To celebrate the release of Visual Studio LightSwitch on MSDN, I am posting the resources of which I am aware. This is a list for you lucky few with an MSDN subscription who can download LightSwitch Beta 1 today. More resources and information will be released on Monday, August 23rd, along with the public beta.

LightSwitch Developer Center
LightSwitch Beta 1 Documentation on MSDN
Vision Clinic Application Walkthrough and Sample
LightSwitch Forum

I’m sure everyone will start posting basic LightSwitch articles soon. Instead of adding to the echo chamber, I intend on finding interesting tidbits within LightSwitch. I’m sure there’s more to be gleaned from this than merely scaling applications quickly. I am curious how to build addins for it, and what kind of problems the LigthSwitch team solved. A LightSwitch application looks pretty slick, and if I think there are things to learn from its internal infrastructure.

Microsoft Press has announced that Charles Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 will be released in time for PDC10 as a free download! I find this crazy, as this is easily a book I would pay good money for. How do I know? I’ve been browsing the 11 chapters they released as a download for VSLive! You can download the PDF, the XPS, and the source code.

Released Chapter List

Part I   The Basics

Chapter 1   Hello, Windows Phone 7

Chapter 2   Getting Oriented

Chapter 3   An Introduction to Touch

Chapter 4   Bitmaps, Also Known as Textures

Chapter 5   Sensors and Services

Chapter 6   Issues in Application Architecture

Part II   Silverlight

Chapter 7   XAML Power and Limitations

Chapter 8   Elements and Properties

Part III   XNA

Chapter 20   Principles of Movement

Chapter 21   Textures and Sprites

Chapter 22   Touch and Play

The official releases of the Office 2010 training kit and SharePoint 2010 training kit are here! Each kit is split into units containing presentations, links to Channel 9 videos, labs, and demos. There is too much information for me to cover in one post, so I’m posting the units for each kit so you can decide if it’s worth downloading. Note that the asterisked items in the Office 2010 training kit contain information pertaining to SharePoint.

Office 2010

Office 2010 Developer Roadmap*
Office UI Customization
Office Client Workflow
Security and Deployment*
Business Connectivity Services*
Developing BI Applications*
Open XML
Office 2010 Services*
InfoPath 2010 and Forms Services*
Application Compatibility
Access 2010*
Core Office Development

SharePoint 2010

Getting Started with SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 Developer Roadmap
Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint 2010
UI Enhancements
Lists and Schemas
LINQ to SharePoint
Client Object Model
Workflow
Services Architecture
Accessing External Data
Enterprise Content Management
Extending Search
Business Intelligence
Sandboxed Solutions
Sharepoint 2010 Claims Based Security
Sharepoint 2010 Best Practices
Sharepoint 2010 Security
Upgrading Custom Solutions
Upgrading VSeWss Solutions to Sharepoint 2010

These units contain several videos each. It will take a considerable amount of time to fully consume the entire kits, but it could well be worth it if you’re developing Office or SharePoint applications.

It’s rare that I find myself attending a conference where I am not speaking. However, when I saw the session list at ReMIX Atlanta, I realized that I had to attend. So much material was outside of my knowledge domain that it was well worth the $25 dollar early bird fee. You would have had to spend thousands of dollars to get the same material from MIX 10.

If you want to learn about programming Windows Phone 7, Silverlight 4, or general User Experience, and you can make it to the Atlanta area on May 8th, this conference is for you!

Check out the session list:

An Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Series
XNA Game Development on Windows Phone
Silverlight Application Development on Windows Phone
Learning the Secrets of Windows Phone 7
Monetizing your Window Phone App in the App Store
What Designers and Developers Don’t Understand about Each Other
Game Changing Silverlight 4 Features
Why Blend 4 has become Indispensible: Dynamic Layout and Transitions
ASP.NET MVC 2: Making your web applications lightening fast
Microsoft Silverlight and Cloud Computing: A Match Made for the Web
Securing Microsoft Silverlight Applications
Thinking About UX: Why it is essential
Beyond Silverlight: Sketchflow for Web Prototyping
Effective User Experience Workflow

Besides the great session lineup, the .NET Rocks Road Trip show, hosted by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, will be in town. The live recording will begin Friday evening, May 7th. This part is free, so you can always show up on Friday and join the fun.

Registration is limited to 400 people, so hurry and sign up if you want in. Based on past trends, I expect this to be sold out in a couple of weeks.

The Office 2010 Beta Developer Training Kit has been released, and it’s chock full of interested presentations, links to videos, and most importantly, labs. Here’s a rundown of the labs, which you could probably use to make a full-scale Office 2010 application.

Getting Started with Office 2010 Development

Build and debug a small Word 2010 add-in. Learn how to customize the Office ribbon and use the ribbon designer. This C# lab utilizes the new dynamic keyword and uses WPF data-binding with the SharePoint Client API.

Open Xml Programming

Utilize the previous lab’s add-in to to use the Open XML SDK and a SharePoint 2010 ListEventHandler.

Business Connectivity Services

Create external content types in SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 then connect to the external data with Business Connectivity Services. You will extend a simple Outlook Form Region to use the external data once the connection is established using the SharePoint Workspace 2010 cache.

Developing BI Applications

Learn about the business intelligence offerings in SharePoint 2010 by utilizing the Chart Web Part, publishing Excel Workbooks to Excel Services, and using PerformancePoint Services to build rich dashboards to analyze business information.

InfoPath and Forms Services

Use InfoPath to define custom forms to aid in the entry of time tracking data. Learn how to use web parts to host and connect InfoPath forms, and write custom code to extend the capabilities of InfoPath forms.

Client Workflow

Using Visio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, and Visual Studio 2010, you will build a workflow process to approve a timesheet submission. When an entry is submitted by an employee, several fields are examined before an approved timesheet is produced. The data from this timesheet is used to generate a printable version in a Word document.

Office 2010 Service Applications

Word Services generates PDF and XPS files based on a Word document, and the Excel Service exposed a REST interface to an Excel workbook. This lab utilizes these services to build a report generation application.

Office 2010 UI Customization

Using C#, customize the UI in Office 2010, build a custom Ribbon, and build a custom Outlook Form Region.

Security and Deployment

This lab demonstrates how to deploy several Office add-ins using ClickOnce and post deployment actions. You will also learn how to create deployments containing multiple add-ins and how to create a WSP file to deploy an Office Document template.

The sessions have been scheduled for SoCalCodeCamp. If you are attending Microsoft PDC, you should definitely be attending SoCalCodeCamp as you will be getting a weekend full of great content for free!

Both of my sessions are on Saturday. First up is Mash Up – ASP.NET MVC, Bing, Bing Map, and Flickr at 12:15. Then at 4:00 I will present on RESTful Data.

I will probably attend the session on Advanced C# as the details hint at some things I’ve been discussing lately, and I want to hear the presenters’ take on things. The only concern I have is that I don’t like undue complexity… my goal is to make development easier. I think the functional and fluent paradigms in modern C# is easier once you get used to it. It’s not really “advanced” so much as a different way of thinking. Of course, I won’t know what’s up until I attend the session!

Registration for PDC 2009 is now open. If you register by September 15th you can save 500 bucks. Or you could get there my way: win a contest (hey, I’m a poor developer). As I mentioned in a previous article, INETA has a component contest that prizes a trip to PDC. But, it’s not the only one: Microsoft has announced the Code7 Contest - Code the Power of 7. It pays out great prizes, but you have to take advantage of the technologies built into Windows 7 like Libraries, Touch, Shell Integration, DirectX 11, and Sensors.

The PDC has also announced an initial list of sessions that will be available. Here are a few I’m interested in.

Zero to Awesome in Nothing Flat: The Microsoft Web Platform and You
Heavy on code and demos and light on slides. Join Scott Hanselman and build a seriously nice Web site in less than an hour using the Microsoft Web App Gallery, Web Platform Installer and the guts and glory of the Microsoft Web Platform. Starting from an open source application from the Gallery, the app customization goes into hyper drive with Microsoft Web Platform dev tools, frameworks, and database. Finish it off by optimizing for SEO and a few clicks to deploy to a real live Windows Server.

Windows Workflow Foundation 4 from the Inside Out
See why Windows Workflow Foundation 4 is a powerful platform for simplifying application coordination logic and state management. Learn about the core runtime abstractions and under-the-hood improvements related to areas such as performance, transactions, and persistence. Get insights and techniques that enhance your investments in Workflow.

The State of Parallel Programming
Parallel programming has been more difficult than it needs to be, perhaps because its tools have been treated as an “add-on” to serial programming. The objectives of composability and productivity demand something better. Come hear a relatively recent consensus view about what is needed for productive parallel programming, and why.

Petabytes for Peanuts! Making Sense Out of “Ambient” Data
Today, the key to success with data is no longer about who can afford to acquire, store and process data effectively. That’s the cheap and easy part. The challenge now is to develop ways to better use data than your competition so you can make sense of all the data you have. Learn how algorithmic processing, at modest and extreme scale, is completely changing how we build information systems. Hear how Microsoft is dealing with this shift and using these emerging concepts in their online services. Also see examples of how some of this technology is beginning to surface in Microsoft’s product stream.

Microsoft Unified Communications: Developer Platform Futures
Learn how Microsoft Communications Server and Microsoft Exchange provide a comprehensive and flexible communications platform for developers. Get a first look at the next generation of this platform through a series of demos and code examples. See how to embed Communicator features in your application using new Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) controls, and learn about the new API to develop full custom clients for Communications Server. Also see how the UC Managed API 3.0 provides access to the new Voice-over-IP features of Communication Server.

Developing Quality Software using Visual Studio Team System 2010
Poor software quality causes unnecessary losses for companies every year. Learn how Visual Studio Team System 2010's new code quality features can improve your teams ability to discover flaws early and to better understand the root cause of any issue. There are tools for everybody including architects, developers, managers, and testers.<br /><br />During this full-day workshop, we’ll start at the beginning with requirements and design, and then move into unit testing, debugging, testing, and collaboration. We will complement these with demonstrations of code quality best practices that have proven to work on a variety of projects. Come see how much easier it can be to improve code quality by using VSTS 2010!

It looks exciting! If anyone wants to hook me up with a trip to PDC, please use the contact form on my website.

Four new “How Do I” videos on Azure have been added to MSDN. Check them out!

Leverage Concurrency in Windows Azure Table Storage?

Windows Azure table storage is designed to support many users at the same time. In this session, you’ll learn how Windows Azure table storage supports concurrency, and you’ll learn a few strategies to help you deal with any concurrency violations.

Use Paging in Windows Azure Tables?

To improve application usability, many applications need to support viewing data page-by-page. In this screencast, you'll learn how Windows Azure table storage provides a built-in mechanism that allows you to efficiently page through query results.

Sync Between Devices and the Cloud with FeedSync?

Syncing the cloud and a growing world of devices is a fundamental need in today’s world. In this video, you will learn how to use FeedSync feeds to synchronize Live Framework data between a device and the cloud.

Get Started with the Messenger Web Toolkit?

Making your application sociable is easy. In this screencast, Chris Parker uses simple code to add instant messaging to his Web site. In minutes he connects his Web site to 320 million Instant Messenger (IM) users on PCs, Macs, mobile devices and Xbox 360. These efforts can help bring new users to his application and retain them for a longer period of time through the use of cool features like chat, presence, contacts and profile information.

Microsoft has published the documentation for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It follows the typical deployment process, so it's the first place you should look for instructions on setting one up. Here's the download link. 

At the very end of it is a Developer Guide which "provides references to a wide variety of Microsoft Office and Unified Communications SDKs and API sets." You got that right, it's really just a set of links with a few paragraphs explaining the purpose of the link. If that's all you're lookiing for, I'll save you some time by posting them here!

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Server SDK

Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Core SDK

Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Speech SDK

Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Windows Workflow Activities

Office Communicator 2007 Automation API SDK

Unified Communications Client 1.0 SDK

Unified Communications AJAX 2007 SDK

Office Live Meeting Service API

Office Live Meeting Service Portal API

Samples

I can't believe I've been writing packages for Visual Studio and didn't know about the series of blog articles on Visual Studio Exensibility by DiveDeeper or about the VSXtra project. Since I want a quick index of the LearnVSXNow! series, I'm posting links to every article. This is a series every managed package framework developer should read.

LearnVSXNow!

How to start VSX programming?
Creating an empty package
Creating a package with a simple command
Creating a package with a tool window
Basic VSX ideas
Creating our first toolset — Prolog
Creating our first toolset — Finishing the sample
Intermezzo — The regpkg.exe utility
Creating our first toolset — Refactoring to a service
Creating our first toolset — Reusing code
Testing a package
Stepping forward: “VsxLibrary” and “HowToPackage”
Menus and comands in VS IDE
Basics of the .vsct file
Creating a simple custom editor — the basics
Creating a simple custom editor — the first ten meter
Creating a simple custom editor — under pressure
Advanced VSCT concepts
PowerCommands Deep Dive — Command Architecture
PowerCommands Deep Dive — Commands and UI
PowerCommands Deep Dive — Analyzing Commands
Thinking about a new MPF
Coping with GUIDs
Introducing VSXtra
Advanced VSCT Concepts: Behind Combos
Services — with no-code service initialization
Multiple Tool Windows
VSXtraCommands Part 1 — Command handling patterns
VSXtraCommands Part 2 — Commands removing recent items
Custom Editors in VSXtra
Merging Package Menus with VSCT
VSXtra at DevCon - Part 1
VSXtra at DevCon - Part 2
Working with Hierarchies Part 1 - Hierarchy Basics
Working with Hierarchies Part 2 - Internal Structure of Hierarchies
Working with Hierarchies Part 3 - Properties and Hierarchy Traversal
Meet Visual Studio 2010 and the New VS SDK 2010 CTP
VS 2010 Editor - Text Coloring Sample Deep Dive
Working with Hierarchies Part 4 - Hierarchy Windows
Working with Hierarchies Part 5 - Managed Classes for Custom Hierarchies
Toolbar Layout and Persistence

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