Jul 23

Blogging with Word 2007

Posted in: Meta, Tutorial

I’m using Word 2007 to create this post. I was actually starting to create a new document and I figured I would try creating a new blog post to see how it works.

I was first presented with this dialog to register my blog:

 

I selected Wordpress from the list and saw this dialog:

 

I put in my blog (http://nathandewitt.net/blog/xmlrpc.php) and entered my account information. I clicked OK and presto changeo I was done.

Next I entered my title:

 

Then I clicked on the Insert Category. It reconnected to my blog to download my Categories, and then I selected Meta from the dropdown list.

I’m going to play around with some of the Word 2007 features to see how it handles them:

An Equation:

Word Art:

 

Some Code:

 


				private
				SPListItemCollection nominated(SPList calendarList)


        {



				SPQuery query = new
				SPQuery();


            query.ViewAttributes = "Scope=\"Recursive\"";


            query.Query = "<Where>" +



				"<Eq>" +



				"<FieldRef Name=\"" + nominateField + "\" />" +



				"<Value Type=\"bit\">1</Value>" +



				"</Eq>" +



				"</Where>";



				return calendarList.GetItems(query);


        }

 

Finally, I typed everything up and clicked Publish. It seems pretty straight-forward.

Pros:

  • Simple to get up and running
  • Handles styles decently
  • Images get uploaded and stored without hassle
  • It’s nice to work in the familiar environment of Word
  • Making changes just involves publishing again

Cons:

  • Equations don’t get converted to PNG or anything, they just vanish
  • Difficult to predict formatting, had to put each picture’s text wrapping properties to Top & Bottom
  • Word Art images have white background
  • The code gets messed up – coloring is fine but each line is a separate paragraph

Conclusion:

This was easy to get going, but I’m not pleased with the embedding of other items (pictures, equations, code). This is a great solution for just writing a typical blog entry without a lot of pictures or style changes. Maybe I’ll use this more for blogging longer essays. I think I’ll stick with handcoding the HTML for now.

No Comments
May 12

Testing Syntax Highlighter

Posted in: Meta

I’m using syntaxhighlighter plugin to manage my source code listings. Just activated it, and now I’m testing it out.

Here’s some SQL:


SELECT i.first_nm, i.last_nm, iui.username, s.descr
FROM tbl_individual i
JOIN tbl_ind_userid iui ON i.pn_id = iui.pn_id
JOIN tblkp_ind_status s ON i.status_cd = s.status_cd

Here’s some XML:


<system.web>
<securityPolicy>
<trustLevel name="WSS_Medium" policyFile="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\config\wss_mediumtrust.config" />
<trustLevel name="WSS_Minimal" policyFile="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\config\wss_minimaltrust.config" />
</securityPolicy>
<httpHandlers>
<remove verb="GET,HEAD,POST" path="*" />
<add verb="GET,HEAD,POST" path="*" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPHttpHandler, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
<add verb="OPTIONS,PROPFIND,PUT,LOCK,UNLOCK,MOVE,COPY,GETLIB,PROPPATCH,MKCOL,DELETE,(GETSOURCE),(HEADSOURCE),(POSTSOURCE)" path="*" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPHttpHandler, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
<add verb="*" path="Reserved.ReportViewerWebControl.axd" type="Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.HttpHandler, Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
<add verb="*" path="*/rss.xml" type="CKS.EBE.RssHandler, CKS.EBE, Version=0.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=3e8b700c069fb747" />
</httpHandlers>
</system.web>

And here’s some C#:


private string GetRandomPasswordUsingGUID(Int32 length)
{
string result = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
result.Replace("-", String.Empty);
if ((length < 1) || (result.Length < length))
{
throw new Exception("Length must be between 1 and " + result.Length.ToString());
}
return result.Substring(0, length);
}
No Comments
May 09

Intro

Posted in: Meta

Hi.  My name is Nathan DeWitt, and I’m a software developer.  I’m just getting started with this site, and I think I’m going to keep it the default WordPress look for a while until I figure out the direction (design-wise) I want to go with.

I plan on using this space to write about some professional topics, which for me involve ASP.NET, MOSS/WSS, MS SQL Server and some of the other Microsoft development stack.  There will also be some other stuff mixed in as I explore new areas.  Pretty much stuff I come across that seems interesting should find its way here.  If nothing else, this will be a place to remind myself what section of that web.config should be edited, or how to extend a system partition in WinXP.

I look forward to receiving any comments or emails.

No Comments