Ellipses and Rendering Limits

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

SharePoint Foundation displays an ellipsis in the mobile device viewer when the text length of a field exceeds a limit that is set in the mobile web.config file (located in %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\MOBILE). In mobile Edit forms for items containing large amounts of data, SharePoint Foundation disables field editing per field type to avoid data loss when the contents exceed a specified limit. In both cases, mobile rendering limits determine what is displayed in the mobile device.

Rendering limits define not only text length limits for ellipsis rendering used in mobile controls, but also the number of options displayed in the controls. For a list of the rendering limits and their default values, see the table at the end of this topic.

Two Ways to Configure Limits

Rendering limits are determined in one of two ways:

• Farm wide default limits are set in the mobile web.config file, which can be edited.

• The default limits can be overridden programmatically on a per Web site basis through the Properties property of the SPWeb. Modifications you make through Web properties are not inherited by subsites.

Modifying the Mobile Web.config File

Each limit setting in the mobile web.config is represented as a key-and-value pair within the <appSettings> section of the file—for example, <add key="mobile_webtitlelimit" value="20" />. If the configuration for a text length limitation is set to 0 or no entry is specified, ellipsis rendering is turned off for that key.

Overriding Defaults per Web Site with the Object Model

To allow customization of rendering limits per Web site, SharePoint Foundation first determines whether the property bag (the Properties property) of the SPWeb object stores the rendering limit parameter. If so, the value stored by the property bag specifies the rendering limit; otherwise, the value stored in web.config specifies the rendering limit. Hence, property bag settings for a particular site override the farm settings in the mobile web.config.

To change the rendering limit for a mobile control, add a property to the property bag (SPPropertyBag) object in the Properties property. The following example shows how to change the rendering limit for list titles of a specific Web site to 256 characters.

SPWeb webSite = SPContext.Current.Site.AllWebs["MyWebSite"];
webSite.Properties["mobile_listtitlelimit"] = "256";
webSite.Properties.Update();

Dim webSite As SPWeb = SPContext.Current.Site.AllWebs("MyWebSite")
webSite.Properties("mobile_listtitlelimit") = "256"
webSite.Properties.Update()

The example requires using directives (Imports in Visual Basic) for the Microsoft.SharePoint and Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities namespaces.

Rendering Limits

The following table describes the rendering limit parameters used in mobile pages and shows their default maximum values. The unit of measure is character, regardless of half-width or full-width character.