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In my previous post I introduced a small script to extend the Edit Control Block (ECB) of list items and documents. The added menu items in the ECB allow users to update certain metadata fields for that item or document. The cool thing is that everything is happening in the background with the help of jQuery, even the actual updating of the data. The result: no postbacks or full page loads, pure AJAX goodness just like showcased in the SharePoint 2010 sneak peek videos. Today I’m releasing a new and improved version of the script, based on your feedback.

I’m pretty sure every SharePoint enthusiast has seen those great Sneak Peek videos Microsoft released some time ago. And I’m sure that lots of the new features shown were very exciting for lots of you. Since SharePoint 2010 is still quite far away in the future, let’s try to bring some of the 2010 stuff to SharePoint 2007! In the overview video, Tom Rizzo showed some new user interface functionality, pretty much all of it was heavily using asynchronous Javascript code to dynamically do updates, change layouts etc. All of this of course to prevent those nasty full page reloads. One of the features that caught my eye was the inline editing of list items or documents: without reloading the page, or opening a new page, it’s possible in SharePoint 2010 to edit meta data. Pretty cool! And I want to have it in my SharePoint sites, today.

I’m pretty sure everybody who is using SharePoint has sent a link to a document in a Document Library to somebody else (in an email message for example). So you probably know that links to documents (or list items) can become pretty long if the document is located in a Document Library on a site deeply buried in a hierarchy.

Note from Mark Miller: I’ve been watching Jan Tielens’ work with jQuery for a while now and am in complete awe of some of the things he has accomplished. I’m very pleased to be able to cross-post his article on the “Search-as-You-Type” web part.