Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms - 26 Jan 2021

Gartner Report on the Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms as published on 26 Jan 2021.

Microservices vs. SOA

Have been reading up on the differences between Microservices and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) lately. The below are the definitions of these 2 terminologies lifted from Wikipedia.

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a style of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. The basic principles of service-oriented architecture are independent of vendors, products and technologies. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online.

Microservices is a variant of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. In a microservices architecture, services should be fine-grained and the protocols should be lightweight.

My Internet browsing pattern got pick up by Google Now and was an article was proposed as a possible to-read article.

SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE	MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE
Maximizes application service reusability	Focused on decoupling
A systematic change requires modifying the monolith	A systematic change is to create a new service
DevOps and Continuous Delivery are becoming popular, but are not mainstream	Strong focus on DevOps and Continuous Delivery
Focused on business functionality reuse	More importance on the concept of “bounded context”
For communication it uses Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)	For communication uses less elaborate and simple messaging systems
Supports multiple message protocols	Uses lightweight protocols such as HTTP, REST or Thrift APIs
Use of a common platform for all services deployed to it	Application Servers are not really used, it’s common to use cloud platforms
Use of containers (such as Docker) is less popular	Containers work very well with microservices
SOA services share the data storage	Each microservice can have an independent data storage
Common governance and standards	Relaxed governance, with greater focus on teams collaboration and freedom of choice

» Microservices vs. SOA – Is There Any Difference at All? | DZone

SharePoint 2013 Site Template ID List for PowerShell

If you are creating a new SharePoint site collection using PowerShell, you can specify the template to be applied. To do that, PowerShell expects you to provide the Template ID. The following is a list of template ids which may come handy.

Template ID	Title
GLOBAL#0	Global template
STS#0	Team Site
STS#1	Blank Site
STS#2	Document Workspace
MPS#0	Basic Meeting Workspace
MPS#1	Blank Meeting Workspace
MPS#2	Decision Meeting Workspace
MPS#3	Social Meeting Workspace
MPS#4	Multipage Meeting Workspace
CENTRALADMIN#0	Central Admin Site
WIKI#0	Wiki Site
BLOG#0	Blog
SGS#0	Group Work Site
TENANTADMIN#0	Tenant Admin Site
APP#0	App Template
APPCATALOG#0	App Catalog Site
ACCSRV#0	Access Services Site
ACCSRV#1	Assets Web Database
ACCSRV#3	Charitable Contributions Web Database
ACCSRV#4	Contacts Web Database
ACCSRV#5	Projects Web Database
ACCSRV#6	Issues Web Database
ACCSVC#0	Access Services Site Internal
ACCSVC#1	Access Services Site
BDR#0	Document Center
DEV#0	Developer Site
DOCMARKETPLACESITE#0	Academic Library
EDISC#0	eDiscovery Center
EDISC#1	eDiscovery Case
OFFILE#0	(obsolete) Records Center
OFFILE#1	Records Center
OSRV#0	Shared Services Administration Site
PPSMASite#0	PerformancePoint
BICenterSite#0	Business Intelligence Center
SPS#0	SharePoint Portal Server Site
SPSPERS#0	SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space
SPSPERS#2	Storage And Social SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space
SPSPERS#3	Storage Only SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space
SPSPERS#4	Social Only SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space
SPSPERS#5	Empty SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space
SPSMSITE#0	Personalization Site
SPSTOC#0	Contents area Template
SPSTOPIC#0	Topic area template
SPSNEWS#0	News Site
CMSPUBLISHING#0	Publishing Site
BLANKINTERNET#0	Publishing Site
BLANKINTERNET#1	Press Releases Site
BLANKINTERNET#2	Publishing Site with Workflow
SPSNHOME#0	News Site
SPSSITES#0	Site Directory
SPSCOMMU#0	Community area template
SPSREPORTCENTER#0	Report Center
SPSPORTAL#0	Collaboration Portal
SRCHCEN#0	Enterprise Search Center
PROFILES#0	Profiles
BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0	Publishing Portal
SPSMSITEHOST#0	My Site Host
ENTERWIKI#0	Enterprise Wiki
PROJECTSITE#0	Project Site
PRODUCTCATALOG#0	Product Catalog
COMMUNITY#0	Community Site
COMMUNITYPORTAL#0	Community Portal
SRCHCENTERLITE#0	Basic Search Center
SRCHCENTERLITE#1	Basic Search Center
SRCHCENTERFAST#0	FAST Search Center
visprus#0	Visio Process Repository

» SharePoint 2013 Site Template ID List for PowerShell | Absolute SharePoint Blog

SharePoint - Site URL Inaccessible from the Server

Despite you having set the 'alternate access mapping' e.g. http://domain.com/, and added the domain url into the server's hosts file, accessing the SharePoint site may encounter HTTP 401 authentication error from the server itself. This issue does not happen if you accessed it from outside.

One cause of this behaviour is related to the loopback security check the Windows server is doing. There are two workarounds as described by an article from Microsoft KB and the following are sufficient to make it work great for me.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
   
   
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
   
   
3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
   
   
4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
   
   
5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
   
   
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   
   
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

How to find out which w3wp.exe PID corresponds to which application pool?

Should we have more than one website hosted on IIS, it may be difficult to identify which web application is the one listed on the task manager especially when the application pools are all on Network Service.

Task Manager showing multiple w3wp.exe processes

Each w3wp.exe process has a PID (process identifier), but to tell which PID belongs to which application pool, it is not straightforward.

One method to find out the application pool is to run the appcmd command on command prompt from C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv directory.

appcmd list wp

appcmd command to show application pool of a PID

Simply match the PID against the application pool name. I hope it helps.

How do I enable ASP.NET 4.5 on Windows 10?

Despite you may have installed Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 on your Windows, IIS has to be installed and ASP.NET to be enabled separately.

To install IIS, you will need to turn on Internet Information Services feature.

The next step to get ASP.NET running is to enable ASP.NET. Prior to Windows 8, we used to run aspnet_regiis /i command. Unfortunately, this command no longer works. I have tried the following command instead to get ASP.NET enabled.

dism /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:IIS-ASPNET45

Misued mobile UX patterns

Do you follow well recognised design patterns when building web pages? They may be generally good but they can end up inappropriate. A UX director from Ustream wrote how common mobile UX patterns can be misused.

Learn Android and Web Development from Google for FREE

What is better than learning Android and Web Development from Google experts for FREE? Google courses hosted on Udacity caters for beginners to advanced developers are opened for enrolment.

An interesting perspective on Responsive Web Design and getting it right

An article on the Smashing Magazine has an interesting perspective on what is responsive web design and how to actually get it right. Taking note on the performance is the right approach.

» You May Be Losing Users If Responsive Web Design Is Your Only Mobile Strategy | Smashing Magazine

What are the differences between Visual Studio Community Edition (FREE) and the Express Editions?

If you are a developer working on Microsoft (or perhaps Linux since Microsoft is open-sourcing its .NET Core) platform, it is likely that you would have heard Microsoft releasing a rich featured edition of Visual Studio at absolutely ZERO cost. The new edition of the FREE Visual Studio is the Community Edition.

So what are the differences between the new Visual Studio Community Edition and the usual Express Editions? Before I begin, I would like to state that the Community Edition is in fact a Professional Edition but re-packaged and distributed at NO cost. The two main differences between Visual Studio Community Edition and the Express Editions are:

1. Visual Studio Express Editions do not allow users to use extensions (aka. plugins).
2. Visual Studio Express Editions are targeting specific platforms e.g. Web, Windows and Windows Desktop apps.

Download Microsoft Visual Studio now!

Handling 404 error page by showing set of suggested links

When a user attempts to follow a broken link or mistypes a url on a website, the user will often be redirected to a typical friendly "404 Not Found" web page so he knows what has happened, instead of throwing some ugly error message.

One way to enhance the experience would be to guess where the visitor intended to go and suggest that page or shows a list of possible pages. An article by the Smashing Magazine describes an approach that makes use of Google's Custom Search API for this purpose. Before embarking onto the implementing it on production, please do note that the free tier for this API has a limit of 100 calls per day.

» A Better 404 Page | Smashing Magazine

Periodic Table of Web Design Process

HTML Tags Accepted by Gmail

When sending a HTML email out, we often used some common HTML tags e.g. <br>, <font> and so on. An article, Gmail's HTML Tag Whitelist, on Quip publish a list of HTML tags known to be supported as well as unsupported by Gmail.

Supported HTML Tags

<a>
<abbr>
<acronym>
<address>
<area>
<b>
<bdo>
<big>
<blockquote>
<br>
<button>
<caption>
<center>
<cite>
<code>
<col>
<colgroup>
<dd>
<del>
<dfn>
<dir>
<div>
<dl>
<dt>
<em>
<fieldset>
<font>
<form>
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>
<h4>
<h5>
<h6>
<hr>
<i>
<img>
<input>
<ins>
<kbd>
<label>
<legend>
<li>
<map>
<menu>
<ol>
<optgroup>
<option>
<p>
<pre>
<q>
<s>
<samp>
<select>
<small>
<span>
<strike>
<strong>
<sub>
<sup>
<table>
<tbody>
<td>
<textarea>
<tfoot>
<th>
<thead>
<u>
<tr>
<tt>
<u>
<ul>
<var>

Unsupported HTML tags

<applet>
<article>
<aside>
<audio>
<base>
<basefont>
<bdi>
<bgsound>
<blink>
<body>
<canvas>
<content>
<data>
<datalist>
<decorator>
<details>
<dialog>
<element>
<embed>
<figcaption>
<figure>
<footer>
<frame>
<frameset>
<head>
<header>
<hgroup>
<html>
<iframe>
<isindex>
<keygen>
<link>
<listing>
<main>
<mark>
<marquee>
<menuitem>
<meta>
<meter>
<nav>
<nobr>
<noframes>
<noscript>
<object>
<output>
<param>
<picture>
<progress>
<rp>
<rt>
<ruby>
<script>
<section>
<shadow>
<source>
<spacer>
<style>
<summary>
<template>
<time>
<title>
<track>
<video>
<wbr>
<xmp>

If you have a whitelist for Outlook.com and Yahoo, do make a comment below.

Infographics: HTML5 - Past, Present & Future

An Introduction To Node.js And MongoDB

A comprehensive article on Node.js and MongoDB.

Many Are Into Responsive Design, So Should I?

Many websites are now moving into responsive design so that webpages load "nicely" on mobile devices. The technologies and frameworks are there but should you and I go into revamping websites and adopt responsive design?

Responsive Web Design Taking Pictures Into Consideration

Responsive web design with pages and images resized and aligned properly for mobile view will not be complete if the images downloaded are the full desktop version. For better design, do consider using element. Read more on the picture element here.

Improve Mobile Support With Server-Side-Enhanced Responsive Design

An article on the Smashing Magazine on how to improve mobile support with responsive design at server side. It also discusses on the balance to doing it on client and server side.

An interesting read.

Side Navigation Drawer or Tabbed Design?

The debate over whether to implement the now trendy side navigation drawer (a.k.a. hamburger menu) or stick to traditional tabbed design for a mobile website or app can go a long way. An article published on TheNextWeb summarised just when using side navigation is relevant.

My take-away from all of this is that if most of the user experience takes place in a single view, and it’s only things like user settings and options that need to be accessed in separate screens, then keeping the main UI nice and clean by burying those in a side menu is the way to go.
On the other hand, if your app has multiple views that users will engage with somewhat equally, then side navigation could be costing you a great deal of your potential user engagement, and interaction with those part of the app accessed via the side menu.

» UX designers: Side drawer navigation could be costing you half your user engagement | TheNextWeb

Learn HTML5 Easily in 6 hours

Impressive effort to teach HTML5 using a video.