Thursday, May 15, 2014

Interesting HTML bug?

Found this very interesting in HTML.

When you create a table with colspans, in some situations the colspan gets ignored.

Check this out:

<table border="1">
    <tr>
        <td colspan="2">111111111111</td>
        <td>2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>1</td>
        <td colspan="2">222222222222</td>
    </tr>
</table>

will produce this html:


image


While this:



<table border="1">
    <tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
    <tr>
        <td colspan="2">111111111111</td>
        <td>2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>1</td>
        <td colspan="2">222222222222</td>
    </tr>
</table>


will produce this html:


image


You see, when i do not add the empty row with 3 blank TD, the colspan settings are ignored.


Anyone has a good explanation for this? I’m puzzled.


Play with it yourself:


http://jsfiddle.net/RDL3s/4/


http://jsfiddle.net/RDL3s/5/


I found this issue while working on multi column settings for KWizCom Forms, I couldn’t figure out why the form ignores my colspan only on some cases…


 


image


( sneak peak, beta will be available tomorrow – ping me if you want to see it first)


Cheers

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

MVP Consumer Camp

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I wanted to let everyone know about a great event that Microsoft is organizing at the Microsoft Store at Square One Shopping Centre in Mississauga – the first Canadian MVP Consumer Camp on Thursday, May 29th from 4pm to 9pm. I will try to be there with my fellow MVPs answering tech questions, showing off demos and the unique features of Microsoft devices. There will be prize draws, Q&A sessions, snacks and refreshments. 

MVPs are recognized exceptional, independent community leaders who share their passion, technical expertise, and real-world knowledge of Microsoft products with others. We speak at events, answer questions online, and have awesome technical blogs!  I will be there with quite a few MVPs from across Canada!

For those of you who haven’t been to a Microsoft Store yet, they are amazing!  They have a huge selection of the latest products and gadgets with experts who can answer all of your questions.  If you can’t make the event, definitely try to drop in to a store to try the latest Xbox game, check out Windows 8.1 and its great touch features or to buy the latest and greatest Windows Phone.  The Nokia Lumia 1020 has an unbelievable camera by the way ;)

Do you have any questions about Surface, Windows, Office, Windows Phone or Xbox?  Do you want to learn about how to get the most out of your gadgets?  There will be an MVP there who can provide answers! Hope to see you there!

Register here!

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Tuesday, May 6, 2014

New / Edit form loads but not responding for 10 seconds

Ok, something we have been struggling with for months and drove many of us at KWizCom a bit crazy…

It is hard to explain, so I’ll try my best:

In our internal portal, we are using SharePoint 2010.

In our current bug tracking list, we use a SharePoint list similar to the issue tracking, every time to click on a new item or edit item – the page loads quickly enough, but it is stuck and not responding for up to 10 seconds sometimes.

After 10 seconds, the page completes loading, rich texts load their toolbar, and the ribbon starts working.

We have over 4000 items in that list, and the problem just becomes more and more of an issue as the list grows.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to pin point the code that makes the browser stuck:

It is a javascript file called “groupeditempicker.js”, and more specifically, a function called “GipInitializeGroup”.

After a little research, I realized this code is a part of the SharePoint out of the box multi-lookup column picker (the left-right-boxes like we call it), which was looking up items from the current list as related issues.

Once I converted this lookup into our Cascading Lookup with “edit on demand” flag, which was designed to work on large list lookups – the problem was solved immediately.

Not sure how many people out there will encounter this issue, and from them how many will find this post – bug if you did, leave me a comment! I am curious to know if it was just us.

Happy SharePointing,

Shai.

Edit: A link to KWizCom cascading lookup product. This product can show multi - lookup as a grid control with paging and checkboxes, and supports a mode we call "edit by request" which means if you edit the item - this field will display the view mode of the current value. If you want to modify it, you have to click on the edit button to change it into edit mode. This feature is very useful for huge lookup lists that you do not modify every time. Cascading lookup page