Perhaps we’re taking Homeland Security a *bit* too far…

I was recently cruising the ‘net in search of random Sharepoint ideas. I’d been tasked with finding solutions to a variety of customization and web part development issues, and was theoretically looking for a good map of the object model. I came across Jan Tielens’ blog, who has some really great tips and ideas relating to Sharepoint. Not suprising, since he’s an MVP for SPS, but I digress. One of the solutions he and his pals have dreamed up is the SmartPart, a web part that will host any user control. The great thing about the SmartPart is that now you can use all the VS.NET designer tools for developing web parts, instead of having to code all the visual elements by hand. Great! Here comes the problem though: Jan is a ‘foreign national’ (From Belgium too, my mother would be so proud). I work for a government agency. Soooo…we can’t use any products created outside the US.

Say what?? But this guy is endorsed my Microsoft? An MVP!! And this SmartPart was voted the favorite web part of 2004!

Whatever. How lame is that?

Category: Tech

Comments

  1. Jan Tielens says:

    Hi Morgan, too bad you cannot use the SmartPart! I suppose you already knows this, but the SmartPart is open source, so you get all the source code with it.

    cu
    Jan

  2. Morgan says:

    Well that would solve that problem…no I didn’t realize it was open source! That certainly changes things. Thanks for the info Jan…I’ll inform the ‘powers that be’ so we can have a chance to use it in our SPS implementations.

  3. MLium says:

    Nice. So just download the source and compile it yourself. Then it’s an “in house” tool and it’s ok to use. That’s “security” for ya.

  4. MLium says:

    More homeland security stuff. On our way back from Vegas last month we were “security checkpoint selectees” which meant that even though our metal detector “stroll” came out clean, we were “wanded” from head to toe, physically patted down and they rifled through our carry-on bags. This takes a long time.

    The really dumb part is this: We weren’t the only ones in the line that were “selectees”. EVERY SINGLE PERSON going through the one and only security checkpoint in LAS was a selectee. It was 5:30am on a Monday morning. Needless to say it took a while to get to our gate…

  5. Morgan says:

    ::shakes tiny fist::

    Curse you powers that be!!

    I’m hoping to have a “true” global alert web part created soon, which will not only crawl the portal site for alerts, but access the backend data for all subsite alerts as well, for the King of All Alerts web part 🙂

  6. Morgan says:

    Was the security staff bored at 5am? Dang! I just came back from Vegas a few weeks ago, and there was no “selectees” then…