Sandrino Di Mattia

New SharePoint 2010 Exams Available in July

Exams

In the last MCP flash Microsoft announced the availability of SharePoint 2010 Exams:

• 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development
  This exam is designed to test the candidate's knowledge and skills on developing applications on the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 platform.
   
• 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications
  This exam is designed to test the candidate's knowledge and skills on designing developing applications on the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 platform.
   
• 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring
  This exam is intended to validate the configuration skills needed to administer a SharePoint 2010 installation.
   
• 70-668 PRO: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Administrator
  This exam validates the skills needed to administer SharePoint 2010.

These exams will be available July 12th.

Resources

To study for the exams you'll need books.
But the only decent book (already available) I found was Beginning SharePoint 2010 Administration: Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Aside from that book you'll want to get  a Safari Books Online subscription.
They offer "Rough Cuts" of books still in development and also online video courses.

• SharePoint Development with Visual Studio 2010 (Rough Cuts)
• Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning (Rough Cuts)
• Sams Teach Yourself SharePoint Foundation 2010 in 24 Hours (Rough Cuts)
• SharePoint 2010 Development (Video Training): 10 Solutions Every SharePoint Developer Should Know How to Create (Video Course)

There are also the free online videos:

• SharePoint Connections 2010 sessions
• Technet videos
• Channel9 videos

And finally there's the community. Blogs, community sites, CodePlex, ...
This is also a great resource to get acquainted to SharePoint.

Enough material to start with your preparations!

Posted: Jun 18 2010, 09:35 by Sandrino | Comments (0) |

Filed under: SharePoint

Complete Expression Blend and Silverlight 5 day OnRamp training course: All videos, all assets, download scripts in one place

Since my last post with a few assets regarding the Expression Blend and Silverlight 5 day OnRamp training course I received a lot of mails from people asking a download link for the training.
After a long long search I finally found the training course on the official Expression site.

This article lists all the videos and all the assets available on the Expression site and Microsoft.com downloads.
At the end of the article you'll also find a short guide and scripts on how to download everything in batch. 

Day 1

Part 1: An introduction to Silverlight and Expression Blend (part 1)

Assets

The following new downloads are available:

• Add Markers to a Video in Expression Encoder
• Animated overlays in Expression Encoder
• Animating with Blends storyboard feature
• Building a basic layout in SketchFlow
• BeeHive Module 1
• BeeHive Module 2
• BeeHive Module 3
• BeeHive Module 4
• BeeHive Module 5
• BeeHive Module 6
• BeeHive Module 7
• BeeHive Module 9
• BeeHive Module 10
• Creating and using an XML Datasource
• Creating a Video Brush
• Creating Effects with Pixel Shaders
• Creating Opacity Masks
• Creating Visual Transitions (with Storyboards)
• Customize Expression Encoder Silverlight Templates Using Blend
• Databinding to Control Properties
• Debugging Exceptions in Visual Studio
• Encoding a video
• Editing in Expression Encoder
• How to Create a Hyperlinked Image Button
• Integrating Silverlight into your website
• Introduction to Styles
• Introduction to Expression Encoder
• Making a slider control
• Metadata_Markers and Silverlight
• Publishing a Silverlight Photo Album in WordPress
• Reusing and Customizing User Controls
• Reusing Interactive Code with Behaviors
• Run Time StoryBoarding
• Sharing Your Site
• Tour of the Expression Blend Workspace
• Using 3D Projection in Blend
• Using States to Create User Interactions
• Using Custom Images as Sample Data
• Using SketchFlow to create a website prototype
• Uncover the hidden power of the Visual State Manager
• Using an ObjectDataSource in Expression Blend
• Using Markers to Trigger events in a video player
• Using Sample Data and Modifying the ListBox 
• Using Sketch Style Controls to Enhance a SketchFlow Layout
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Working with Behaviors in SketchFlow
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Adding Feedback and Annotations in the SketchFlow Player
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Working with the SketchFlow Animation Panel
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Exporting your SketchFlow Project
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Using Sample Data in SketchFlow
• Working with Components in a SketchFlow Project: Working with States in SketchFlow
• Working With Clipping Paths in Expression Blend
• Working with Layout Tools
• Working with Projection Properties to Create a 3D Image Carousel

Older downloads that were posted before:

• Adding Video and Still Images to Your Silverlight Project
• Adding Interactivity to Imported Art Assets
• Creating visual transitions with the Visual State Manager
• Creating Storyboard animations in Blend
• Creating vector artwork in Expression Blend
• Designer Developer Workflow
• Editing the Appearance of Your Project Items using Expression Blend
• Importing Artwork into Expression Blend
• Importing Native Adobe Illustrator Files
• Importing Native Adobe Photoshop Assets
• Optimizing Video for Silverlight Playback using Expression Encoder
• Organizing Your Project using Layout Containers in Expression Blend
• Using a grid control

• Using the stack panel control

Download Everything

To download all the assets you need the following:

• cURL: http://curl.download.nextag.com/download/curl-7.19.5-win32-nossl.zip
• Download script: OnRamp_Assets.zip (4.41 kb)

To download all the videos you need the following:

• SDP Downloader: http://sdp.ppona.com/
• Combined .asx file containing all the downloads: OnRamp_AllVideos.zip (26.52 kb)
• File rename script: OnRamp_AllVideos_Rename.zip (5.09 kb)

Why not just use cURL you say? The videos cannot be downloaded since they are streamed with MMS. To be able to download them you need a tool (like SDP) to process the streaming and save it to file.
SDP is interesting because it allows to import .asx files. This is like an xml playlist. I created one containing all the videos.

To download all the videos:

1. Open SDP
2. Press the Open button
3. Open the .asx file
4. Press Batch
5. All files will be downloaded

I noticed that sometimes the download breaks and the file does not completely download. Changing the protocol in SDP from TCP to HTTP seemed to improve the download stability.

After downloading all the files you'll see a dirty file list:

And then after running the rename script you'll see the clean file list:

Notes

• Part 3 and 4 of Day 2 are not videos but online labs (they cannot be downloaded).
• The .asx file has 6 missing files. If you run the rename script it will create *.missing files so you know what files are missing.
• Day 5 is not online yet. This post will be updated when the videos are published.
• I'll see if and how I can upload all videos somewhere so that a cURL script can be used to download them all

Enjoy and happy learning!

Posted: Jun 07 2010, 11:36 by Sandrino | Comments (11) |

Filed under: Development