TOOLS

This is the first of 4 articles on using containers for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) development.

Disclaimer

While I have learned a lot about containers over the last 2 years, I do not claim to be the final authority on this topic. My goal over these next 4 articles is share what I have learned and how I use that knowledge in my daily life as a SPFx developer. Containers are not just for SPFx but work on many developer technologies. In fact, I used containers, primarily Codespaces, to write this blog, which uses Hugo/Go. I encourage you to do the research and make your life easier.

Recently, I had to set up a new development machine. These days, my primary development tasks are centered around SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions, so setting that up was my first goal. Everything was going smoothly until I tried to install the certificate that the development web server needs for developing SPFx solutions. From there, I descended down the certificate rabbit hole. After a couple of days of research and asking everyone I know for help, I was finally able to complete the task and decided that I better document it before I forget.

I’m always excited when I earn a certification, but some are more special than others. I have been working for over a year to learn all the skills needed to earn the Microsoft 365 Developer Associate certification. While I have been working as a SharePoint developer for almost 15 years, most of my work has been in very specific areas, like webparts or apps. Certifications normally require more skills than one person would have experience in, even someone doing this as long as I have. MS-600, which is the only exam needed for the certification, covers several areas that I just don’t operate in every day. It has taken a while for me to get comfortable in those areas.

Have you ever found yourself looking for an icon, but not able to quite track down the perfect one? Between SPFx projects and the new modern list formatting capabilities in Microsoft 365, I am often looking for the icon to perfectly represent my idea. Until now, this process involved browsing through the Fluent UI website in hopes that I will stumble across one that works. Now there is a better way: Flicon.io

This new site is the brainchild of Chris Kent, Microsoft Office Development MVP and speaker extraordinaire. As a member of the Microsoft 365 PnP Core team, Chris spends a lot of time working on samples of List formatting, often using icons in those samples. I’m betting that he got tired of trying to find appropriate icons for his entertaining demos on the weekly “Sharing Is Caring” calls and decided to build a better solution. The problem with the current process is that you can only search for icons by name and often the name does not fit into the category of icon you are looking for.

Flicon.io is a tool that lets you search for icons based on categories and tags that have been associated with each icon instead of just the name. Let’s take a look at how that works.

So this post falls into the category of “How old where you when you found out…?” The question is answered “I was today years old” because that’s how the question usually works. This was one of those days.

I was listening to a recording of the bi-weekly “Microsoft 365 Developer SIG community call,” which happens on the 4th Thursday of every month. (The Microsoft 365 Platform community calls are all worth checking out and each of them is recorded and then uploaded to Youtube within 24 hours of the live event. Find out more info here: aka.ms/m365pnp) Part of the call was a demo by MVP Chris Kent on custom formatting in lists and he was showing how to use emojis in the formatting. Again, his demos are “must see TV,” both for content and entertainment value.

As the development pendulum has swung back to the “front end,” I find a majority of my time in VS Code. Back in the early days of VS Code, I missed the rich toolset of Visual Studio, but as I became more comfortable with the combination of command line and graphical interfaces in VS Code, as well as the explosion of awesome extensions for VS Code, I found myself opening Visual Studio less and less. (Honestly, when I open Visual Studio these days, it’s because the icon is next to VS Code in my taskbar and I accidentally click the wrong one. As long as it’s open, I apply the latest updates and close it back down.)