Spent the morning trying to figure out why my Application Block help file (.chm) was not displaying content. Needless to say, I went down several rabbit holes on the Internet (web pages that did not yield a solution).

If you download a help file (.chm) and then open the file you may get a warning message - but this is not a clear message to what the problem is. When the application comes up, the content pain says something to the effect that it cannot display the page. There is nothing to indicate how to fix the problem.

So, here it is. CHM (help files) that are downloaded are blocked - and you have to "unblock" them. They were blocked by a security update. So, downloaded CHM files have the blocked attribute set. If you select on the file's properties you can change this behavior by selecting the "unblock" button.

Rob Caron has short discussion with screen shots here.

 

Vishwas Lele gave an excellent presentation at CAPAREA last night on bringing together Windows Communication Framework and Workflow Framework. Vishwas is the CTO at AIS and also the Microsoft Regional Director for the Washington, DC, area.

One of the interesting suggestions for why you would want to do this is that the technology lets you chain together web services in a workflow so that the service calls occur in a proper order. Web services by themselves are inherently stateless - unless you build the infrastructure to manage state in them. But with WCF and WF, combining these two technologies together you get that infrastructure right out of the box.

 

Kudos to Gary Blatt, and his staff, of the SharePoint User Group of Washington DC. He put on a great two-day SharePoint conference (Second Annual Regional SharePoint Conference). It was attended by over 180 practitioners, developers, managers, designers, implementers, speakers, and sponsors. The sponsor/vendor attendance was quite impressive.

 

I particularly enjoyed the presentations by (in no particular order) Sahil Malik, Melvin Brown and Kevin Hans, Vanessa Williams, Ed Hild, and Greg Galipeau. And, of course, Gary. He's the only speaker that did not need a microphone.

 

Besides the technical presentations, I was particularly interested in what speakers as Melvin Brown, the KSN Program Manager at FAA, which received Excellence.Gov awards for demonstrating excellence in leveraging technology to enhance collaboration.

 

Many SharePoint implementers and practioners commented on the fact that SharePoint is much more than a technology, it is an enabler for collaboration. Several tips were suggested for getting users to participate, some quite ingenious, such as:

• Not allowing users to attach documents to emails
• Not allowing users to use email (radical)
• Turning off the corporate shared drive

 

The conference was Not-For-Profit, and Gary used the proceeds to donate a sizeable check to the Children's Miracle Network! Good job Gary.

 

If you are developing in SharePoint in Washington DC, are you getting paid enough?

SUGDC Summer Regional SharePoint Conference will be held on June 27-28 (Friday-Saturday) in Dulles Virginia at the Dulles Airport Holiday Inn.

If the atmosphere was the like a football field, then carbon dioxide would only be an inch, and man's contribution would measure the size of a dime standing on edge. Still scared?

We have Chris Hammond coming to talk with us at the Capital Area DotNetNuke User Group (http://www.capitaldug.org) meeting this coming Wednesday, May 21st. Chris is a core team member of the DotNetNuke development team.

This will be a great meeting for those interested in developing DotNetNuke Modules!

The meeting starts at 7pm at the ATT offices in Tysons Corner, in Vienna, Virginia.

 

Scientific method says that if your observations do not support your hypothesis, then your theory is probably wrong.