New Sitecore Google Maps Module

IE is proud to announce the release of our first Sitecore Shared Source Module. The module that has been developed by IE to replace the existing Google Maps module. Whilst the old module has served the community well for many years due to advances in the Google Maps API and Sitecore it has now passed its used by date and desperately needed a re-vamp.

For more information visit IE’s Blog

Handy little apps

Over the years i’ve found a few handy little applications that just make things so much easier (windows applications sorry linux and mac geeks ).

I’ll quickly list these below;

• Display Fusion
  This small little util makes working with multiply monitors a lot easier with some minor tweaks such as expanding the task bar to multiply monitors. You really need to look at this your self.
• Remote Desktop Manager
  This application isn’t just a replacement for RDP but allows you to connect to different protocols using one simple system. I would recommend it for any dev as it can do remote RDP through a VPN which you setup all in RDM so you don’t have to connect to the VPN and loose your internal network.
• IETester
  This is a must, you can use Virtual PC to do all your testing but sometimes you just need to quickly check this is your program.
• Notepad++
  This is a must it just works and you will never go back to the bad notepad
• WinMerge
  When you need to merge something or even compare directories this is your program.
• Teracopy
  This is a replacement for the bad windows copy, move etc. This allows pausing and resuming of copying files and is just quicker then the normal windows copy. A must have.
• UtiluMFC
  This is like IETester but has multiply version of Firefox
• Expresso
  This is for setting up regular expression for .net
• Linqpad
  For assisting with setting up linq statements

There are a lot more but these are just a few to get you started.

Sitecore AbortStaticFiles with Pipeline

Sitecore has a very flexible pipeline implementation allowing developers to extend the basic behaviours of how a page/file etc will be handled. In certain cases you don’t want to kill the system and just let certain files be executed without the Sitecore context and let the files be returned to the user as quickly and with minimal processing required. Now why do we want this, if you allow ASP.NET to handle all traffic, such as turing off extensions and friendly media file names then ASP.NET is running over every single server request made to the system, such as calling static files like jquery-1.5.js etc.

Sitecore Value cannot be null, Parameter name: path

Got this error on a project working on and couldn’t quickly resolve the issue. It was happening when logging into the Content Editor only and with “Standard Fields” enabled so was a tricky one.

Thanks to Sitecore 6.4 now working within Firefox.

 

What i did to resolve the issue was;

• Open Firefox
• Open Sitecore and login as admin in Desktop user
• Open your Sitecore Control Panel (sitecore bar/control panel)
• Preferences
• Change your application preferences
• Make sure “Fields from the Standard Template” is off and click ok
• No open the “Content Editor”
• Click on the “Home” item (default one supplied by Sitecore)
• Click Presentation tab
• Hit “Reset” in ribbon and continue
• Now Click on another item somewhere even “Content”
• Click “View” from ribbon and enable “Standard Fields”
• Now click on the “home” item and it should now load

What the issue seems to be is a reference to a layout, rendering, sublayout etc.
Hope this helps someone.

Embed Sitecore in an existing ASP.NET site

Sometimes I’m asked can we quickly embed Sitecore in our existing ASP.NET site because of various reasons or it’s just a quick way to get it up and working while slowly migrating there site over. Well this you can do but you have to make a few small modifications to get it working or else you’ll run into some small headaches.
PS: This is a very very quick wiki article so don’t mind my rushing

Sitecore XSLT with Padlocks on navigation

Sitecore will renderer out the navigation items based on the security that the user has, this is great in most cases but say you need a site where you have a simple is logged in/logged out approach and the navigation needs to always indicate that a page is secure. Of course our actual padlocks are images but you get the idea.

Well with Sitecore it’s not as difficult as you would think

Speed up Azure Site

When you deploy onto the Microsoft Azure cloud platform you may have noticed that by default the system will not produce cached or compressed output for the user. This has been designed this way to assist those developers that well don’t know to much about deployments and site optimizations (Not having a go, sometimes you don’t need to worry about this as its someone elses problem).

ubeeTech Site v2

Got our site up! @bobandmax came up with the great concept of using cut-paper models to illustrate our services: http://bit.ly/ubeeTechWWW

So what is special about the site;

• Browser friendly, well except IE6 no one likes IE6 anymore
• Works with devices such as iPhone, Android etc (can’t guarantee it will be perfect)
• Uses Cufon to render our main header fonts
• Running on the Microsoft Azure platform
• Some more little features

If you want to know more you can always visit us or follow us on twitter feed.

Helpful links for new iPhone Devs – includes me

I’m new to iPhone development and have found a few helpful links that will at least push you in the right direction. These links aren’t all the links but just some basic pages and links that have helped me in finding what and how to get started.

Enjoy

• http://www.daleisphere.com/iphone-app-development-where-to-start/
• http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1173999.html
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1939/how-to-articles-for-iphone-development-objective-c
• http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/matcmadison.edu.3989485784.03989485786

There are plenty more such as on the Apple site but these will at least push you in the right direction. Also if you can purchase your self a nice book and have a read, that’s what im doing at the moment.

Dynamic “Sitecore.Caching.ICacheable” GetDataLength method

Sitecore uses the Sitecore.Caching.ICacheable interface which is well very easy to start working with but there is one little part which i found to be well a little pain. The issue is that you have to manually work out how big the data being to cached is, well what i see with this is that it’s not as correct as it should be.