If you develop a SharePoint Application with Visual Studio 2010, e.g. a Console Aplication, you may get an FileNotFoundException.

For example in this code (program.cs):

namespace DemoConsoleApp
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
           SPSite site = new SPSite("http://sharepoint.local");  //<<--- FileNotFoundException
           SPWeb web = site.RootWeb;
           //your code here

        }
    }
}

I’ve maked the line of code where you may receive the exception.

I solved the problem by setting the platform target in the project settings: Go to “project settings”, select “Build” tab, set “Platform target” setting to the architecture of your platform. I always use “x64” there. – After that the exception is gone.

In the last weeks I’ve extended the sample project that I’ve created for “Ribbon Customization”. You find the project source code on Codeplex:

• http://spcustomribbondemo.codeplex.com/

The related articles on my blog are:

• Part 1: How To Activate SharePoint Ribbon Tab by JavaScript Code
• Part 2: Sample Visual Studio 2010 project for creating a custom SharePoint 2010 Ribbon tab on runtime (!)
• Part 3: Additional Ribbon Sample: Custom Ribbon Tab generated by a delegate control that lists all associated list workflows and allow to start a workflow on a selected list item.

There are lots of excellent articles out there about SharePoint 2010 Ribbon customization.

Some articles that helped me:

• Chris O’Brien’s Blog – Customize the ribbon programmatically from web parts and field controls
• Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
• Elumenotion Blog – Code to Hide the Ribbon and Site Actions Menu for Anonymous Users
• Makarand Kulkarni’s Blog – SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Customization Part I: Architecture of Ribbon

Especially the first blog post in the above list leaves a question open: "Using client-side code to show ribbon items".

I had the same problem: How to activate a custom SharePoint Ribbon tab by JavaScript code?

After some reading in SharePoint standard JavaScript files I found the solution. I used some jQuery too:

1: $(document).ready(function  () {

2:     ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(salesappActiveRibbonTab, "sp.ribbon.js" );

3:

4:     function  salesappActiveRibbonTab() {

5:         try  {

6:             _ribbonStartInit("MyApp.SharePoint.Ribbon.CustomTab" , false , null );

7:         } catch  (e) {

8:         };

9:     };

10: });

This allows me to activate my custom Ribbon tab with ID "MyApp.SharePoint.Ribbon.CustomTab" by JavaScript code. It works pretty fine!

Update 1

Meanwhile I created an test project for adding a custom ribbon tab while runtime. There I have had the problem, that the ribbon was created correctly BUT was not activated thru the code above. After some debugging of MS Ribbon JavaScript I created the following code:

var ribbontestintervall = null;

function RibbonTestActiveRibbonTab2() {     try {         window.clearInterval(ribbontestintervall);

        if (typeof (_ribbonStartInit) == "function")             _ribbonStartInit('RibbonTest.SharePoint.Ribbon.CustomTab', false, null);

        if (true && typeof (_ribbonReadyForInit) == 'function' && !_ribbonReadyForInit()) {             ribbontestintervall = window.setInterval("RibbonTestActiveRibbonTab2()", 1000);         }     } catch (e2) {     };
};

So the Browser retries the activation of the tab as long as it works.

Update 2 (2011/01/14)

See my new post and sample project on CodePlex :

Sample Visual Studio 2010 project for creating a custom SharePoint 2010 Ribbon tab on runtime (!)

Update 3 (2011/03/03)

Next part posted today. See the part list at the top of this blog post.