Display a random picture on your home page

In my last post I introduced the URL protocol for SharePoint lists. Today, let’s see how to use it to display a random picture on a page.

You’ll find other examples on the Web that are based on the same principle. Here is a very popular slide show from Todd Bleeker:
http://www.mindsharpblogs.com/todd/archive/2006/12/20/1431.aspx

A major difference with the above example is that my code is cross-browser (IE and Firefox), as is usually the case for the other scripts I publish. In this case in particular the behavior of Internet Explorer 7 is actually closer to Firefox than to IE 6.

Using the RPC method via the URL Protocol

Here is a game to play with fellow SharePoint addicts (don’t try it with your family…): list all the options you are aware of to retrieve the content of a SharePoint list. This could actually be an interesting way to kick off a SharePoint workshop with advanced users.

For me, the URL protocol of the RPC method is one of the most intriguing. In this post we are going to experiment with it. Then in my next post I’ll put it to work, to display random pictures on a SharePoint page.