John Koerner's Page

Taking a screenshot from a .Net app is very easy. The function to use is the CopyFromScreen function from the Graphics class.

I was helping someone with an issue restoring vb6 windows from a .Net application over on VBForums. The issue ended up being that the MainWindowHandle of the process was returning the window handle for the ThunderRT6Main window. The ThunderRT6Main is a hidden window that all VB6 apps have that is used for message processing. When we called ShowWindow against this window handle, nothing would happen. To get around this, I ended up calling the GetWindow API with a GW_HWNDPREV to get the window handle of the form window and then called ShowWindow on that.

Whenever I need to write a keyboard listener, I always have to go back and search through old code to get the exact syntax. I then end up copying and pasting a whole bunch of code. I decided it was time to create a DLL that will handle all of this work for me. I also decided that I will post the DLL up here for anyone to use as they see fit.

The DLL is copyrighted, however, it is free for distribution with personal or commercial applications.

The setup package, which includes a help file, a sample app, and the DLL, can be downloaded from the downloads page, or from the link below.

Download: KeyboardListener.msi

The sample app shows off the basic functionality of listening for one particular key, a set number of keys, or all key presses on a system. Below is a screenshot of the sample application. This dll works system wide, not just within the application that is using it.

Creating a plugin architecture in a C# application is a fairly easy task. The video below will walk you through the process of setting up the plugin architecture and it will implement a simple plugin.



The source for the project can be downloaded Here.

The video below gives an overview of creating a ComboBox that does conditional formatting. The code uses regular expressions to determine if an item in a combobox should have special formatting. The code is nowhere near production ready, but it should give you an idea of how to do formatting of items in a combobox drop down list. See the full post if you want to copy the code.

I have added a SCORM compliant version of the Creating Content for the SharePoint Learning Kit video to the downloads page if you would like to have a copy of it in your own SharePoint site.

Here is a new video demonstrating how to create SCORM content for the SharePoint Learning Kit.



Resources:
SCORM Simple Content API
Jing Project
SharePoint Learning Kit

I found a nice little post from Heather Solomon on allowing SharePoint to have multiple levels of sub navigation. It works really well, but the navigation editor in MOSS does not let you nest sub-menus by default. I wrote a quick little C# app that allowed me to add navigation as needed. Here is the meat of the code.

SPNavigationNode oNewNode = new SPNavigationNode("My New Tab3","");
oWeb.Navigation.TopNavigationBar.AddAsLast(oNewNode);
oNewNode.Properties.Add("NodeType","Heading");
oNewNode.Update();

SPNavigationNode oChild1 = new SPNavigationNode("C1","/");
oNewNode.Children.AddAsFirst(oChild1);
oChild1.Properties.Add("NodeType","Heading");
oChild1.Update();

SPNavigationNode oChild2 = new SPNavigationNode("C2","/");
oChild1.Children.AddAsFirst(oChild2);

Note: I have only tested this on MOSS 2007 and it did some weird things to my tab highlighting that I haven't figured out yet.

If you have used the Visual Studio Extensions for Sharepoint to create more than one list, then you will probably be familiar with the problem of all custom List Definitions are given the name ListDefinition1. This causes problems when you activate the feature, because SharePoint already thinks ListDefinition1 exists.

To fix this problem, there are a few things that need to be changed in your project.

1.) Rename the ListDefinition1 folder in your solution.
2.) Change the URL in the Instance.XML. You'll probably want to change the display name as well, but that is not necessary.
3.) Change the Name in the ListDefinition.xml. Again, you'll probably want to change the display name as well.

Some things to keep in mind are that the display name column is used in one of the folder names that is created by the extensions, so if you use a character that SharePoint doesn't like (i.e. an apostrophe) you will get an error.

If you get an error when deploying, your best bet is to fix the error in VS, delete the PKG folder, and then rebuild and deploy your solution.

I found a nice little snippet on Heather Solomon's site for customizing the CQWP. She had a nice little debugging XSL style for items to see what properties were available.

After doing a little digging with the XSL, I enhanced it just a bit, so I could get both the parameter name and the value:



The output then looks like:

P:ListId=FF486727-3DD6-4FFB-A5F5-B9A922366E9E
P:WebId=FF7C38FA-BBAA-4240-9A2B-63B8F508C780
P:ID=1
P:x007B_ff564e0f_x002D_0c70_x002D_4ab9_x002D_b863_x002D_0177e6ddd247_x007D=Welcome to your Project Diary!
P:FileRef=Customers/Customer1/CustomerProject/Lists/Posts/1_.000
P:x007B_ff22ea11_x002D_1e32_x002D_424e_x002D_89ab_x002D_9fedbadb6ce1_x007D=1
P:Modified=2008-03-25 12:50:55
P:Author=System Account
P:Editor=System Account
P:Created=2008-03-25 12:42:02
P:PublishingRollupImage=