I’ve gatherered a few productive tips for using JavaScript within SharePoint. The below commands can be used within webparts etc. or directly in the browser’s address field while you’re on a SharePoint page, like this:

Putting javascript: in front of your script snippet will fire it right there and then.

These commands are neither terribly advanced nor applicable on all pages, but they make for a useful reference all the same. I aim to continually update this page with new content so if you have any JavaScript tips, feel free to drop them in the comments.

Edit an application page: MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode()

This enables edit mode on SharePoint’s application pages, like EditForm.aspx, DispForm.aspx etc. so you can insert web parts above or below the normal content:

Pop-up an alert with the User ID og the logged-in user: alert(_spUserId)

Enable the Edit toolbar: javascript:__doPostBack(‘ctl00$PlaceHolderTopNavBar$SiteActionsMenuMain$ctl00$wsaShowMenu_CmsActionControl’,'reviewPage’)

Simply enables the toolbar where you can access the page edit functions:

Hide the Edit toolbar: __doPostBack(‘ctl00$PlaceHolderTopNavBar$SiteActionsMenuMain$ctl00$wsaHideMenu_CmsActionControl’,'exitMenu’)

No prizes for guessing this one.

Show help: TopHelpButtonClick(‘NavBarHelpHome’)

Pops up the built-in help page. Interestingly, you can try this on Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference web site:

If you have worked with a localised version of SharePoint you may have encountered the annoying RTF editor script error.

Basically, the problem renders all instances of the RTF editor unusable, across the MOSS installation due to a common javascript error.

Symptoms

Every time a user opens an RTF editor and starts typing, a JavaScript error is fired, making typing almost impossible. This problem seems to be present in only some installations of SharePoint with regional language packs installed.

Here’s a screenshot of a Danish RTF editor with the script error:

The screenshot is from an English MOSS server with  the Danish language pack installed.

As annoying as the script error may be, it’s even more aggrevating that the error doesn’t occur on all servers with this exact setup. This means you can’t predict if a server is going to have this problem, purely based on the configuration.

Cause

The problem seems to be caused by bad code in one or more of the JavaScript files in the LAYOUTS folder. As you may know, the LAYOUTS folder is common for all sites on the MOSS server, i.e. all folders named _layouts is mapped to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS.

I can only speculate about how this can happen, but perhaps some versions (but not all) of the language packs include faulty JavaScript files. This could explain why this problem doesn’t occur on all MOSS servers with language packs.

Solution

Microsoft hasn’t released any fixes to counter this problem and there is no indication as to when or, indeed, if this will happen.

Obviously, my client needed a fix ASAP and this is what I came up with:

First, I installed Fiddler HTTP Debugger to determine which JavaScript files load when the RTF editor is launched.

Fiddler came up with the following list of files:

Note that 1030 directory is where the Danish files are located (1033 is English).

I now had a fairly good idea of where the bug was located but I didn’t have the patience to go through all that JavaScript code! Instead I copied the above 7 files from a healthy MOSS server (with Danish language pack) – and lo and behold – everything worked just fine.

My money is on HtmlEditor.js as the most likely culprit but I haven’t checked up on this.