SharePoint 2013 | View post on anonymous blog asking for auth?

So, SharePoint 2013 has a lovely feature that is automatically enabled when a site or at-least parts of a site are set to allow anonymous access, this feature is "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode" it stops anonymous users from seeing SP system pages, it is a very useful security feature and in previous versions of SP, it is automatically disabled when the site is set to allow anonymous, 2013 being a more security conscious beast sets it by default.

Why is this an issue? a blog is just a normal site with pages in a library? not so!

A blog site consists of 

1. a homepage (viewable with anon, perfectly fine)
2. a Comments list (adding comments as anonymous is also fun and games!)
3. a Posts list (all blog articles are posts, and here is where the problem lies, clicking on a post on the homepage takes the user to the "view form" for that list item, hence a system page! so it is automatically locked down

So with this you really have two options:

1. Disable the “Limited-access user permission lockdown mode” Site Collection Feature (see the side effects below)
2. Create a custom view and list web part, all in a pages library

Both options are valid but choose carefully, they both entail extra work, disabling the lockdown feature does the following:

Allows list pages and system pages applicable to a read user to be viewable anonymously, so a user can navigate to those pages and see the lists, all left hand nav panels will show Site Contents and any other previously restricted links, so you end up needing to hide the links and need to be wary of anonymous visitors seeing your sites lists and libraries

SharePoint 2013 | Arabic display templates issues

I had another lovely issue recently, i created a set of display templates for different languages, all worked fine except Arabic, when the html file was uploaded the JS would get generated but as a "Design File", so the CSWPs wouldn't pick it up, tried changing the CT manually and it errored out saying the master page gallery didn't have the right fields.

The solution was to install SP1 and SP1 for the language packs, save yourself time, make sure you have a properly patched server!

Surface 3 Pro as a web development machine

A few weeks ago I obtained a surface 3 pro (128gb/4gb), since then I have been using it constantly as my main machine in an effort to see if and how it can be used as a development machine, before this I was using a Lenovo Z500 (8GB ram, i7 3rd gen, 1tb disk) so I naturally compare the performance and use of the surface to that.

The work I do in a day to day basis:

• PHP dev (LAMP server, VS 2013)
• Powershell (ISE/prompt x 2)
• ASP.net Dev (2-5 dev sites up at any time, all with VS 2013)
• SharePoint Dev (SPD 2010/2013, VS 2010/2012/2013)
• Graphic Design (Paint.Net, Photoshop)
• Presentations and demoing (Office Suite, Lync, Camtasia)

So I main needs for a laptop are:

• It needs to be Quick
• Can handle the masses of chrome and IE tabs I have open along with a few instances of VS and a few RDP sessions
• Portable (I generally carry it for atleast 2h/day)

The Good

• The battery can generally see me through an entire workday without needing to charge, very useful for travelling
• The plug has a USB charger built in
• The build of the Surface is spot on, its solid and all the parts work well together
• Size means its easy to use in smaller spaces
• Nice in-built sound, for those spotify/netflix moments
• Type keyboard feels good when typing, feeling like a miz beterrn a mac pro keyboard and the awesome old "tappy" keyboards
• Its very portable, being list and small, the kick stand being able to pivot to most positions makes it great to have on most types of desk
• The InstantGo functionality is nice, meaning you can just close the keyboard over the screen and the surface instantly goes into a sleep state, you can carry it around for hours and it wont loose almost any battery in that stage, great when you are about to make a demo or a presentation, one less thing the demo gods can smite you with! 

The Bad

• The touch screen functionality in windows 8.1 still doesn’t really cut it when you need to use a lot of selecting so a mouse is needed
• Use of display port means I have to carry a box of different cables around (VGA/HDMI/Ethernet) to connect to a wired network or to any external screen
• 4GB of ram means occasionally being selective on the apps I have open and almost no possibility for on-box VM's, but with teh readily available Azure VM's, there isnt really a need to have the local VM's, atleast in the way we used to need them so this isnt much of an issue
• Screensize can be a bit small, recommend docking it to a larger screen

Conclusion

I have found this to be a brilliant replacement for a the z500 laptop, it can rip through almost any work quickly, my biggest issue with it is the size of the screen, when developing on it, due to the nice resolution it means code can be hard to see, but of course if you have an office space, a doc and a 24inch monitor solves that very easily and cheaply.

Now i have been using this for weeks i cant see the need to go back to a full laptop unless you need that extra grunt for VM's or a few instances of Photoshop and other apps open

Ofcourse it depends on what you are looking for and the type of intensive web dev you do, based on my needs it ticked every box, i would use this for everything apart from local VM's