SDN5 gets rss feeds, done using Sitecore RSS Module. Check out and subscribe to downloads feed to get notified of new releases. Still need to find a place to stick pretty 'xml' button to. Finally making use of DefaultButton of asp.net's Panel: searching at sdn5 should work fine with enter button now. If there are other places where enter behaviour should be fixed, send them in. Speaking of search, sdn5 search autocomplete is finally live. Fixed the issue with list buttons appearing in IE after you hower over menu while autocomplete box is displaying ( reported by Alex de Groot, thanks). Microsoft released the Web Application Project for Visual Studio 2005, which is probably the best option you have working with Sitecore 5.2+ in MSVS. Download. Very cool Microsoft's Monad shell gets RC1 under a brand new 'Windows PowerShell' name.
I used to have a CopySourceAsHtml visual studio add in to post sharply formatted code to blog. But it produced really dirty html which actually made my dasBlog unhappy and for some reason it doesn’t work well (or just doesn’t work) in vs2005. Here’s a really nice macro on coding horror that works in any visual studio version and creates a much cleaner code. It’s a bit painful to install, but then you can assign a shortcut and forget. Mine is ctrl-c + ctrl-c. Update: which wasn't a great idea for a hotkey..
I’m using asp.net 2.0 portal on Sitecore front end in the current project, and personalization features such as portlet drag-n-drop just won’t work unless asp.net understands that the user is logged in and can tell the difference between users. Here’s my hack-n-slash solution: it envolves shim classes implementing IPrincipal and IIdentity, delegating everything to Sitecore. User id is returned as user name to asp.net, so that each user gets own personalization data (actually user names would also work, since they're unique). On each request, a custom processor in HttpBeginRequest pipeline (named AspnetUserSetter) puts the Sitecore principal in asp.net context. And since I'm humble enough to allow asp.net do the rest, using default personalization database and provider - it just works. Now I wish it was easier to create custom frames around web parts.
public class SitecorePrincipal : IPrincipal
{
private IIdentity identity;
public IIdentity Identity
{
get { return identity; }
}
public SitecorePrincipal()
{
identity = new SitecoreIdentity();
}
/// <summary>
/// Checks whether Sitecore user is in the given role. Supports both role names and ids.
/// </summary>
public bool IsInRole(string role)
{
if (MainUtil.IsID(role))
return Sitecore.Context.User.IsInRole(ID.Parse(role));
RoleItem roleItem = Sitecore.Context.Domain.GetRole(role);
if (roleItem != null)
return Sitecore.Context.User.IsInRole(roleItem.ID);
else
return false;
}
}
public class SitecoreIdentity : IIdentity
{
public string Name
{
get { return Sitecore.Context.User.ID.ToString(); }
}
public string AuthenticationType
{
get { return "Sitecore Authentication"; }
}
public bool IsAuthenticated
{
get { return Sitecore.Context.IsLoggedIn; }
}
}
public class AspnetUserSetter
{
public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
{
HttpContext.Current.User = new SitecorePrincipal();
}
}
 Tons of great happened to Sitecore while I was keeping quiet. Completely revamped Content Editor looks amazing, and performs too.
In a weird turn of things, I have installed Office 12 after having a chance to try out our new interface. It looks like I’m writing the post just to enjoy the experience. Jakob and Lars have lots of screen shots and detailed info on their blogs.
For the developer goodness, Runi has made most of the main Sitecore API classes support remoting, and it is very simple to use – check out his post for a how to. There is much more to it, like multiple template inheritance, and hopefully it will start getting out soon.
The best part is that is still the same Sitecore underneath - no breaking changes and no need to start anything from scratch.
And what about me? Well, my mission was to cruise the city promoting the new secret Sitecore Office 13 look and feel using our branding weapon:
 
I am flying back to Ukraine on Sunday morning. It sure has been a very exciting month thanks to everyone around – I truly appreciate that!
When you run your site in a live mode, you can still have the publishing restictions such as publish dates for items, do not publish flag and lifetime for versions to remain in effect. All you need to do is to find your site in <sites> section of web.config file, and add filterItems="true" to it. The attribute is actually described in inline help above the sites section, but its often missed. Turning it on makes running some sites in live mode much more feasible. The catch that still remains (for live mode) is that if you use html cache, it will not be cleared because there's no publishing event to trigger that.
When converting a non-trivial Sitecore 4 solution to V5, consider switching off the search indexes in Sitecore. It should help to speed up the process quite a bit. update: removing item:save event handlers might also save you some time: <event name="item:saved">
<handler type="Sitecore.Links.ItemEventHandler, Sitecore.Kernel" method="OnItemSaved"/>
<handler type="Sitecore.Tasks.ItemEventHandler, Sitecore.Kernel" method="OnItemSaved"/>
<handler type="Sitecore.Globalization.ItemEventHandler, Sitecore.Kernel" method="OnItemSaved"/>
<handler type="Sitecore.Data.Indexing.ItemEventHandler, Sitecore.Kernel" method="OnItemSaved"/>
</event>although out of these standard four, the first one is more likely to produce some impact, if you've already switched off indexing. Unless you are running conversion on top of already existing items in V5 database, there's no need to look into item deletion. Saving an item, on the other hand, happens quite a few times. Once you feel that you're getting close to the desired result, you can use Control Panel in Sitecore to rebuild link database and search indexes, to restore the standard functionality.
Since I don't have much to do in evenings, I'm having a great time reading " Getting Real" by 37Signals .. I think V5 is a fairly large product, but just like with less is better, you can stay small in big. And speaking of getting real, SPN site has finally had a facelift this morning. Now I just need (apart from keeping my fingers crossed) to stretch SDN5 to be just as wide - I have no idea why we haven't done that before.
I think its quite common for various
pieces of code in Sitecore to climb the item hierarchy up, seeking
some inherited wisdom. A less common scenario, however, is to have a
parent which is less visible than its child.
home
|
--news
|
--news item
(please bear with my advanced graph
engine)
Imagine that you're not allowed to see
the news section, but individual news items are just fine - either by
mistake, or deliberately. So what happens if you have a code that
goes up the tree ? (think breadcrumb)
Item item = this;
while (item != null)
{
Collect(item.Fields["Menu
Title"].Value);
item = item.Parent;
}
You'll start with news item, which is
fine. Then you go up to the news section, trying to read its field..
and get an exception, with a pretty clear message. That item that you
don't have access to is considered to be "BrowseOnly", and
reading fields of browse only items is bad.
To avoid seeing that exception in
future, you need to add a guard clause looking for
item.RuntimeSettings.BrowseOnly.
Hopefully this one stops biting me now.
It's a busy week, so I've been unresponsive a bit. Thanks everyone for the feedback, if you have more - throw that in. And just in case - I'll be in Copenhagen for the following 4 weeks, we can negotiate a price of SDN5/SPN/sitecore.net features you've always wanted.. Scrolling status bar anyone?
Thanks to staying at home with cold I had a chance to add a couple of new features to sdn5. I've also added a 'beta mode' so that they can be tested first. To enable the beta, just go to the http://sdn5.sitecore.net/?sdn5beta= - it will set the beta cookie and thats basically it. You can click 'back to normal' any time, but I'd appreciate if you also let me know whats wrong. To the features:  1. Search autocompleteThats actually the reason I wanted a beta mode first to make sure that javascript works fine for everyone, and doesn't annoy people. The autocomplete data is supplied by new MondoSearch Behaviour Tracking web service based on actual search queries at sdn5, which is very neat. For client side I've used prototype and scriptaculous javascript frameworks, and I've enjoyed using them both very much. Prototype adds a lot of basic stuff making js coding much easier, and scriptaculous builds high-level effects using prototype. And it even has ready-made ajax and local autocomplete controls making the task really easy. I look forward to playing with them more, but don't want to abuse sdn with cheesy effects. I'd also like to make use of behaviour in future so that html is totally clean from javascript bits. The downside of all that is of course that its quite a bit of javascript code to download at first visit. 2. Remember me and logoutI think was a very popular request and its a shame that I haven't added it before. I've set it to expire in a day for now, but with sliding expiration enabled. Anyway, this one is also in beta for a while because its not an optimal solution yet, unfortunately. Hopefully this won't turn into a google-like betas, and I'll move it to a live version soon. Let me know if something doesn't work for you or you simply don't like it. ps. Sdn5 also has page titles now (again, shame on me), but I was brave enough to make that huge modification on a live site at once.
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