Darrin Brandon, Author at Applied Information Sciences

In a recent blog post, I walked through setting up a SharePoint 2013 development environment in the cloud. After doing that, the next most logical step was to start building apps. But that meant that I would have to understand what a SharePoint app really was and how it differed from SharePoint 2010 development. I mean sure, I could bang out the typical “Hello World” app, but to do anything meaningful, I needed to dig a little deeper.

Apps vs. Solutions

An app for SharePoint is a stand-alone, self-contained piece of functionality that extends the features and capabilities of a SharePoint site. Apps can bring together the best of both worlds; modern web technologies and all the familiar pieces of SharePoint. On top of that, users can discover and download apps on their own from the public Office Store or from their organization’s private App Catalog. In contrast, a solution is used to customize or enhance SharePoint sites and needs a farm administrator to deploy, manage and remove.

Why Apps?

The first question that I asked myself was why would you use an app? I would assume that the answer to this question might depend on who you polled, but as a developer, I am extremely excited that I can now leverage all of the exciting things that my “non-SharePoint” counterparts have been doing for quite some time. In my opinion, this paradigm shift is a smart move by Microsoft, and will go a long way in attracting more developers to the platform.

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Darrin Brandon

If you have a Web application that will receive even moderate traffic, you should probably perform some load testing. Load testing can help identify what your maximum operating capacity is, as well as any bottlenecks that might prevent you from reaching that capacity. Now I’m not going to do a deep-dive into load testing, but instead I’m going to show you how to use Team Foundation Service to perform that testing in the cloud.

I’m only going to use a couple of tools here. First, I’m using Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate. If you don’t yet have it, you can download a trial here. Second, I’ll be using Team Foundation Service. If you haven’t yet signed up for this, you should. There is a free offering (for up to five users) and the sign-up is quick and painless.

Since I don’t already have a project with load tests, I’m going to quickly step through creating one that we’ll use for our demo. Read More…

Darrin Brandon

Have you ever wanted a fresh SharePoint development environment? Have you ever needed to quickly create a test box, or wanted to prototype something specifically for a customer? In the past, in all of these scenarios, you’d face a very time-consuming process and quite honestly, one that has likely been a deterrent. In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through creating a SharePoint 2013 development environment, on Azure, utilizing the Visual Studio 2013 RC.

Thanks to the good people at Microsoft, there is now a developer image on Azure that comes with SharePoint 2013 and Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate RC, already installed. Before we get too far along, I do have to warn you that you’ll need either an Azure or MSDN subscription. If you don’t have an Azure subscription, you can activate your MSDN Azure benefit and receive up to $150 USD in free, monthly Azure credits. If you are careful to shut down your VM at the end of each work day, then you should be able to use this VM as your day-to-day development machine without eating up all of your credits. Read More…

Darrin Brandon

How many times have you been tasked with building a UI at runtime? I know I’ve had to do it plenty of times. This can often be a time consuming and tedious process. Check the data type, decide what kind of control to use, add that control to some placeholder, rinse and repeat.

I was recently given a task that would take selected search results, compare the items selected, and then present the user with a UI of all fields common across the selected items. Pretty straightforward…and potentially lots of code.

Being new to SharePoint development, little did I know that there was a hidden gem (they tell me there are more) that would aid me in my endeavor.

BlogPosts by Darrin Brandon