></span>

        </a>

            <div class="profile_dropdown">

                <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder>

                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

                    <ul>

                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder> 

                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder>

                        <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLogOut" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign Out"></asp:LinkButton></li>                        

                        <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign in as a Different User"></asp:LinkButton></li>

                    </ul>

                </div>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

Our Final ASCX code-behind is:

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;

namespace CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu

{

    public partial class CustomWelcomeMenuControl : UserControl

    {

        protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)

        {    

            // Username

            PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

            welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;

            placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);

            // Profile picture

            SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);

            SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);

            if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))

            {

                // Use default picture (or replace with another)

                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";

            }

            else

            {

                SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());

                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;

            }

                string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

            string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

            if (!Page.IsPostBack)

            {

                myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;

                mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;

            }

            else

            {

                myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;

                mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;

            }

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))

            {

                // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...

            placeHolderMySite.Visible = false;

            }

            else

            {

                // User has a MySite, show the link to it...

            placeHolderMySite.Visible = true;

            linkButtonMySite.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(mySiteHostUrl));

            }

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))

            {

            // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available

            PostCacheSubstitutionText pt = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

            pt.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;

            pt.PrefixHtml = "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n//<![CDATA[\nvar _spUserId=";

            pt.SuffixHtml = ";\n//]]>\n</script>";

            placeHolderUserID.Controls.Add(pt);

                string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");

            linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";

            }

            else

            {

                // Use the MySite profile page...

            linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(myProfileUrl));

            }

            // Login as another user

            string loginAsAnotherUserUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true");

            linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser.OnClientClick = string.Format("LoginAsAnother('{0}', 0);return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(loginAsAnotherUserUrl));

            // Sign out

            string signOutUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/SignOut.aspx");

            linkButtonLogOut.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(signOutUrl) + "');return false;";

        }

    }

}

Hopefully you find this useful, and can take it further if need be. Leave comments if you have any questions.

A project I am working on called for a custom implementation of the SharePoint Welcome menu control. The replacement control needed to provide the following:

• Implement the look and behaviors that the designers created.
• Exclude some default SharePoint menu items (such as My Regional Settings).
• Reuse some existing SharePoint menu items (such as Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User).
• Allow for the addition of other custom menu items in the future.
• Display thumbnail of the user’s profile picture.

I had to create a control that looked and behaved like the following:

The designers came up with some clean, semantic markup married with some jquery, for me to start from:

<div class="header">

    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />

    <div class="header-bar">

        <div class="profile_menu">

            <a href="#" class="profile_btn">

                <span class="image"><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px" /></span>

                <span class="name">John Doe</span>

                <span class="arrow"></span>

            </a>

            <div class="profile_dropdown">

                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

                    <ul>

                        <li>Edit Profile</li>

                        <li>My Site</li>

                        <li>Log Out</li>

                        <li>Sign in as a Different User</li>

                    </ul>

                </div>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

This is part 2 of a three part series.

1. Part 1 – Overview, Profile Picture, and User Name
2. Part 2 – Edit Profile and My Site links
3. Part 3 – Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User

Leveraging the SocialNavigationControl for My Site and My Profile links

The My Site and My Profile links are rendered by the SocialNavigationControl, and contain rendering logic that branches depending on whether a My Site host has been installed. I didn’t want to recreate this so I went digging with Reflector.

I found this code for the control’s OnInit method:

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)

{

    base.OnInit(e);

    if (!base.IsPostBack && SocialControlHelper.CheckUserAccess)

    {

        this.ProfileURL = SocialControlHelper.ProfileURL;

        this.MySiteHostURL = SocialControlHelper.MySiteHostURL;

    }

}

Sweet! Everything I needed was right there, from the SocialControlHelper class.

Wait a minute, Doh! SocialControlHelper is marked as sealed, internal. Wonderful, don’t you love it when Microsoft does that?

Fortunately, upon looking at the code for SocialControlHelper, it runs once, and caches the two URLs it’s responsible for in the HttpContext.Items collection using the following string keys:

private const string FLD_MySiteHostURL = "SocialData$MySiteHostURL";

private const string FLD_ProfileURL = "SocialData$ProfileURL";

Perfect, anything can grab it from there. The SocialNavigationControl does its rendering of menu items in the OnPreRender event. This means that by including the control on a page, and setting it’s visibility to FALSE, it won’t render anything, and we can still leverage the items in SocialDataHelper by getting the urls from HttpContext.Items. We can add this to our ASCX markup at the top:

<!-- The social data control is used here just to test for existence of mysite/profile pages -->

<asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderSocialData" runat="server"><SPSWC:SocialNavigationControl ID="socialNav" runat="server" Visible="false"></SPSWC:SocialNavigationControl></asp:PlaceHolder>

Some ASCX code-behind:

string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

    myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;

    mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;

}

else

{

    myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;

    mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;

}

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))

{

    // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...

}

else

{

    // User has a MySite, show the link to it...

}

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))

{

    // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available...        

}

else

{

    // Use the MySite profile page...

}

Notice that I am storing these URLs in ViewState as well. The SocialNavigationControl only fetches data on initial page load. If you have applications/web parts/user controls that will be present during postbacks, then you will want to persist these links somewhere like ViewState.

Reconstructing the SocialNavigationControl’s Javascript

Now for the hard part, filling in the conditionals above. The Welcome menu is comprised of three different controls, so they don’t all render the same way. The primary control, PersonalActions, renders the core menu and the bulk of the menu items in HTML. The SocialNavigationControl, however, uses javascript to find the existing menu on the page and then append its own items to it. It’s pretty ugly and hacky (from Reflector):

private void SetMyProfileMenuJavascript()

{

    string key = this.ClientID + "_insertMyProfileMenu";

    DebugStringBuilder builder = new DebugStringBuilder();

    builder.AppendLine("function " + key + "() {");

    builder.AppendLine("    var menus = document.getElementsByTagName('menu');");

    builder.AppendLine("    if (menus == null)  return;");

    builder.AppendLine("    var menu = null;");

    builder.AppendLine("    for (var i=0, len=menus.length; i<len; i++) {");

    builder.AppendLine("        if (menus[i].id.lastIndexOf('PersonalActionMenu') != -1) {");

    builder.AppendLine("\t\t       menu = menus[i]; break;");

    builder.AppendLine("        }");

    builder.AppendLine("    }");

    builder.AppendLine("    if (menu == null)   return;");

    bool flag = false;

    bool flag2 = false;

    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ProfileURL))

    {

        flag = true;

        builder.AppendLine("    var elm = document.createElement('ie:menuitem');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('menugroupid', '50');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('description', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MyProfileMenu_description)) + "');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('text', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MyProfileMenu_text)) + "');");

        builder.AppendLine(@"    elm.setAttribute('onmenuclick', 'STSNavigate2(event,\'" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(this.ProfileURL) + @"\')');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('id', 'ID_MySiteLinksMenu');");

    }

    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.MySiteHostURL))

    {

        flag2 = true;

        builder.AppendLine("    var elm2 = document.createElement('ie:menuitem');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('menugroupid', '50');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('description', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MultPages_MySite_Description)) + "');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('text', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MultPages_MySite_Label)) + "');");

        builder.AppendLine(@"    elm2.setAttribute('onmenuclick', 'STSNavigate2(event,\'" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(this.MySiteHostURL) + @"\')');");

        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('id', 'ID_MySiteMenu');");

    }

    builder.AppendLine("    var sep = null;");

    builder.AppendLine("    for (var i=0, len=menu.childNodes.length; i<len; i++) {");

    builder.AppendLine("    \t   if (menu.childNodes[i].id == undefined || menu.childNodes[i].id == '') {");

    builder.AppendLine("            sep = menu.childNodes[i]; break;");

    builder.AppendLine("        }");

    builder.AppendLine("    }");

    if (flag)

    {

        builder.AppendLine("    if (sep != null)");

        builder.AppendLine("        menu.insertBefore(sep.cloneNode(true), menu.firstChild);");

        builder.AppendLine("    menu.insertBefore(elm, menu.firstChild);");

    }

    if (flag2)

    {

        builder.AppendLine("    if (sep != null)");

        builder.AppendLine("        menu.insertBefore(sep.cloneNode(true), menu.firstChild);");

        builder.AppendLine("    menu.insertBefore(elm2, menu.firstChild);");

    }

    builder.AppendLine("};");

    builder.AppendLine("_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('" + key + "');");

    this.Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(base.GetType(), key, builder.ToString(), true);

}

The OOB behavior for the Welcome menu will actually render two profile links if you have SharePoint Server installed:

1. My Profile (linking to the My Site Host profile page)
2. My Regional Settings (linking to userdisp.aspx, the SharePoint Foundation profile page)

The My Regional Settings link is added by the PersonalActions control (from Reflector):

PostCacheSubstitutionText text2 = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

text2.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;

text2.PrefixHtml = "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n//<![CDATA[\nvar _spUserId=";

text2.SuffixHtml = ";\n//]]>\n</script>";

this.Controls.Add(text2);

SPUser currentUser = this.Web.CurrentUser;

MenuItemTemplate menuItem = base.GetMenuItem("ID_PersonalInformation");

if (menuItem != null)

{

    if (currentUser == null)

    {

        menuItem.Visible = false;

    }

    else

    {

        string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.Web.GetServerRelativeUrlFromUrl("_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");

        menuItem.ClientOnClickScript = "javascript:GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";

    }

}

My design called for only displaying one “Edit Profile” link, which should be smart enough to combine these two approaches, and link to userdisp.aspx if SharePoint Foundation used, and to the My Site Host profile page if available.

To achieve this, the first step is to adjust the ASCX markup to include some PlaceHolder controls that can be customized in code-behind:

<div class="profile_dropdown">

<asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder>

    <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

        <ul>

            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder>

            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder>

            <li>Log Out</li>

            <li>Sign in as a Different User</li>

        </ul>

    </div>

</div>

Here is the code-behind I used that combines the output from the PersonalActions control and SocialNavigationControl:

string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

    myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;

    mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;

}

else

{

    myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;

    mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;

}

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))

{

    // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...

    placeHolderMySite.Visible = false;

}

else

{

    // User has a MySite, show the link to it...

    placeHolderMySite.Visible = true;

    linkButtonMySite.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(mySiteHostUrl));

}

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))

{

    // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available

    PostCacheSubstitutionText pt = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

    pt.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;

    pt.PrefixHtml = "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n//<![CDATA[\nvar _spUserId=";

    pt.SuffixHtml = ";\n//]]>\n</script>";

    placeHolderUserID.Controls.Add(pt);

    string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");

    linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";

}

else

{

    // Use the MySite profile page...

    linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(myProfileUrl));

}

Summary

In this post, we deconstructed the SocialNavigationControl, and figured out how to render intelligent links to My Site and My Profile pages.

Our ASCX markup so far is:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>

<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>

<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomWelcomeMenuControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu.CustomWelcomeMenuControl" %>

<div class="header">

    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />

    <div class="header-bar">

        <div class="profile_menu">

        <a href="#" class="profile_btn">

            <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" /></span>

            <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder></span>

            <span class="arrow"></span>

        </a>

            <div class="profile_dropdown">

            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder>

                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

                    <ul>

                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder>

                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site"></asp:LinkButton></li></asp:PlaceHolder>

                        <li>Log Out</li>

                        <li>Sign in as a Different User</li>

                    </ul>

                </div>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

Our ASCX code-behind so far is:

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;

namespace CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu

{

    public partial class CustomWelcomeMenuControl : UserControl

    {

        protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)

        {    

            // Username

            PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

            welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;

            placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);

            // Profile picture

            SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);

            SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);

            if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))

            {

                // Use default picture (or replace with another)

                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";

            }

            else

            {

                SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());

                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;

            }

                string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

                string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

            if (!Page.IsPostBack)

            {

                myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;

                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;

                mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;

                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;

            }

            else

            {

                myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;

                mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;

            }

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))

            {

                // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...

                placeHolderMySite.Visible = false;

            }

            else

            {

                // User has a MySite, show the link to it...

                placeHolderMySite.Visible = true;

                linkButtonMySite.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(mySiteHostUrl));

            }

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))

            {

                // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available

                PostCacheSubstitutionText pt = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

                pt.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;

                pt.PrefixHtml = "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n//<![CDATA[\nvar _spUserId=";

                pt.SuffixHtml = ";\n//]]>\n</script>";

                placeHolderUserID.Controls.Add(pt);

                string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");

                linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";

            }

            else

            {

                // Use the MySite profile page...

                linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(myProfileUrl));

            }

        }

    }

}

Next, check out Part 3, where we learn how to display links to Sign Out and Sign in as a Different User.

Part 1 – Overview, Profile Picture, and User Name

A project I am working on called for a custom implementation of the SharePoint Welcome menu control. The replacement control needed to provide the following:

• Implement the look and behaviors that the designers created.
• Exclude some default SharePoint menu items (such as My Regional Settings).
• Reuse some existing SharePoint menu items (such as Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User).
• Allow for the addition of other custom menu items in the future.
• Display thumbnail of the user’s profile picture.

I had to create a control that looked and behaved like the following:

The designers came up with some clean, semantic markup married with some jquery, for me to start from:

<div class="header">

    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />

    <div class="header-bar">

        <div class="profile_menu">

            <a href="#" class="profile_btn">

                <span class="image"><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px" /></span>

                <span class="name">John Doe</span>

                <span class="arrow"></span>

            </a>

            <div class="profile_dropdown">

                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

                    <ul>

                        <li>Edit Profile</li> 

                        <li>My Site</li>

                        <li>Log Out</li>                        

                        <li>Sign in as a Different User</li>

                    </ul>

                </div>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

This is part 1 of a three part series.

1. Part 1 – Overview, Profile Picture, and User Name
2. Part 2 – Edit Profile and My Site links
3. Part 3 – Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User

Overview of Approach

My general approach to solve this was to create a .NET User Control, installed in the _controltemplates directory. I could use code-behind and the API, and have the most control over display and formatting of the menu. This could all be deployed with a WSP package, using Visual Studio 2010. I could leave out any menu items I didn’t need, add any custom items necessary, and write code to recreate any SharePoint menu items that I wanted to keep.

I started out creating a new Empty SharePoint Project in Visual Studio 2010:

I then added a User Control to the project, and pasted the markup from the designers into the :

My next task was to figure out what I could reuse from SharePoint’s own menus, by looking into the OOB Welcome menu.

OOB Welcome Menu Controls

Before I started, I had to dissect the out-of-box Welcome menu control. If you look at the master pages in SharePoint, they usually include a reference to Welcome.ascx. It turns out that this isn’t just one control, it is a combination of three different controls that each interject their own menu items:

1. Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.PersonalActions – This is the primary control, responsible for most of the menu items and the menu core. Items 4-9 below (plus another item, “Request Access” that isn’t shown in the screen shot) are rendered by this control. The menu and its items are rendered as <menu> and <ie:menuitem> nodes in the html.
2. Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.MUISelector – This is responsible for displaying language selections (item #3 below) if you’ve installed language packs.
3. Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SocialNavigationControl – This is responsible for displaying My Site and My Profile links (items 1 and 2 below, part of SharePoint Server).

Displaying the User’s Profile Picture

To display the profile picture, I first had to adjust the original markup from the designers to include a server Image control. Here is the original markup:

<a href="#" class="profile_btn">

    <span class="image><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px;" /></span>

    <span class="name">John Doe</span>

    <span class="arrow"></span>

</a>

Here is the adjusted markup:

<a href="#" class="profile_btn">

    <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" /></span>

    <span class="name">John Doe</span>

    <span class="arrow"></span>

</a>

Once that was done, I was able to use the API to get at the user’s picture:

protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)

{    

    // Profile picture

    SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);

    SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);

    if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))

    {

        // Use default picture (or replace with another)

        imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";

    }

    else

    {

        SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());

        imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;

    }

}

Displaying the User’s Name

The user name is pretty easy to deconstruct. The PersonalActions menu uses the PostCacheSubstitutionText control to render the user name and insert it into the Welcome menu’s controls collection (code below from Reflector):

PostCacheSubstitutionText child = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

if (flag)

{

    child.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;

}

else

{

    child.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.WelcomeUser;

}

child.MaximumLength = maxChar;

base.MenuControl.UseShortId = true;

base.MenuControl.Controls.Add(child);

The PostCacheSubstitutionText control will prevent the username from being cached on the server as part of output cache settings, so that if a user uses the Sign in as a Different User menu item, they will always see the current username instead of a cached one. You can play with the PostCacheSubstitutionTextType to change how the username is displayed.

In order to insert this text into our menu, I added a PlaceHolder control into the ASCX markup, and then added the PostCacheSubstitutionText control to the PlaceHolder’s controls collection in code-behind. I replced the John Doe text in the markup with this:

<a href="#" class="profile_btn">

    <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" /></span>

    <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder></span>

    <span class="arrow"></span>

</a>

I then added the following lines to the PreRender event:

// Username

PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;

placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);

Summary

In this post, we deconstructed the OOB welcome menu control, figured out how to get the user’s profile picture, and got the user’s display name into the menu.

Our ASCX markup so far is:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>

<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>

<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %> 

<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomWelcomeMenuControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu.CustomWelcomeMenuControl" %>

<div class="header">

    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />

    <div class="header-bar">

        <div class="profile_menu">

        <a href="#" class="profile_btn">

            <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" /></span>

            <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder></span>

            <span class="arrow"></span>

        </a>

            <div class="profile_dropdown">

                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">

                    <ul>

                        <li>Edit Profile</li> 

                        <li>My Site</li>

                        <li>Log Out</li>                        

                        <li>Sign in as a Different User</li>

                    </ul>

                </div>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

Our ASCX code-behind so far is:

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

namespace CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu

{

    public partial class CustomWelcomeMenuControl : UserControl

    {

        protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)

        {    

            // Username

            PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();

            welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;

            placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);

            // Profile picture

            SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);

            SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);

            if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))

            {

                // Use default picture (or replace with another)

                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";

            }

            else

            {

                SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());

                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;

            }

        }

    }

}

Next, check out Part 2, where we learn how to display links to My Site and My Profile.

If you try to Add New Item… and select the Web or SharePoint categories in a VS 2010 SharePoint project, you won’t find Generic Handler anywhere.

You’ll find ASP.NET Handler, but this will require you to create entries in web.config to make your handler work. In order to add a new .ASHX generic handler and get it to deploy properly, you can use the following steps:

• Right-click the project, and select Add New Item…
• Choose the Application Page template.
• In the name box, enter a name for your file, with an .ashx extension.
  
• Open the .ashx file, delete the contents and replace with the following, changing your Class= attribute with your desired namespace and class name:

  <%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>

  <%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

  <%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="MyNamespace.MyGenericHandler" %>

  Note: If you want to reference other SharePoint assemblies in your code-behind, you will need to add an @ Assembly directive for each DLL.

• Open the ashx.cs file.
  • Add a using statement for System.Web.
  • You probably don’t need the using statement for Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls, so remove it.
  • Change your namespace if necessary.
  • Change the class to inherit from IHttpHandler.
  • Implement the IHttpHandler interface. Your code should now look something like this:�

    using System;

    using Microsoft.SharePoint;

    using System.Web;

    namespace MyNamespace

    {

        public partial class MyGenericHandler : IHttpHandler

        {

            #region IHttpHandler Members

            public bool IsReusable

            {

                get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }

            }

            public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)

            {

                throw new NotImplementedException();

            }

            #endregion

        }

    }

• In the Solution Explorer, delete the ashx.designer.cs file, it is not needed.
• In the Solution Explorer, click the .ashx file, and in the Properties pane, set the Build Action to Content.
• In the Solution Explorer, click the .ashx.cs file, and in the Properties pane, set the Build Action to Compile.
• Make sure to enable Token replacement for .ashx extensions. This will replace the $SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$ token with the full strong name of your assembly, enabling you to reference other classes in your compiled assembly from the ashx code-behind.You can read more about token replacement here. To enable this for your Project, Unload your Project, Edit the .csproj file and add the following text to a PropertyGroup, and Reload your project:

  <PropertyGroup>

    <TokenReplacementFileExtensions>ashx</TokenReplacementFileExtensions>

  </PropertyGroup>

If you aren’t familiar with Colligo, it’s a desktop client application/outlook add-in/explorer file manager, that enables users to save documents or emails directly to SharePoint, and be prompted for metadata at the time of saving.

Colligo reads the content type of the target lists/libraries, and generates a default form very similar to what SharePoint does with the default EditForm.aspx ListForm web part. If you don’t like the default form, or need to customize the metadata entry experience (for example custom validation, pulling from external data sources, inter-dependent controls), you can develop a custom editor and show your own Windows Forms-based form to the user.

The default Colligo Editor form, shown here when adding a new Announcement.

How to Start

To start developing a custom editor, begin by installing Colligo Contributor, and obtaining your product and sdk keys from Colligo.

Create a new Visual Studio Class Library project, and add a reference to the Colligo dlls in the GAC.

Add the necessary using statements:

using Colligo;

using Colligo.Properties;

using Colligo.Util;

using Colligo.WML.MetaData;

Change your class to inherit from the ICustomEditor class:

namespace MyNamespace

{

    public class MyCustomEditor : ICustomEditor

    {

    }

}

Implement the Interface methods:

namespace MyNamespace

{

    public class MyCustomEditor : ICustomEditor

    {

        // SDK Key

        private const string SDK_KEY = "XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX";

        #region ICustomEditor Members

        public string GetSdkKey()

        {

            return SDK_KEY;

        }

        public EditorResult ShowEditor(IEditContext context)

        {

            // Show your form here

        }

        public ResolveConflictResult ShowResolveConflictDialog(IResolveConflictContext context)

        {

            return ResolveConflictResult.UseDefaultResolveDialog;

        }

        #endregion

    }

}

In the ShowEditor method, this is where you can create an instance of a Windows Form, and call the ShowDialog method on it. You can also pre-validate and avoid showing your form for situations that are not appropriate.

public EditorResult ShowEditor(IEditContext context)

{

    // Check if this is something we care about

    if (!context.List.IsDocumentLibrary)

    {

        return EditorResult.UseDefaultEditor;

    }

    if (!string.Equals(context.List.Name, "Private Documents", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) &&

        !string.Equals(context.List.Name, "Public Documents", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))

    {

        return EditorResult.UseDefaultEditor;

    }

    // Only show for Create/Edit (use the default Colligo form for Viewing)

    if (context.EditorMode == EditorMode.Create || context.EditorMode == EditorMode.Edit)

    {

        using (myCustomWindowsForm myForm = new myCustomWindowsForm(context))

        {

            DialogResult createResult = DialogResult.None;

            createResult = myForm.ShowDialog(context.Parent);

            switch (createResult)

            {

                case DialogResult.Cancel:

                    return EditorResult.Cancel;

                case DialogResult.OK:

                    return EditorResult.OK;

                case DialogResult.No:

                    return EditorResult.UseDefaultEditor;

            }

        }

    }

    else

    {

        // View - Show the default editor

        return EditorResult.UseDefaultEditor;

    }

    // Fall through

    return EditorResult.OK;

}

Notice I am passing in the IEditContext instance into my form’s constructor. The IEditContext object has all the goodies in it, and will give you access to the list, the web, the content types, list item metadata, etc.).

What to Consider

Some basic things to consider are:

• Which scenarios will your editor cover? View, Create, Edit?
• Is this only for documents, or list items, or both?
• Will you support content types? A list/library can be configured with multiple content types, which you will need to create a UI for selecting/changing if you decide to support that.
• How will you handle multiple files? Will you enable setting different data for each item, or will you force all items to use the same entered metadata? Think carefully about the “Name” field for documents in document libraries. You want to make sure that the same name is not used for multiple documents.
• Will you allow changing folders (for document libraries with folders enabled)? If so, you’ll need to build this UI.

There are a number of ways/methods that may kick off the display of your form, and you need to consider each of these:

• User selects New > Item from within Colligo Contributor
• This is similar to the New > [Content Type] menu directly in SharePoint. You can expect that EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType will not be null.
• User selects Upload from within Colligo Contributor
• This is similar to Upload Document from within SharePoint. EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType may be null.
• User drags/drops a single file onto Colligo Contributor
• EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType may be null.
• User drags/drops multiple files onto Colligo Contributor
• EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType may be null.
• User performs a single File > Save As from within an application
• EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType may be null.
• User drags/drops multiple files onto the Colligo area in Windows Explorer
• EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType may be null.
• User selects Edit Properties from within Colligo Contributor
• Need to grab existing values and prepopulate your controls. EditorContext.ContentType and EditorContext.ListItems[0].ContentType will not be null.

Some Gotchas

Following are some gotchas to be aware of:

Check for Null

Don’t make any assumptions about any of the items in the IEditContext object. ContentTypes may be null, Fields may not exist or be null, other relevant ILists in the Web may not be synchronized locally, and will be null, etc., etc., etc. Check everything for null first, and test everything that returns a collection/array for Count and Length > 0. If there are fields/lists/lookup column values that your form expects, check for the existence of these things right away, and exit if you don’t find them.

Parent Windows

If your form is called via the Save As dialog from an application (or via the FileManager), the ParentWindow handle may not be valid, so be careful with the ShowDialog(IWin32Window) overload, which threw a System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception for me. I had to wrap my ShowDialog(context.Parent) in a try>catch, and then try it without any parameters (ShowDialog() ).

Custom Field Types

If you are using any custom field types, be really careful to make sure and store the data in the proper format. My customer was using a couple of custom field types found on CodePlex, and one of them extended the Lookup field, and it took me a few traces with Fiddler to figure out that it wanted its values in lookup column format (“52;#ItemName”);

Site Lookup Columns

If you have any lookup columns that are defined in higher-level sites, and you are using those site columns in lists located in subsites, then Colligo will not be able to see the lookup values. In order to implement these scenarios, you will have to force your users to synchronize the higher level sites as well as the subsites.

I had one particular scenario where I couldn’t pre-filter the items in the collection with an SPQuery object (too complicated a query for CAML), so I needed a way to filter the SPListItemCollection afterwards using C#, before returning the XML.

The SPListItemCollection offers the .Delete() and .DeleteItemById() methods, however they will commit the deletion back to SharePoint. I wanted to simply remove some items from the in-memory collection, not delete the items from the server. There was no way that I could see to remove items from an SPListItemCollection in memory only.

I looked into sub-classing or extending the SPListItemCollection class, but there is no public constructor in the base class, and no way to get at the logic behind the .Xml property without nasty reflection.

I ultimately ended up resorting to using Linq to XML to delete the rows directly from the returned XML, and then adjusted the ItemCount accordingly.

Here’s the code:

// Get the list items from a list

SPListItemCollection items = myList.GetItems(mySPQuery);

// Get the xml of the list items

itemXml = surveyItems.Xml;

XNamespace z = "#RowsetSchema";

XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Parse(itemXml);

IEnumerable<XElement> rows = xdoc.Root.Descendants(z + "row");

List<XElement> rowsToDelete = new List<XElement>();

foreach (XElement row in rows)

{

    // Here is where you can test for a condition, and decide to remove a row

    if (row.Attribute("ows_Title").Value.Contains("Some string to filter on"))

    {

        rowsToDelete.Add(row);

    }

}

while (rowsToDelete.Count > 0)

{

    // Update the parent row count

    int rowCount = Convert.ToInt32(rowsToDelete[0].Parent.Attribute("ItemCount").Value);

    rowsToDelete[0].Parent.Attribute("ItemCount").Value = (rowCount - 1).ToString();

    rowsToDelete[0].Remove();

    rowsToDelete.RemoveAt(0);

}

// Get the newly filtered xml

itemXml = xdoc.ToString()

I’ve submitted my application for approval at HelloTxt, and hopefully it’ll be a quick approval process. I can’t release the version for testing yet, because it only works with my own user key right now until it gets reviewed and approved (sort of a chicken and egg thing if you ask me).

In the meantime, I thought I’d post a quick screen shot of the new tab and highlight some features:

After entering your API key, xPollinate will pull in your Tags, and all of your defined services (networks). You can either choose a tag to post to (which will select only those networks in the tag), or you can choose All Networks and then individually select the networks to post to.

Notice that the account name of each service is posted next to the service name. This is because HelloTxt support multiple accounts with the same service (i.e. more than one twitter account).

Just like Ping.FM, you can choose to post either as a status/microblog update using a template, or post as a blog entry.

I’m excited to get this release out, and hope the application gets accepted soon.

GE BR30 Reveal Light Bulb

In my new kitchen can lights, a cheap contractor pack of Sylvania 65W flood lights didn’t even last one year before all 13 bulbs burnt out. I’ve replaced them all one-by-one with the GE Reveal bulbs, and none have burnt out, over one year later.

I’m sure the performance has a lot to do with having dimmers. I’ll bet it’s a lot more gentle on the filaments when you turn on a light with the dimmer down to begin with. Even still, these Reveal bulbs are great.

$num(%track%,3) – $validate($replace(%album% – $iflonger(%_folderpath%nnn – %album% – %title%.%_extension%,256,$left(%title%,$sub(230,$len(%_folderpath%nnn – %album% – ))),%title%),.,-),-)

Session #1:

Windows Azure Platform:

Another Demo, sample app, of basic CRUD web app.

CRUD is standard ASP.NET SqlDataSource control with SQL commands, that works with SQL Express but runs in the cloud

Demo’d using Trace.Write which writes out to the development console logger and can also write to the Azure Storage logging subsystem

Migrated to SQL Azure by just changing the connection string

Storage (BLOBs, Tables, and Queues)

NEW – Add ability to mount Azure storage as NTFS drive

Coming soon – Ability to manage VMs with admin privileges

Create snapshots of your VMs

When up-scaling, Azure will deploy your app on top of your custom VM image

SQL Azure:

Only pay for what you use

Do not worry about disaster recovery

Change a connection string an have effortless switch to SQL Azure

Sync framework to sync SQL DBs in the cloud with on-premise data

Service Bus:

Securely connect apps (on-premise with cloud)

Tunneling technology

Services bus is a middle man for communication between

Access Control:

Provides outsourcing of claims-based RESTful services

Integrates with ADFS v2

Windows Azure Improvements since last year:

SQL Azure Improvements since last year:

1. Not just RESTful consumption of services anymore
2. Works with standard TDS based tools (SQL management studio)

Microsoft has a vision of "Three screens and a Cloud".

The screens include:

1. Mobile devices
2. Desktop computers
3. Internet connected TVs

   They can all be united by data and services in the cloud.

Public Data in the Cloud (Codename "Dallas").

Repository for public data sets that can be consumed in any number of ways (and easily by Azure)

Accessed through Microsoft PinPoint

Sign up for a CTP key

Some data includes NASA mars photos, GIS data, AP News articles

PinPoint:

Centralized marketplace for partner providers, Azure ISVs and implementers, and gateway to "Dallas" public Data.

"System Center" will plugin to Azure to monitor your Azure instances, check to meet SLAs, and enable you to scale up the Azure instances directly.

2010 will include ability to have the Azure cloud be able to establish a network connection to on-premise resources (i.e. self hosted SQL Server)

WordPress is moving to Windows Azure

Assembly plugin = System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom(pluginFileName);

object pluginClass = Activator.CreateInstance(plugin.GetType("Plugin.PluginClass"));

This kind of architecture is pretty standard, and is one of the few ways to accomplish this plugin model in .NET (other than some cutting-edge things like MEF). It works for the most part, but has some obvious limitations, such as:

• Once a DLL is loaded in this manner, it cannot be unloaded from memory (unless you mess around with AppDomains for each plugin)
• If your plugins want to talk to one another, they pretty much have to go through a lot of plumbing code in the main app

Where it really starts to have problems is when your plugin DLL needs to reference other DLLs used by the main application, or other plugin DLLs, and you find yourself in .NET Plugin DLL Hell.

Here is the crux of the problem:

When you add a reference to a DLL via Visual Studio, the framework will always try to load an exact matching version of that assembly, and will fail if it can’t find it. So, good luck if that DLL you depend on ever gets upgraded to a new version.

You can usually control this with a standalone application, because when you upgrade the app, you upgrade all the dependencies at the same time. In a plugin model, you can’t control when other dependencies are upgraded, and so your plugin will simply fail to load when this happens.

There is no way in the .NET framework to tell it to use a particular version of a DLL or any newer version it finds.

Here’s a scenario to demonstrate this:

• You have a WinForms application, that loads plugin DLLs when the app starts.
• The main application uses a third-party control library.
• You write a plugin that also needs the controls, so you add a reference to the version that the main app uses.
• At some point, someone working on the main app upgrades it to use a newer controls DLL, recompiles the app, and distributes it along with the newer controls DLL.
• Since no work was actually done on your plugin, no one has recompiled it against the newer controls DLL.
• When the upgraded application starts and loads your plugin, your plugin goes BOOM!

Another scenario:

• Your plugin references another plugin
• The other plugin gets upgraded without your plugin getting recompiled
• Your plugin now goes BOOM!

When I say “BOOM!”, I mean you’ll probably see something like this from the Fusion log:

"System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘YourDependentAssemblyNameHere’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.” 

I am having a similar problem with my Windows LiveWriter plugin, xPollinate. Every time Microsoft releases a new version of LiveWriter, all of its DLLs that I reference have new version numbers, and so my plugin will fail to load unless I recompile my plugin against the latest versions of the DLLs.

Well, so what are our options to deal with this?

• You can simply not add any references in your plugin project via Visual Studio, and just use reflection for everything (yuck). This is probably a little easier now with the dynamic keyword in C#, but not much.
• You can try to get the main application to put in assembly binding redirects in its config file for any common DLLs that might be referenced by plugins.

That’s all I can see at this point. Here’s to hoping a future version of the framework will make this easier for us.

This is just a maintenance release to make the plugin work with Windows LiveWriter version 14.0.8089.726.

I am currently working on supporting categories for the next release, so stay tuned.

Apparently HP was aware of this, because one of the Updates (“Urgent:HP Update fix for “Install Cancelled issue”) was supposed to fix the Updater not working. I ran the updater, it downloaded the Update Fix, and then…. failed to install the fix.

Nice. An update to fix a problem with an updater, that fails to update the updater.

I’m implementing the AKS for a customer, and I’m having a hard time understanding how this product actually made it to a public release. It feels like a product that is half finished, that was used as a springboard to creating a commercial product, while leaving the original free version to the wayside. If you are considering working with this, you might want to read about the frustrations I encountered below:

Installation experience – Where are those .bat files?

When you download the AKS, you’ll get a zip file, which contains a folder and a single EXE installer.

Running the installer will perform the following tasks:

1. Installs control adapters and reference files into an AKS folder in your Program Files directory.
2. Copies a feature and master pages/css styles to the /12/Templates/Features folder in your SharePoint installation (if you are running 32 bit).
3. Creates a Start Menu icon group for AKS tasks and links.

After running through the installer, a quick look at the “Welcome to the Accessibility Kit…” PDF informs you that you need to install and activate the feature:

The AKS Feature
The AKS Feature is not the AKS Kit but a part of the Kit that works as a feature in MOSS. The AKS
Feature installs the Example Master pages and the Modified CSS. You must install this by
selecting Install AKS Feature from the Start Menu:  Start | All Programs | AKS by HiSoftware |
AKS Feature install.  Once the feature is installed, you will still need to activate it within your
SharePoint application through: Site Settings | Site Collection Features. Please note if you are
on a 64 Bit server please follow the 64 Bit instructions.

I looked all over for those “64 bit instructions”, but there was nothing. There was a “64bit Feature Install” icon in the Start Menu, but no text anywhere instructing me to click on it.

I figured out that to install the feature, you need to click on either the 64bit Feature Install icon or the AKS Feature Install icon in the Start menu (note that the shortcuts are only created for the current user, and there is no way to tell the installer to install for everyone). If you run these shortcuts from the Start menu, the command window will flash, execute, and then immediately disappear, before you can check if it finished successfully or not. On a 64 bit server, you’ll see a flash of xcopy commands that copy styles and master pages into the /12 folders.

I wanted to be sure that it installed, so I tried to find the location of the batch file so I could run it again in a command prompt and actually see the result. I right-clicked the shortcut and went to Properties to figure out the target location, and it was greyed out:

I looked for the bat file in the Program Files directory, but no luck. Yuck! A .bat file that I can’t see or easily get to?

I figured out that it installed, because I then saw the feature in my Site Collection Features page. I activated it, and then tried to take a look at the master pages and styles.

Control Adapters – Incorrect C#

The AKS comes with several control adapters that rewrite some of the out-of-box control html to make it more compliant. Some of the C# adapter files have mistakes in the C# code that make them not able to compile. For example, in the Web Part Zone Smart Adapter for WCAG2.0, there is an extra curly brace, and even a reference to a variable that is not even declared in the file anywhere:

   1: else

   2: {

   3:

   4:     } // <-- Extra brace?

   5:

   6:     //Output sOutputBuilder to be rendered

   7:     oOutput.Write(sOutputBuilder.ToString()); // <-- sOutputBuilder is never declared in this file!

   8: }

“Smart Adapters” (not too bright)

The AKS comes with several “Smart” control adapters (adapters that do not need a lot of configuration). The Web Part Zone Smart Adapter sounded like it had some promise, as it would convert a web part zone to use divs instead of tables.

However, when you install it, it has the side effect of not rendering any of your web part’s “Titles”. If you want to use the headers that come with the web parts, then this control will not work for you. It also prevented viewing web parts in Design mode, they would just disappear from the page.

Finally, it was hard to see the point of using the adapters at all, as all they appeared to do was add some labels to blogs, wikis, and search boxes. They will certainly not do anything at all if you use the CKS EBE or Wiki versions, or if you have customized/branded the search controls.

Master pages and styles do not exist!

Once you install the feature, a set of master pages and css styles will get installed to the master page and style library galleries for your site collection. I cracked open SharePoint designer, tried to open a master page, and got a nasty error message that the file did not exist and could not be opened.

In order to open the file, I had to run through the SharePoint UI, and “Publish” each master page and CSS style before I could access it via SharePoint designer. There was no mention of this anywhere in the documentation.

Relative font sizes? Good luck!

The AKS stylesheets attempt to change all SharePoint font size declarations into relative sizes in ems, rather than fixed pixel/point sizes. This might work fine for anonymous internet site pages, but if you will ever let your visitors view any of the system pages like list new/edit/upload pages or use out-of-box web parts, good luck tweaking styles for a month to get things right.

Woops, what about default.master?

The AKS installs alternate versions of the out-of-box publishing master pages, such as BlueBand.master, BlackBand.master, etc. I don’t know about you, but none of my customers have ever started from those master pages on internet sites, and all my intranet applications make heavy use of default.master. I was really disappointed to see that there was no alternate version of default.master.

HCCE – Nothing but trouble

The HiSoftware Code Compliance Kit (HCCE) is a SharePoint event handler that will look for a certain string of text in your SharePoint web pages, and replace it with different (possibly more accessible) text. You use a text file in which you specify pipe-delimited lines of text to find and replace (e.g. “Text to find|Text to replace with”). The HCCE has the following problems when implemented:

• There is only a debug build provided (no release version).
• There is no source code (you cannot recompile).
• There is no regex option for pattern matching. All strings must be matched and replaced exactly.
• The DLL looks for a hard-coded path to the configuration text file in C:\Program Files\HiSoftware… This doesn’t work on 64bit systems because the installer installs to Program Files (x86). Since you can’t recompile the DLL, your only option is to copy the text file to the Program Files directory.
• Once you implement the feature, your SharePoint Welcome menu will get rendered above the <html> tag, causing it to appear at the top of your screen and out of place. Several posts about this, and no response at all from HiSoftware.
• The install/uninstall .bat files do not work, and need to be adjusted for 64bit machines. Why no WSP?

Conclusion

Poorly documented, sloppily put together, and full of holes and mistakes, I was very disappointed in the AKS. Coupled with a total lack of support and responsiveness to issues on their web site, I think it reflects poorly on HiSoftware as a company.

The manner in which properties and entity IDs are encoded into long query string values makes the urls appear to be injection attacks. On a particular client’s BDC application, the picker dialog used a url similar to the following:

http://domainname.org/_layouts/Picker.aspx?MultiSelect=False&CustomProperty=uU2hhcmVQb2ludC5Qb3J0YWwsIFZlcnNpb249MTIuMC4wLAF%2F%2FAQAAAAAAAA9QcmltYXJ5Q29sdW1uSWQQU3lzdGVtSW5zdGFuY2VAAA
AAAMAgAAAF9NaWNyb3NvZnQjAsIEN1bHR1cmU9bmV1dHJhbCwgUHVibG
ljS2V5VG9rZW49NzFlOWJjZTExMWU5NDI5YwUBAAAAPk1pYAEAAAD%2F%2F%23Jvc29mdC5TaGFyZVBvaW50LlBvcnRhbC5XZWJDb250cm9scy5JdGVtUGlja2
VyRXh0ZW5kZWREYXRhB
JZAhFbnRpdHlJZBNTZWNvbmRhcnlDb2×1bW
5zSWRzAAAABw8PDw8CAAAANw4AAAcOAAAIDgAACQMAAAAPAwAAAAAAA
AAPCwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
3D&EntitySeparator=%00&DialogTitle=Choose%20User&DialogImage=%2F_layouts%2Fimages%2Fbizpicker.gif&PickerDialogType=Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.ItemPickerDialog%2C%20Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal%2C%20Version%3D12.0.0.0%2C%20Culture%3Dneutral%2C%20PublicKeyToken%3D71e9bce111e9429c&DefaultSearch=

Using the HTTP GET for this kind of thing is a bad idea, and I hope that Microsoft fixes this in the future.