I had the privilege to deliver a talk for the folks of Scope International at their office last Thursday (26 Mar 09). Scope International is the IT arm of Standard Chartered Bank and they develop LOB applications to cater for the needs of Standard Chartered Bank users worldwide.
All thanks to Raymond Cheong who help arranged the session (and created a nice EDM for the talk) and the Training Dept for making this a success.
You can download the new VSeWSS 1.3 March 2009 CTP now.
New features in version 1.3 include:
- Can be installed on x64 Server OS machines running SharePoint x64. Previously only x86 Server OS could be used
- Separate build commands for package, deploy and retract are added as Visual Studio menu items
- WSP View improvements for consistency of deleting feature elements, merging features and adding event receivers to features
- Command line build, package and retract commands are included enabling continuous integration and build servers. Previously command line build of SharePoint projects was very difficult
- Refactoring support for renaming of Web Parts. Previously renaming a web part required changes in several files in the project
- Solution Generator can now generate solutions from publishing sites. Previously only regular sites could be generated
- Allowing partial trust BIN deployments of web parts
- New project item template for SharePoint RootFiles items
- Deployment will now optionally remove conflicting existing features on the development server prior to redeployment. Previously any feature name conflicts would result in an error
- Ancillary assemblies such as for business logic can now be added to the SharePoint Solution WSP
- Hidden features related to Site Definition projects are now shown in WSP View. They are no longer hidden
- For advanced users a fast deploy is included to update only the compiled assembly on the SharePoint development installation
- Deployment step logging is included
- The List Definition from Content Type template now allows for the creation of a List Definition Event Receiver
- The User Guide is now installed with the extensions instead of being a separate download
What is a surprising to me from the VSeWSS team is a release of a set of 10 new theme projects for VSeWSS. These are individual Visual Studio 2008 projects which when deployed to SharePoint offer fresh new designed themes you can use in your projects. As the preview pic above, the themes are nicely designed.
Downloaded some of the projects which I feel useful from Codeplex and uploaded to Live SkyDrive (just in case some of the projects got shutdown)
Nevertheless if you keen to find out more about those SharePoint projects here is the list
DataForm webpart without SharePoint Designer
http://wicklunddataformwp.codeplex.com/
SharePoint Tool Basket
http://sptoolbasket.codeplex.com/
Lookup With Picker
http://lookupwithpicker.codeplex.com
Using ASP.NET MVC with SharePoint
http://sharepointmvc.codeplex.com/
SharePoint Calculated Field Icon Set
http://iconset.codeplex.com/
Connected lookup
http://cl.codeplex.com
SharePoint List display setup
http://splistdisplaysetting.codeplex.com/
I Love SharePoint
http://ilovesharepoint.codeplex.com/
SharePoint List Association Manager
http://slam.codeplex.com
And here is the link to my SkyDrive folder.
2nd day since I arrived at KL and still experiencing jet lag. So blogging is a good activity when I wake up early in the morning. All in all the trip was good as I learnt a lot of new stuff on SharePoint vNext and also met some cool people like Joel Olson, Lisa Feigenbaum, Doug Mahugh, Bob Fox and the list goes on. As any huge conference, people will get motivated by the sheer amount of talents in the summit and come back fully charged to do something great for the community.
If you want to read about what I learnt in MVP Summit and I have to say sorry because all the stuff shown in the summit are under NDA! As usual the Office + SharePoint team is very tight lip about their product development schedule and you see little info in the web. But as SharePoint developer and you are wondering what is in store for you in vNext of Visual Studio (aka VS 2010) then you should check out Somasegar’s blog post here about new SharePoint Tools feature that come out of the box with Visual Studio 2010.
Besides from you will be able to quickly navigate and browse your Sharepoint site directly in Visual Studio with use the Server Explorer; the new Visual Studio 2010 designers can be used to create Web Parts, application pages, and user controls for a SharePoint site. You got to check out the screenshots in the post here.
http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/02/19/sharepoint-tools-support-in-visual-studio.aspx
Unfortunately what is shown in the blog is not available in the public download of VS2010 CTP here. https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/content/content.aspx?ContentID=9790
But if you want to check out some of the photos I took during my trip in US, you can go to my Live Photos side here.
https://cid-732d1d42507315a3.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/MVP%20Summit%202009%20@Seattle?link=1
Photos when I was in San Francisco
https://cid-732d1d42507315a3.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/San%20Francisco%20Mar%2009
https://cid-732d1d42507315a3.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/San%20Francisco%20Mar%2009%20Part%202
I manage to grab a few pics of Mount Shasta at California when I drove back from San Fran to Seattle
https://cid-732d1d42507315a3.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/San%20Francisco%20Mar%2009%20Part%202/Mount%20Shasta,%20California
Woa, my first post for 2009! Been busy since the beginning of the year and was doing a lot of research for customer engagements and presentations. One of the big presentation happens today at KLCC Convention Centre called TechNet MSDN Technology Summit. It’s a mini TechEd and focuses on technology update for our board technical audience.
As I promised in the talk, all references will go to my website here. So below are links to some of the resources I used in my talk.
SharePoint Branding- CSS and Master Pages
SharePoint Branding - Packaging your design into a ShaePoint Feature
Custom Site Theme for SharePoint 2007
SharePoint 2007 Theme Generator
Package your content design
Heather Solomon’s blog
And here is my slides deck
According to the website,
The new Microsoft Certified Master series offers advanced technical training and certifications on Microsoft technologies that go beyond any product training offered outside of Microsoft today. IT professionals who successfully complete the training program and certification testing validate their skills as product experts who successfully design and implement solutions that meet the most complex business requirements.
Mind you, this is not a certificate you can get by studying brain dump, candidates are required to attend a 3 weeks training at MIcrosoft’s Redmond campus, passes 3 written exams and one lab exam. Like Cisco Certified Master, I think the hardest test to pass is the lab exam where actual production issues are simulated and candidates are required to solve it in the given timeframe.
How much is the cost? Since it’s the master cert, and you got to go to Redmond to learn from the gurus, the whole cost training + exams will cost you USD18,500. The 3-weeks training is valuable regardless whether you pass the exams or not because it is taught by people (or master I should say) who really know their stuff.
Below are technologies offered in the MSM program
- Exchange 2007
- SQL Server 2008
- Active Directory
- SharePoint Server 2007
- Office Communications Server 2007
So you think this is very ‘geng’? MCM can go for the new Microsoft Certified Architect (Technology focus) program here after they got the cert. Its different from existing MCA (Solutions/ Infra) programs which are technology agnostic.
The Microsoft Patterns and Practices team have recommended using Isolator for Unit Testing a Microsoft SharePoint application, and their newly released SharePoint Guidance requires Typemock Isolator to run the Training Management application’s unit tests.
“Typemock Isolator is a great way to open up the world of unit testing to SharePoint developers. Unit testing SharePoint applications is an important part of our soon to be released P&P SharePoint Guidance and Typemock Isolator is integral to our unit testing guidance.”
In conjunction with the launch, Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.
The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.
Today there is no build in support for SharePoint found inside Visual Studio 2008 except the SharePoint workflow project. If you want to create studd like Site Definition etc. you need to download the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools for Visual Studio. It is available for VS2005 as well as VS2008. So in TechEd EMEA 2008, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint will be build in for VS2010.
Channel 9 did an interview with Reza Chrisaz on what are the new features in VS2010 for SharePoint developers. You can download the video here. I list down some of Reza’s Key callouts
SharePoint project templates build-in for VS2010
At last!! Visual designer for SharePoint webparts!!
Exploring SharePoint artifacts inside Server Explorer
Package Explorer - sort of like the one we have with VseWSS today
One of my favourite feature - the feature explorer
Adding Solution to TFS source control with Team Build and nightly build support
Announced by Paul Andrew today, the Hands On Labs and VPC for learning SharePoint development in www.mssharepointdeveloper.com have been updated to use Visual Studio 2008 as development tool. Previously the content was meant to be used with VS2005. This brings huge improvement especially on the development of SharePoint Workflow.
I also realized the PowerPoint slides have been updated and can be downloaded here.
SPUG (http://www.sharepointgroups.org/myspug) is helping to introduce SharePoint introduction courseware into the successful Start.NET (www.microsoft.com/malaysia/dotnet/) program in Malaysia. Last Thursday and Friday I organized a workshop to train 7 Microsoft Certified Trainers from 5 CPLS from Klang Valley on the course.
Would like to thank all MCTs Renga, Richard, Ervin, Daqing, Glentt, Chris, and Seok Chern for the support!!
Also thank folks from SPUG esp Y-Mi (SharePoint MVP), Matthew, Eng Guan and Nagen for helping out with the content.
