Learn MS .NET

While looking through my RSS Feed I ran across Randy Walker's blog post about the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Training Kit being available. I thought it would be a good link to provide to everyone who reads my blog as well as placing it here as a reminder for me to download and take a good look at it.

OverView

The Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.

The Kit can be downloaded at Microsoft here.

Microsoft has released one full E-book on LINQ from Microsoft Press called Introducing Microsoft LINQ as well as providing a couple of chapters from two other books that they are publishing.  The other two are Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX and Introducing Microsoft SILVERLIGHT 1.0.

Introducing Microsoft LINQ
by Paulo Pialorsi and Marco Russo

ISBN: 9780735623910

Product Description

Data-rich applications can be difficult to create because of the tremendous differences between query languages used to access data and programming languages commonly used to write applications. This practical guide introduces LINQ, a set of extensions to the Microsoft Visual C# and Microsoft Visual Basic programming languages.

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: C# Language Features
• Chapter 3: Visual Basic 9 Language Features
• Chapter 4: LINQ Syntax Fundamentals
• Chapter 5: LINQ to ADO.NET
• Chapter 6: LINQ to XML

Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX
by Dino Esposito

ISBN: 9780735624139

Product Description

Get an expert introduction to the new JavaScript enhancements for Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0. More than a basic AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) script library, the Microsoft implementation brings object orientation to JavaScript, together with enhanced client-side and server-side controls that greatly simplify coding while delivering enhanced Web experiences with any browser.

• Chapter 1: The AJAX Revolution
• Chapter 5: The AJAX Control Toolkit

Introducing Microsoft SilverLight 1.0
by Laurence Moroney

ISBN: 9780735625396

Product Description

Get a first look at Microsoft Silverlight with this practical introduction. This ideal reference delivers pragmatic advice, from in an insider s perspective, of how the tool was developed from concept to release. An expert on Silverlight and a Technical Evangelist on the Silverlight team delivers a first look at the new cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in and details the relationships among Silverlight and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 technologies.

• Chapter 1: SilverLight and User Experience
• Chapter 5: Programming SilverLight with JavaScript

The free E-Book and free chapters can be downloaded from here.

This article first appeared in LearnMSNET.com on June 25, 2003

Many of the web developers that are currently moving to ASP.NET were previously ASP developers, which made them used to developing their script code inline with the HTML.

This coding style of using inline code is still available within the ASP.NET framework, but a new coding style designed for large team development has also been introduced with ASP.NET this has been dubbed code-behind.

This coding style places all the code that is to be executed by the server into separate files for each .aspx page.  This allows web designers who specialize in the HTML development of a site, and application developers who specialize in the programming logic of the site to work together in a way that the page designer does not disturb the code in the page.  This also allows a company who is interested in protecting it’s investment or who are developing web applications for resale to distribute just the .aspx files and the compiled code-behind files as a .dll file for the site.

There are three ways of working with .aspx pages.

1. Inline code that is compiled on the web server as it is needed.
2. Code-behind files that are compiled into a .dll file and then removed from production.
3. Code-behind files that are compiled on the web server as they are needed.

With these options in mind it becomes very important to consider how a developer will work with .aspx pages in ASP.NET.  Along with the tools that will be used to develop these pages.  Currently the most popular way of developing is with either Web Matrix which is available from http://www.asp.net/ or to use Visual Studio 2008.  Not to say there aren’t other tools out there to develop .aspx pages because there are.

More...

Well after receiving Visual Studio 2008 yesterday.  I proceeded to get my update done and see how the final product compared to the last Beta of the product I had used.

Prior to me receiving my copy of Visual Studio 2008 I had read Scott Guthrie's Blog post on "Steps to Uninstall VS 2008 Beta2 before installing the VS 2008 Final Release". This had given me a head start or preparing to do the upgrade.

Although even with this knowledge I did forget to uninstall one of the components from the Beta 2 build.  I was impressed when the install caught this and let me know about it prior to allowing me to install the RTM version.  I had forgotten to uninstall the MSDN Library.

After installing I ran visual studio and have not had any issues with the product so far as any bugs have been found, but I have ran across an issue with developing modules for DotNetNuke which I will be addressing in another blog post later today or tomorrow.

Yesterday, marked the RTM release of Visual Studio 2008 Standard, Professional and Team System to MSDN subscriptions.  This edition makes some significant improvements to developing applications for the web.  They have integrated the editor that is used within the expressions web tool to allow split window development of code viewing and WYSIWYG editing at the same time.

With the release of Visual Studio 2008, they also released .NET Framework 3.5 as well.  Version 3.5 includes the much talked about LINQ (Language Integrated Query) and data awareness.  This allows you to write queries in LINQ enabled languages to fully manipulate SQL Data, collections, XML and DataSets.

The following Express editions are now available for download:

• Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition
• Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition

The express editions allow for hobbyists or students to get interested in creating applications and has a great way to see some of the improvements in the products.

Scott Guthrie provided a great listing of the features and capabilities of Visual Studio 2008 yesterday in his blog.

All in all this was an important release for anyone that is heavily involved in web application development with some of the advances that have been added to this edition it will make a much needed upgrade from previous versions.

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 to the public for anyone interested in testing out what is coming to developers in the future.

Their download page found here, contains information about the new visual studio as well as downloads for the Standard, Professional, Team Suite and Team Foundation Server.  They have provided installation images as well as VPC images to get you up and running quickly with the product.

Scott Guthrie one of my favorite Microsoft employees, provides us with his insight into not only the new Visual Studio, but also the new features of the .NET languages.  In his blog series this summer he has been discussing LINQ which is an overall querying programming model.

His most recent blog post, found here, discusses and an add-in to the new Visual Studio 2008 which can be downloaded from his post.  This add-in allows the visual debugging and testing of your LINQ statements in your code.

If your interested in LINQ this is a must to take a look at.