Hello and welcome to part 5 of another epic CleverWorkArounds blog post.

If you think I write a lot on my blog, you should see my documentation and training material! I seem to be rare insofar as I actually like to write documentation and can churn out reasonable quality pretty fast. So if you need your scary SharePoint farm/infrastructure audited and fully documented, you know who to call! 🙂

Anyhow, here is the current state of play.

• Part 1 of this series looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries. We looked at a Microsoft documented method, then a better, more flexible method.
• Part 2 wrapped this JavaScript code into a web part which has been loaded into the SharePoint web part gallery.
• Part 3 then examined the trials and tribulations of getting this new web part added to certain SharePoint pages (NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx), and then with a few simple edits, use this web part to hide form fields as desired. Finally, I demonstrated the power of combining this with SharePoint Audiences targeting functionality to make the hiding/unhiding of form elements personalised to particular groups of users.
• Part 4 introduced Visual Studio and STSDEV. I created a project to perform the same functionality in part 3, but not requiring any JavaScript knowledge or experience. By the end of part 4 I had a STSDEV project that compiled with no errors.

And now we are onto Part 5 where we turn our attention to the packaging and deployment of our web part. As you are about to see, STSDEV makes this a very quick and painless experience. If you aren’t convinced of the merits of STSDEV and the SharePoint solution framework by the time you finish this article, then I don’t know what will convince you.

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using Javascript – Part 5”

Hi there. As I write this post, the media are telling me that the stock market is stuffed, the US economy is going to the dogs and banks are writing down billions from sub-prime excess. I dare not check my online broker, road traffic this morning was abysmal, I was late, brought in the wrong laptop and left an important DVD at home.

Could it get any worse? Who knows, but it sounds like the sort of day to re-visit JavaScript and get frustrated with writing a web part for the first time.

So to recap on our journey thus far..

• Part 1 of this series looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries. It looked at a Microsoft documented method, then a better, more flexible method.
• Part 2 wrapped this JavaScript code into a web part which has been loaded into the SharePoint web part gallery.
• Part 3 then examined the trials and tribulations of getting this new web part added to certain SharePoint pages (NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx), and then with a few simple edits, use this web part to hide form fields as desired. Finally, I demonstrated the power of combining this with SharePoint Audiences targeting functionality to make the hiding/unhiding of form elements personalised to particular groups of users.

All in all a pretty clever workaround so far if I say so myself. 🙂

My original goals for this JavaScript was to find an effective, easily repeatable way to customise SharePoint form pages by hiding fields or form elements when we need to. Specifically:

• Allow hidden fields based on identity/audience
• Avoid use of SharePoint Designer
• Avoid customisations to the form pages that unghosted the pages from the site definition

We achieved these goals in part three, but was I satisfied? No. The quest for more clever workarounds always goes on!

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript – Part 4”

Hey there. Welcome to part 3 of my series on SharePoint customisation using JavaScript and web parts.

So here is the lowdown so far. We are trying to find an effective, repeatable way to easily customise SharePoint form pages, so that we can hide fields or form elements when we need to. The goals were to:

• Allow hidden fields based on identity
• Avoid use of SharePoint Designer
• Avoid customisations to the form pages that unghosted the pages from the site definition

So how have we progressed thus far?.

• Part 1 of this series looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries.
• Part 2 wrapped this JavaScript code into a web part which has been loaded into the SharePoint web part gallery.

So let’s knock the rest of this over and pick up right from we left off…

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement of this post depends on how much you hate JavaScript.

Metrosexual web developer   

Socially inept technical guy   

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript Part 3”

Hi again.

JavaScript sucks! There I said it. Despite me hating it as a programming language, I can’t deny that in SharePoint, it does have its uses.

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement of this post depends on how much you hate JavaScript.

Metrosexual web developer
Socially inept technical guy
Luddite IT manager	(sorry … why are you here anyway?)

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6]

To quickly recap the first post of this series, we looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries. The technique demonstrated can be used for columns, buttons and whatever else you want. The method once debugged, is fairly easy to implement with SharePoint designer with and some cut and paste.

But there are several problems with the method that prevent it from getting a better CleverWorkaround rating than “Meh”. They include:

• One size fits all, fields are hidden for all visitors irrespective of need.
• You need to modify the page in SharePoint designer via cut and paste of JavaScript code
• You need to modify auto-generated pages
• You need to modify a page from its site definition
• Insecure, relying on client side to hide content/controls is not a secure solution

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript Part 2”