Hexo, a Node.js Blog Platform

It's been five years since I wrote my first blog post, a look at XSLT that still gets pretty good traffic. I chose Blogger because it was free and easy, and the fact Google owned it gave me some confidence it would stick around.  But it's been feeling like less and less of a good fit recently.

Dipping a Toe into Open Source Development

I spent some time this weekend shaping my Gutter Icon code into a proper Github repo:

1. I took the class file and put it into a separate project.
2. I replaced the old namespace "SitecorePlayground" with the more official  sounding "SharedSource".
3. I serialized the Core content item that wires this up.
4. I created a package with the DLL and and the content item, and tested them in a blank solution.
5. I browsed among the various open source licences here and selected this one.
6. I put the whole thing on Github and added a Wiki.

Next step, getting it on trac.sitecore.net!  A fair bit of work for 20 lines of code, but quite satisfying.  Please comment if you end up using this in your Sitecore installation.  

Creating a Gutter Icon for Proxies

One of the true joys of Sitecore is the ease of customization.  We use proxies fairly extensively on our site, and a colleague recently complained that the Content Editor did not give a clear indication of whether an item is a proxy, and what is its source.  This inspired me to see if I could add a gutter icon to identify proxies, similar to the gutter clones icon that ships with Sitecore 6.4.   (The "gutter" is the area to the left of the content tree with icons, such as "My Locked Items", that can be toggled on and off.)  Like the clones icon, I wanted one that would navigate to the source item when clicked.  This is a fairly straightforward task, but I did have to lean on ReSharper's decompiler to see how the Sitecore guys built the clones icon.