SharePoint Upload Multiple Picture Manger Issue

There are numerous articles about how the Picture Manager's invokation from SharePoint Picture library suddenly goes missing.  And you never get to see the upload picture manager that allows you to compress and adjust a batch load of photos before upload to SharePoint Picture library.  It is actually a really useful tool of Office. They have excluded it from Office 2013 also and not really given any alternative.

This article below gave me an idea what to do

http://www.ofonesandzeros.com/2009/03/19/office-picture-manager-wont-open-after-clicking-upload-multiple-in-picture-library/

However, none of the suggestions worked for me.  It actually was not affected by IE running in Protected Mode.  Our machines were locked down and some very knowledgeable person of Windows Registry even showed us where the key is to turn Protected mode on for Intranet sites set in IE.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7236247/ie-protected-mode-for-local-system-account

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\1
and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\1

DWORD 2500 (Set to 0 to turn switch off)


It turns out on my machine, I think the porblem was it was upgraded from Office 2007 to 2010 rather than a clean install of 2010.

The problem get exasperated when you have SharePoint 2010 and 2007 sites running.

Anyway, it was to do with the OISCTRL.OISClientLauncher Add On for IE.  Strange that even doing a ProcMon log, it does not show any errors.  

It clearly tries to invoke the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Office 2010 Tools\Microsoft 

Office Picture Manager.lnk which it says it has succeeded in invoking.

In IE the OISCTRL.OISClientLauncher Add-On is clearly loaded in the Manage Add-On screen.  This adds to the confusion to why has it stopped working.

However, I found the upgrade to Office 2010 from Office 2007 must have corrupted something and it is not pointing to something correctly.

Anyway, I followed the article to unreg the dll

regsvr32 \u "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\oisctrl.dll" 
from the Run Dialog Window

This cleared the reference to the old Office 2007's oisctrl.dll

Then the 2010 version was manually registered 

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\oisctrl.dll"

Voila, the picture manager started again.  Need to close all instances of IE and reopen for the changes to kick in.

Switzerland Puma shirt

A neat no noise of a shirt.

Simple design with no nonsense.  Get to business like.

The iconic crest.

With decor from the Swiss FA?

Sleeves are a decent shape.  Just a little bit too big for my liking.

Neat shirt.

v4 master page and css

Whilst digging through the v4 refactoring for our site.  I have now created a set of master pages and spent time in creating some nice css to go with it.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9_yNfhuCpxJVnhGOUczTURiQ0U/

This relates to this article earlier.  Using css to suppress left menu and quicklaunch to present a full screen across for SharePoint's webpart zones.  Some layouts want it.

http://kongedagain.blogspot.hk/2013/11/creating-copy-of-your-master-page-that.html

SharePoint prompting for password not showing or working for non admin users caused party by server hardening Local Security Settings on Server

This has been troubling one of SharePoint 2010 environments for a while and no one been able to pin point the problem.  We even had MS consultants who could not identify the exact fix.

Basically, we had a situation on a 2010 farm where users no matter what permission they were granted on the SharePoint site, either directly or via AD groups.   They would get prompted for username and password when ever they try tried to navigate the site.  It was happening just on this farm and not on others.

Users basically cannot use the site properly.  Some resources like images and .css from sitecollection images folder would always be locked.  And any SharePoint URL resource that was not a full path with the .aspx file in the end.  The site would not resolve the URL showing a blank page to the user.

However, we found using the Farm Admin account was OK.

We also found if users were placed into the Administrators group in the WFE server itself, the problem went away.

We scratched our heads and look everywhere to see what was causing this including.

• IIS7
• Firewall blocking authentication with AD
• Trust between Domain
• Examine local desktop’s local security policy in secpol.msc.  Examine the - > Local Policies -> Security Options -> Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level

It turns out the main culprit was actually a Server Hardening script that was ran on the server. 

Some settings put into our Server in the User Rights Assignment section of the Local Security Policy that caused the login issue. 

(Bypass traverse checking).  Once added domain Authenticated Users, the login problem was resolved. 

Actually MS Support has highlighted this problem can happen for when users edit the site with SP Designer 2010, but it appears the setting affect nearly all usage of the site.  See their support article below.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982948

Fantastic mechanism to embed a video playlist for videos to be stored in SharePoint portal. FLV files again

This is just perfect for putting your wmv or mov or mp4 files onto a presentable interface in a SharePoint portal, embedding it into a CEWP.

Firstly, use the following converters to get file into a .flv format.  FLV file is more compress and smaller and can be consumed by an embedded flv flash player that can be embedded into SharePoint portal.

http://www.asoftwareplus.com/flv-player-free.html
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Video-to-Flash-Converter.htm

Then the above's converters has a HTML example with JavaScript on how to plant the flash / flv file into a webpage.

There is a file called demo3.html that builts the page which the players sits on.

It writes out the JavaScript code.

Place all the converted flv files into a videos sub directory.
Place the thumbnail that links to the video in a thumbs sub directory.

In the videos.xml file.  Put in an xml section for every flv video file that you want in the playlist. Like below

<vid>
<flv>videos/MVI_7019.flv</flv>
<img>thumbs/tar2.png</img>
<desc>Movie Trailer: Watch this performance...</desc>
</vid>

See the above there is a reference to the flv file in the videos directory.  A .png file that is the thumbnail and a desc that pops up the description for the movie.

Below is a packaged up zip file with an example of the solution.  

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9_yNfhuCpxJZ1ZFNnZWZ2hiSEU/edit

Unzip it and you will see all the example files.

To plant it into SharePoint, created a document library call it say "VideoPlayer"  Plant everything expanded by the zip file into the library then -

Use a CEWP and with JavaScript open a dialog window like below

<STYLE type=text/css>.highlightit IMG {
FILTER: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=100); opacity: 1; -moz-opacity: 1
}
.highlightit:hover IMG {
FILTER: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=70); opacity: 0.7; -moz-opacity: 0.7
}
</STYLE>
<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=center><a href="javascript:openMovies();" class="highlightit" title="View our Videos..."><img src="/VideoPlayer/SpringDinnerVideoPlayerImage.png" style="border:none" alt="View our 2014 Spring Dinner Videos..." /></a></td>
</tr>
</table>

<script type="text/javascript">

function openMovies()
{
var strParam1 = "/VideoPlayer/demo3.html";

winRef = window.open(strParam1,"Win_SpringDinner","height=480,left=450,location=no,menubar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,status=no,titlebar=no,toolbar=no,top=220,width=555",false); 

winRef.focus();
}

</script>

Avoid UB Electric Kitchen Extractor Fan Problems with steam

They have design problems and are dangerous. rubbish, scam, fault not suitable for people in Hong Kong

See this link below for more details and pictures....

(Video quality not too good after compression.  But the drip happens at around 0:02 from the side of the motor.)

UB Scam Extractor

Avoid UB Electric Kitchen Extractor Fan Problems with steam - They have design problems and are dangerous. rubbish, scam fault not suitable for people in Hong Kong

OK, onto another topic, recently we went and bought a supposedly highly recommended, high power extractor fan as a present for our dear mother in law.  It turns out it could not suit our needs and the product could not extract properly.  

Try boiling eggs in water, steam a fish, make soup basically cook anything that uses a bit of water.  We had so much condensation that water, yes WATER accumulated above the extractor's grill area and motor.  This can cause health and safety issue as there are electrical circuits in the extractor and you know water and electricity don't mix.  The water dripped back down onto the stove.  And electricity was beginning to leak from the device because of the contact between the condense water and electrical circuit.  Situation made worse because the unit is made entirely of stainless steel and aluminium.  If we don't get electrocuted, the likelihood of an electrical fire is real because of the water getting into the electrical circuit.

The company that made the extractor is UB Electric.  http://www.ubelectrical.com/

Their customer service here in Hong Kong was none existent and very rude and would not acknowledge their product problem even after their maintenance engineer had come and seen the problem first hand a few times.  They had the audacity to say "It is a problem with your environment" There is nothing wrong with our machine.  Their supposed contact number in the US is not active and no answer.

I did some research and I think the problem is very similar to this case http://forums.techguy.org/do-yourself-not-computer-related/520868-over-stove-fan-leak.html

It seems like in our case there is also a factor in the space in clearance required between stove and the bottom of the extractor.  If it is less than 34 inches the problem gets worst.  The problem cannot be solved by the solution suggested above because here in Hong Kong most of us live in tall high rises and it is impossible to put such a flap onto the vent.  Also since we have to live in crowded space, many of our kitchens may not have enough room for the level of clearance it requires and the retailers and suppliers ought to make it clear before they sell it to you.  It works in other countries but the design is problematic when sold to an average un-wary customer like us here until we find out the hard way and their after sale services won't do anything about it and the retailer is also shirking its responsibility and not providing a refund or a commitment to fix the problem by what ever means.  The annular insulation modification possibility is also not offered by them as a service and they ought to since their products probably require it to work properly here.  Its like someone selling you a car and not telling you it has issues when going down a hill.  And then leaving you on your own to work out how to fix its brakes.

Needless to say, avoid their products at all cost especially if you live in Hong Kong, it is a cow-boy company out there to scam money from un-wary customers.  They produce products that are at a premium price and supposedly very powerful extractor wattage.  But its all a fake to sell design fault products.  The model we have probably has a design fault or at least should not be sold to consumers here in Hong Kong.  It is the i200.  I want to see whether they really have a presence in the US as seen on their website.  Or are they quoting OEM partners who sometimes use the same motor on their extractors.

More details to come with pictures.  You will be warned after you see it.  Don't part your cash and be sold their products, you could get electrocuted and if you want a very wet cooking stove like us then its a very expensive way to achieve it at least ;-)

See the water condense dripping back into the grill area from the motor above.

More water coming down as we are cooking.  umm its getting wet.

See how wet the stove has become.

Video capturing the leakage, the above electrical is getting wet from the condensation and with a detector, it returns a positive on electricity leakage.  (Video quality not too good after compression.  But the drip happens at around 0:02 from the side of the motor.)