If you are certified as MCPD on .NET 2.0 and wish you upgrade to .NET 3.5 when those exams are released then you may only have to sit for upgrade exam(s). Gerry O’Brien points this out in his post. There is no confirmation on this yet, however providing an upgrade path from .NET 2.0 to .NET 3.5 is a logical and sensible move.

Technorati Tags: Certification, MCP, MCPD, Microsoft

I will sit for 70-502 Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Windows Presentation Foundation exam when it is released. Looking at the breadth of WPF I expect this exam to be a tough one. In whatever time I get besides consulting, I am preparing for this exam. Other than reading some very good WPF books, I am also spending time with online resources to refresh and gain deeper understanding of WPF. In these posts I am sharing those links. I have tried to map resources with skills measured by the exam as listed in preparation guide. Hope this post and others in the series will be helpful.

Before we get into the exam objectives, it is advisable to understand what WPF is all about. Following links provide a good base. Do not worry if content of these articles bounces over you at this stage. By reading them you will get a broad understanding of WPF and its capabilities.

1. Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation
2. Getting Started with Windows Presentation Foundation

Creating a WPF Application

This is perhaps the easiest of all skills. Creating WPF Applications is similar to creating any other application in Visual Studio. You start by clicking File –> New –> Project and select the appropriate template for your application. For WPF following templates are available through Visual Studio:

1. WPF Application
2. WPF User Control Library
3. WPF Browser Application (also known as XBAP)
4. WPF Custom Control Library 

Select an application type

1. Comparing WPF applications and XBAP - What’s the difference?

Configure event handling

1. Events
2. Adding Event handlers for controls in WPF (XAML) applications
3. WPF: A Beginners guide part 3 of n

Configure commands

1. Commanding Overview
2. Input and Commands How-to-Topics
3. WPF: A Beginners guide part 3 of n

Configure page-based navigation

1. Navigation Overview
2. Navigation in Windows Presentation Foundation Applications

Configure application settings

1. Get the Command Line Arguments
2. Client Application Services (I don’t know if this will be included in WPF exam, still worth a read)

Manage application responsiveness

1. Threading Model

Technorati Tags: WPF, Certification

Guy Kawasaki in his talk with Steve Ballmer at Mix08 said that the new Microsoft employee is much easier to work with. Being a developer in Sydney Australia I confidently say that I agree with Guy 100%++. I do not know of any other company where I can talk to its employees on IM and get my queries answered instantly. At times I have asked simple and silly questions to people who work at Microsoft Australia and to people in Redmond and not once have I been denied an answer.

Other than being helpful I have also found many Microsoft employees to be encouraging. For example I started participating in the community after my first meeting with Frank Arrigo. It was Frank who encouraged me to give my first presentation on WPF at SDNUG and Sydney .NET User Group. And since then I have made it a point to participate in community whenever I can.

Another thing I realise is that it is not just an initial push and then you are forgotten. After my first presentation, I was encouraged by Charles Sterling to continue delivering more on WPF. The result of this motivation led me to present at Code Camp, Hands on Labs at Dimension Data, WPF training for all at New Horizons and Present WPF at ACS. These events were made possible due to dedicated efforts of Charles Sterling and Andrew Coates. Lately I have interacted with Greg Willis and Michael Kordahi from DPE team and I find that they bring the same energy and dedication, and are ever helping.

So to sum it up I agree with Guy Kawasaki. Were else do you see a CEO of a multi-billion dollars company performing Web Developers…Web Developers…Web Developers…

Many times we need to know which browser our content is running on. Silverlight gives us the ability to find that information through BrowserInformation class which can be accessed through BrowserInformation property of HtmlPage class located within System.Windows.Browser namespace. I have created this simple demo to retrieve information about the browser. Below is the code followed by silverlight content which displays browser information.

Note that I set the DataContext in constructor. This is all I need to do in C#. I will set the values using data binding in XAML.

Jamie Rodriguez has made available a list of Silverlight bloggers through an OPML file. You can download the file here.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

Get 3 hours of training on SQL Server 2008 via Microsoft E-Learning. Here is the link.

Technorati Tags: SQL Server

I will present Silverlight at Newcastle Coders’ Group on 7th May 2008 and at Wollongong .NET Users Group on 14th May, 2008. So if you are game for some gradient-twisting, pixel-crunching time then join me at either location.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

You may have noticed that all posts have disappeared from my blog. This is probably the saddest moment for this blog. Reality is that my hosting company had a hardware failure and its all gone. Backups? What backups? Now this part is the most frustrating and the one which angers me. When I called up the hosting company they said that the backups were also gone. I wonder if they had any backups.

Am I angry? Most definitely I am. I was relying on my hosting company to have an adequate backup strategy in case of disasters. Now I could have and in hindsight I think that I should have backed up my data. But I was relying on the fact that I am hosting with a reliable provider and I am paying them to do a job. Think about it, when you deposit money in a bank do you also employ your personal security guard to stand outside the bank. You don’t because you know that you pay fees and expect service from your bank. I know this post is a whinge. But after loosing all the content which I created for more than 2 years I am entitled to one.

So what I am doing for future. Firstly I have closed my accounts with the crap-o-hosting company and I have moved to another company. Yesterday I got an email from crap-o-hosting informing me that they have recovered my database and they will email it to me. I have not heard from them till this moment. And I do not have many hopes either. I will count my losses and move on. A crappy company cannot stop me from doing what I like to do. So stay tuned for more interesting and useful content from me.

Once again for those who read my blog and for those who find me through search engines, I apologise for all those 404 errors.

Oh yes and If you want to know about crap-o-hosting company I was with then leave me a comment and I will be happy to name them.