A Matter Of Degree

How to Display the "New" icon against a List Item in a Data View

A client asked today if I could display the "New!" icon in a data view web part I had created for an Announcements list on their intranet's home page.  Thanks to the excellent Share the Learning blog, I found the code snippet to add, and wanted to go a step further and share where it needs to be added.

Here's the code, courtesy of Share the Learning:

<xsl:if test="ddwrt:IfNew(string(@Created))">
    <img src="/_layouts/1033/images/new.gif" alt="New" />
</xsl:if>

When you open the page in SharePoint Designer, and select the data view web part where you want to add the code, you need to find the link to the list that is being displayed.  If you want the "New!" icon to display after each title (which is how it is displayed by default in lists and libraries), paste the code snippet immediately after the link (i.e. after the </a> tag), as shown in the image below.

No Exit - Document Update from Outlook to SharePoint

Let's say you've connected one or more SharePoint document libraries to your Outlook, perhaps using these well-written directions from the MS Office Outlook Team Blog.  While offline, you edit several of the documents in one of your synched document libraries via the folder pane in your Outlook.  When you connect to the network again, you want to update the live document library with your changes. 

You might expect there to be a means of batch updating the documents, perhaps by right-clicking the document library name in the Outlook folder pane, or by hitting the Send/Receive button.  But in fact you need to open each changed document in order to prompt the update. 

That's clunky, but clunkier is the message box you get to perform the update:

If you click the Update button, the server is updated, the message box goes away and the document remains open (no feedback for "successful update").  When you attempt to close the file, the same message box appears.  You need to click "Do not update server" in order to be able to close the file.   

Why make the message appear twice in order for me to be able to get out of my document?  How about an "Update and close" button?    If I have to do this for every document I've edited while offline, the amount of time it takes to update, try to close the file, and click the "do not update" button will become significant.

Commute as Home Page

Giraffes Don't Huff, originally uploaded by graysky.

The WGBH mural on the Mass Pike has changed my experience of commuting to Boston.  It features an image which changes every day, presented in an interesting format - one large square that spreads out on both sides in narrow vertical bars broken up by stretches of building.  The images are bright and appealing, and make me feel happy and inspired to see something beautiful in an otherwise heavily industrial landscape.

When I build intranets for clients, they often request a picture-of-the-day on the home page. When I'm driving, the WGBH mural is like that web part on the home page to my work day.  Traveling by car I also get announcements, traffic alerts, and advertisements from the signs along the way.  Maybe the time and temperature, or a stock ticker if I'm downtown.  And I know there's an emergency team out there somewhere that I can call on if I get into a jam. 

When I take the train, there are more advertisements than art and system status alerts are poor, but there are means for giving feedback that you don't get on the highway, plus much more opportunity for collaboration and social networking.

How does your commute/home page affect the experience of your day?  Is your route well-designed, attractive to look at, and able to get you quickly to your destination?  Or is it cluttered and ugly, moving at a crawl?  How is the experience for a first-time user - is the navigation intuitive?  What about for someone who has been hitting the same "page" every day for years - is there anything (like a new picture or a wisecracking train conductor) that makes the experience fresh and enjoyable?

Occasional outages and downtime are unavoidable, but so many systems are slow and convoluted just by their nature, because they've grown up organically from something smaller or because they're being run the way it's always been done.  Where could improvement come in?  If you were making a wishlist for your commute, what would be the must-haves and the nice-to-haves?  Could these be applied to everyone, or are there features that should be targeted to particular users at particular times?   (In the case of the WGBH mural, what might be good for the commuters isn't so good for the neighbors.)  Most important, do you feel you could suggest or enact anything on your wishlist?  Or do you feel you have no control over this system at all? 

Some facts about the mural:

• Go-live date:  September 17, 2007
• Cost:  $1.4 million (1.6% of the entire cost of the new building)
• Size: approximately 30-foot-by-45-foot
• Designer:  Polshek Partnership, of New York
• Image display schedule: 6:30am–7pm; "At night, the mural displays a tranquil image of the evening sky over Boston as seen from the west."
• Image source/content: "drawn largely from that day's TV or radio programming on WGBH or from other sources of content that reflect WGBH's mission."
• Address:  1 Guest St., Boston, MA 02135 (at the corner of Market St. in Brighton)

Sources and other information:

WGBH Picture of the Day (WGBH)

Experiencing architecture with seven senses, not one (Architectural Record)

Bright in Brighton: WGBH opens its new factory (Current.org)

A bridge to the future in Brighton (Boston Globe)

$1.4 Million Dollars : The cost of the WGBH mural on the Mass Pike (Boston Billboards blog)