Released Chapters 9&10 of -My thoughts on the founding of HiSoftware for Comments

Chapter Nine – a new MillenniumThe Evening was uneventful. No Server crashes, the world did not end, there was no second coming that I could tell, just one day off before the craziness started again! A point of order, as a founder of a young software company your day off will usually have something to do with your company, especially if you start it in your house or in your garage. At the beginning of 2000 the offices were done and we now had:
http://hisoftwarefounding.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-thoughts-on-founding-of-hisoftware_28.html



Chapter Ten – Aristotle, Virtue and 2001While 2000 was hot, 2001 was a year that, beyond a shadow of doubt, would change the world, not just Hiawatha Island Software’s world. Perhaps it dictated how the millennium would start, but even the best of us were not prepared for what would come. Let’s drop back to the past again for a moment to another of the greats in Western philosophy. Aristotle was born in 384 BC. Some notes that we all know of Aristotle; he was hired by Philip of Macedon to be the tutor of the greatest Alexander of all, Alexander the Great.
http://hisoftwarefounding.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-thoughts-on-founding-of-hisoftware_6860.html

Are Ethics Important In Technology Companies?

Hello All:

Wanted to take a quick comment to put out a technology company question. Do ethics matter:

1. Does being truthful with your employees matter?
2. Does being truthful with your partners matter?
3. Is it OK to break contracts with your partners?
4. Is it OK to ship software that you know is not tested and has major Flaws?

I would say

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. NO
4. NO

What are your thoughts?

Cheers,
Rob

HiSoftware founder seeks support in beginning global extensions of Microsoft AKS, European tour to discuss in July

Hello Everyone:

There was a recent post/review on the Microsoft Accessibility Kit for SharePoint which is Paid for and belongs to MS. It is open source with the goal of extension and support. I believe that this has good merit but it has not been widely and openly adopted due to as pointed out on Twitter by @AccessForAll this reviewer says: http://www.lifeonplanetgroove.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/25/review-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-half-finished-product/

This is a pretty fair assessment but neglects to comment on Microsoft's true commitment to improve on the accessibility of MOSS. With this in Mind I am suggesting that a bunch of us who have committed ourselves to #a11y get together and extend this Microsoft Open source project and really give it QA and Really start building it open source.

Anyone who wants to join in please send me a email to ryonaitis@gmail.com

I will be in Italy and a couple other places mid July if anyone wants to meet to discuss this.

Cheers

Euros, Rome, Florence and Munich in July

Just got my notification that my euros shipped, hotels booked, time to do a Euro Tour to Drive up some consulting work. If I have time One day in Paris is in order.

Updates from the trip and different #a11y standards in Europe.

Cheers,
Rob

Creating CodePlex project for CKEDITOR for MOSS WCM Wrapper

the CKEDITOR is now up to a release candidate. The Wrapper will allow for use of the Opensource CKEditor in SharePoint. The accessibility of this editor is unparalleled. Check it out at http://docs.fckeditor.net/CKEditor_3.x/Accessibility_Compliance. The C# Wrapper will also be OPEN Source under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)

-rob

Working hard on completing the wrapper and project today

HiSoftware Founder New Post on Preventing Compliance Errors in SharePoint w/source

Preventing Compliance Errors before they happen for the Web Content Scenario in Microsoft office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

Compliance is an important aspect of both Intranet and Internet content management. Ensuring that your Web content conforms to regulatory and standards based compliance requirements is an important factor in creating a stable and trustworthy Web based experience for your site users. For those that use the Web Content Management Scenarios in MOSS this document will provide you with complete examples on how to implement content compliance for the following areas:

· Markup Validation
· Brand Management
· Bad words List

The example is written is C# with Visual Studio 2008. The programs do require access to files other than that in the project, but the locations are not hardcoded and the example was written to allow for distribution as a solution when you complete your policy files. The Source code and reference files will be provided with this post and can be distributed freely.

Introduction
There are several tasks that you may want to perform on your content that are potentially not available out of the box, may require some programming, or simply may be out of the scope of your normal business. For these reasons you can take advantage of the SharePoint Object Model to provide extended content compliance services to your WCM Solutions.


Download Source: http://www.yonaitis.com/34aPolicy.zip
Download Documentation: http://www.yonaitis.com/validmarkup_moss.pdf

New Post Done and will be posted shortly

Preventing Compliance Errors before they happen for the Web Content Scenario in Microsoft office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
Compliance is an important aspect of both Intranet and Internet content management. Ensuring that your Web content conforms to regulatory and standards based compliance requirements is an important factor in creating a stable and trustworthy Web based experience for your site users. For those that use the Web Content Management Scenarios in MOSS this document will provide you with complete examples on how to implement content compliance for the following areas:
· Markup Validation
· Brand Management
· Bad words List
The example is written is C# with Visual Studio 2008. The programs do require access to files other than that in the project, but the locations are not hardcoded and the example was written to allow for distribution as a solution when you complete your policy files. The Source code and reference files will be provided with this post and can be distributed freely.

Full Post and complete sourcecode will be available shortly

Posted Chapter 8 - Read what HiSoftware was named after

Blogged: CHP 8 Thoughts on the Founding of HiSoftware, read what the Co. was named after http://tinyurl.com/njh63m

Chapter 6 Posted

http://hisoftwarefounding.blogspot.com/2009/06/chapter-6-spit-and-ice.html
Just Posted Chapter Six of MTOF

Shrinking and Formatting Drives

This can be fun but it is time consuming on this Friday morning. Rain for the next Ten days, Maybe a trip to DC is called for this weekend. I should have ordered partitions at the size I needed - what was I thinking. New Machines are good. It will be a busy Development weekend.

Back in the lab

I have to admit the Sicilian wine was good, but it is good to be back. I did much writing and a little coding and I am ready to do some fun releases.

A wrapper for CKEditor allowing it to work in MOSS the CK Editor A11y with JAWS Guidance is great with integrated SpellCheck powered by spell checker .net. Just very clean and a nice feel to it. All C# Code to accomplish this will be made freely available and open back to the community.

MOSS WCM Valid Code Example/White Paper! English and Spanish! Some tomorrow and some on friday depending if I missed fedex today or not so I can set up my new servers!

Check Back!
rob

New Dell Servers Due in on Thursday

This is great news as I will be installing Windows Server 2008 Virtualization it is a very good thing to need something to complete a development task and to just be able to go get it when needed. The new SharePoint Compliance Workflow Engine I am writing open source for my third post will benefit from this configuration. I will post the complete configuration in my post.

Cheers,
Rob

Audio Chapters of the My Thoughts on the founding of HiSoftware (Draft) Novella

Robert B. Yonaitis HiSoftware Founding (MTOF) by Robert B. Yonaitis http://www.yonaitis.com/foundingaudio.html audio book read by boston recording artist Scott daamgard http://www.scottdamgaard.com/

New Bamboo Post - In Spanish

http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/spanish/archive/2009/06/12/blogger-invitado-rob-yonaitis-fundador-de-hisoftware-personalizaci-243-n-de-la-barra-de-edici-243-n-del-sitio-para-incluir-la-validaci-243-n-del-contenido-para-el-panorama-del-contenido-web-en-moss.aspx

Cheers,
Rob

New Blog started

Started a new blog as I revise final chapters and original ones for a free publishing of the My Thoughts on the Founding of HiSoftware book
http://hisoftwarefounding.blogspot.com/

Any comments or thoughts on what you think may be relevant is appreciated

-rob

SharePoint WCM: Valid Code, Privacy, and Brand Management Feature Question

In my recent blog post I covered implementing open source accessibility and quality validation tools within SharePoint WCM. In addition to this I mentioned my next post looking like Sunday on how to use the Publishing API to create valid (X)HTML markup.

In Developing this blog post and Open Source Example I will be covering:

- Blocking a BAD Word List by either Pattern or Exact Match
- Correcting Markup
- Brand Correction
- Privacy Rules (PII)

Can anyone think of anything else I should add to the list for this tutorial. Please provide any suggestions by 2pm Tomorrow (EST). If you have any suggestions please send them to me at ryonaitis@gmail.com

AChecker and SharePoint

Working on connecting AChecker and Sharepoint for additional testing via SharePoint Workflows and PageEditing toolbar as per a request I received. New Test Suites include:

WCAG 1.0 (International)
WCAG 2.0 (International)
BITV 1.0 (Germany)
Section 508 (U.S.)
Stanca Act (Italy)

Hope to have it done today

Cheers, Rob

Customizing the Page Editing Toolbar to include Content Validation for the Web Content Scenario in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

In recent weeks several people have asked me how they can implement content validation in Microsoft SharePoint as a new menu item for users in such a way to allow not only for validation but also to include guidance and educational value. An additional request has been the ability to test for Accessibility in languages beyond English; specifically: Spanish, Italian, and French. This solution will cover these concerns. This Post covers content validation for:

• Accessibility
• Link Checking
• (X)HTML Markup Validity
  

To follow along you simply need SharePoint installed or you can simply download the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD that will contain all the software needed for you to follow along. Download Link (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=67f93dcb-ada8-4db5-a47b-df17e14b2c74&DisplayLang=en). For the testing engines the following sites will be referenced:

• The SIDAR Foundations Hera Software: http://www.sidar.org/hera/
• The W3C markup Validation Service: http://validator.w3.org/
• The W3C Link Checker Service: http://validator.w3.org/checklink

For the purpose of this test and code this post will reference these external sites and the validation will run externally. However, in some cases this will not be possible and you may therefore want to download these validation servers to your local servers so as not to worry about hostname routing over the internet. This example will be complete and it will require no outside references. If you find something is missing please notify the author: Robert B. Yonaitis @ ryonaitis@gmail.com.


Figure 1 - MOSS interface displaying our final product which is integrated content validation


Note the menu item Validation contains three new tests: Validate Accessibility with Hera, Validate Links with the W3C Link Checker, and Validate Markup with the W3C Validator. To create this menu option we need to complete a few simple steps:

1. Edit the CustomEditingMenu.XML File with SharePoint Designer
2. Perform an IIS Reset on the Litwaredemo machine
3. Test our pages
   

In this method there will be no source code to write or compile. So let us begin!

Editing the CustomEditingMenu.XML File
To properly ADD items to the Edit Menu capabilities you will need to modify or add a CustomEditingMenu.XML file. By default the litwaredemo image has a Blank CustomEditingMenu.XML file. This is what we will edit to provide content validation.
1. Start the WIN03_MOSS.VHD
2. Open SharePoint Designer from the LITWAREDEMO VHD to the MOSS Site
a. Select Start
b. Select All Programs
c. Select Microsoft Office
d. Select Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer
e. Select File from The SharePoint Designer Menu
f. Select Open Site from The SharePoint Designer Menu
g. TYPEIN http://localhost/ into the Site Name Input Box
h. Select Open
i. Login if Required: Default User/ Password pair is: Administrator / pass@word1
3. Navigate the folder list to _catalogs / masterpage / Editing Menu
4. Open the CustomEditingMenu.XML file in the SharePoint Designer
5. Replace the content with the following content (NOTE: THIS ASSUMES THIS FILE HAS NOT BEEN MODIFIED BEFORE AND YOU ARE WORKING WITH A FRESH IMAGE) or download the xml file

6. Select File Save from the SharePoint Designer Menu
7. CHECK the file in if required
8. Publish a Major Version
9. Close SharePoint Designer
10. From the Start Menu Select Start Run
11. Enter IISRESET in the OPEN: Text Input
12. Select OK
13. When the IISRESET is complete Launch your site http://litwaredemo/pages/default.aspx
You will note you now have the three menu items under the new validation menu item

Some Explanations of the nodes
This post covered a large amount of ground and now it is time to step back for a moment and to explain the validation a bit and for this we will use the Hera Accessibility Validation node.

In the Console node we will set the values required to implement Accessibility Validation. Most of the items are self explanatory but the following is an Explanation:

• DisplayText – The DisplayText attribute is used to name the menu item text that the user will see as in Figure 1 of this post and is configurable by the person setting up the site
• UseResourceFile – By default this is set to false for all of the validations
• ImageURL – This assigns the menu item image to be the actionssettings.gif file and is configurable by the person setting up the site
• UserRights – The UserRights attribute describes the rights necessary to see the node that is being described. A complete list of available values can be found on the following MSDN Page and is customizable by the person configuring the menu: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spbasepermissions.aspx
• RequiredRightsMode – The RequiredRightsMode attribute is set to any by default
• PermissionContext – The PermissionContext attribute is set to the CurrentSite. A complete list of available values can be found on the following MSDN Page and is customizable by the person configuring the menu: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.utilities.permissioncontext.aspx
• IsSiteRelative – The IsSiteRelative attribute is set to false. This is very important. It tells the system that the NavigateURL link is not relative to the MOSS site you are on so it does not attend the page being called to the current site. // If this was not set to false you would end up with a link to something like this: http://litwaredemo/Pages/javascript:window.open();"
• NavigateURL – The NavigateURL attribute is where we define what page to test and what site we will be testing the site on and in this example it is Hera. Please note Hera will be able to detect your browser language and bring up the page in the correct language.

Figure 2 - Hera Report

Closing
The post you just read is designed to work on sites available on the internet. If you will be using this on an intranet you will need to download and install the testing engines onto your own server. All of the validation engines selected for this example can be downloaded. Please note the NavigateURL will have to change if you change validation server locations from the ones that are used for the example.

Upcoming Posts

• How to deploy this solution over a farm as a feature
• How to create a simple workflow that takes advantage of these items
• How to create moss publishing sites that produce valid xhtml

About the Author
Robert B. Yonaitis is the Founder of HiSoftware Inc, (Hiawatha Island Software Company). Robert has also authored multiple titles focused on Content Publishing and Content Management: The Elements of WebSite Promotion , Understanding Internet Traffic, Understanding Accessibility. Yonaitis' leadership brought HiSoftware technologies recognition for the positive impact that they have had for everyone who uses information and applications on the Internet regardless of physical or technical ability. Yonaitis’ technology and software innovations have received numerous accolades and awards, including the 2002 Da Vinci award for Electronics and IT Innovations that have most improved the lives of People with Disabilities. His design of the testing portal, cynthiasays.com, was endorsed by the ACB for its impact and educational importance in the area of Web Accessibility. Yonaitis holds a private pilot license. He received a BS, majoring in Computer Science, from Franklin Pierce in NH and a MAS from Embry-Riddle specializing in Aeronautics and Space Studies.



You can download this post as a PDF

Facilitate Next-Generation Experiences

Well or at least make something meaningless sound special. Thanks to mark for passing this on here is the bullshit generator. Watch out gartner for some of this noise! http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

We need to monetize vertical technologies and in an essence grow front-end architectures. In the end I may be concerned about our inability to synthesize bleeding-edge e-commerce solutions. The team will evolve best-of-breed web-readiness solutions for the public. I do hope that we will aggregate 24/7 e-markets at the end of the day. However, we need to visualize plug-and-play communities.

- Rob :)

Bing

Microsoft has Made Bing http://www.bing.com/ available. It takes a couple seconds to orient yourself to the interface but the results seem on par to what I need, trying to find if they have a BING source code Search.
Cheers,
Rob