Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Mirosofts new Beta Certification Exams are available for ASP.NET 3.5 and ADO.NET Application Development
Register for Beta Exam 71-562: TS: Microsoft .NET 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development
You are invited to take beta exam 71-562: TS: Microsoft .NET 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development. You were specifically chosen to participate in this beta because of your current Microsoft Certification status or previous participation with Microsoft Learning. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form. The 71-xxx identifier is used for registering for beta versions of MCP exams, when the exam is released in its final form the 70-xxx identifier is used for registration.
By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft certifications.
71-562: TS: Microsoft .NET 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development counts as credit towards the following certification(s).
| • | MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Applications |
Register to be the first to know when Visual Studio 2008 exams become available. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/sqlvs/offer/default.mspx to see the offer details.
Registration begins: March 13, 2008
Beta exam period runs: March 14, 2008 - April 4, 2008
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered.
Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.
Regional Restrictions: India, Pakistan, China
You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: 562B1
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.
Register for Beta Exam 71-561: TS: Microsoft .NET 3.5, ADO.NET Application Development
You are invited to take beta exam 71-561: TS: Microsoft .NET 3.5, ADO.NET Application Development. You were specifically chosen to participate in this beta because of your current Microsoft Certification status or previous participation with Microsoft Learning. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form. The 71-xxx identifier is used for registering for beta versions of MCP exams, when the exam is released in its final form the 70-xxx identifier is used for registration.
By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft certifications.
71-561: TS: Microsoft .NET 3.5, ADO.NET Application Development counts as credit towards the following certification(s).
| • | MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, ADO.NET Applications |
Register to be the first to know when Visual Studio 2008 exams become available. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/sqlvs/offer/default.mspx to see the offer details.
Availability
Registration begins: March 13, 2008
Beta exam period runs: March 14, 2008 - April 4, 2008
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered.
Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.
Regional Restrictions: India, Pakistan, China
Registration Information
You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: 561B1
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 is now available
After a long wait Microsoft silverlight 2.0's beta 1 is Now Available! with new conmtrols like Full suite of Controls TextBox, RadioButton, Slider, Calendar, DatePicker, DataGrid, ListBox and other, and also have StackPanel, Grid and Panel Layout Support.
Now you can take advantages of new features by installing the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 which includes the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 runtime, the SDK, and the add-on to Visual Studio 2008. Click here for complete overview of Silverlight 2.0
Now you can take advantages of new features by installing the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 which includes the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 runtime, the SDK, and the add-on to Visual Studio 2008. Click here for complete overview of Silverlight 2.0
Sunday, March 2, 2008
First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2
ScottGu enlightens us all again with a very great tutorial on using Expression Blend 2.5 (March preview coming soon) to work with Silverlight 2 content.
Silverlight Runtimes - Feature Matrix
Currently, there are two runtimes available for users to experience Silverlight content.
- Microsoft Silverlight 1.0
- Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha September Refresh
Both runtimes support rich media capabilities and enable fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality audio and video to all major browsers including Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer running on the Mac or on Windows. The designer experience remains largely the same for both runtimes as well. The main difference resides in the developer experience. The Silverlight 1.1 Alpha runtime introduces support for.NET languages such as Visual Basic and Visual C#.
The Features Matrix below provides an overview of which runtime is required when viewing Silverlight applications.
Silverlight Runtimes - Feature Matrix
| Features | Silverlight 1.0 | Silverlight 1.1 Alpha September Refresh |
| 2D Vector Animation/Graphics | Yes | Yes |
| | Yes | Yes |
| Cross-Browser (Firefox, IE, Safari) | Yes | Yes |
| Cross-Platform (Windows, Mac) | Yes | Yes |
| Framework Languages | No | Yes |
| HTML DOM Integration | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP Networking | Yes | Yes |
| Isolated Storage | No | Yes |
| JavaScript Support | Yes | Yes |
| JSON Web Services | No | Yes |
| LINQ to Objects | No | Yes |
| Managed Control Framework | No | Yes |
| Managed | No | Yes |
| Managed Exception Handling | No | Yes |
| Media – Content Protection | No | Yes |
| Media – 720P High Definition (HD) Video | Yes | Yes |
| Media – Audio/Video Support (VC-1, WMV, | Yes | Yes |
| Media – Image Support (JPG, PNG) | Yes | Yes |
| Media Markers | Yes | Yes |
| Rich Core Framework (e.g. Generics, | No | Yes |
| Security Enforcement | No | Yes |
| Silverlight ASP.NET Controls | Yes | Yes |
| Type Safety Verification | No | Yes |
| Windows Meda Server Support | Yes | Yes |
| XAML Parser (based on WPF) | Yes | Yes |
| XMLReader/Writer | No | Yes |
Friday, February 8, 2008
Silverlight 2.0
The alpha version of Silverlight 2.0 (previously referred to as version 1.1) includes a version of the .NET Framework, with the full Common Language Runtime as .NET Framework 3.0; so it can execute any .NET language including VB.NET and C# code. Unlike the CLR included with .NET Framework, multiple instances of the CoreCLR included in Silverlight can be hosted in one process. With this, the XAML layout markup file (.xaml file) can be augmented by code-behind code, written in any .NET language, which contains the programming logic. It can be used to programmatically manipulate both the Silverlight application and the HTML page which hosts the Silverlight control. Silverlight ships with a lightweight class library which features, among others, extensible controls, XML Web Services, networking components and LINQ APIs. This class library is a subset of and is considerably smaller than .NET Framework's Base Class Library. Silverlight code runs in a sandbox which prevents invoking platform APIs. Silverlight 2.0 also adds support for DRM in media files
The version of .NET Framework in Silverlight adds a subset of WPF UI programming model, including support for shapes, documents, media and animation objects of WPF. However, the set of UI controls Silverlight ships with in the current release is limited. Also, in the current release, the UI controls do not have support for databinding to any data source. But, Microsoft has clarified that the limitations are due to this being an early preview release. Future releases will add more than 20 UI controls, add two-way databinding support, and automated layout management as well as data manipulation controls such as DataGrid. Third party libraries for expanded sets of UI controls are being made available for the alpha release as well.
Silverlight 2.0 Architecture
The included Base Class Library (BCL) provides classes for collections, reflection, regular expressions, string handling and data access. It also supports LINQ, with the full support for LINQ to Objects and expression trees. Almost all of the System.LINQ and System.LINQ.Expression namespaces are exposed. However, LINQ to XML is not present in the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha release, though further releases of Silverlight 2.0 will include it. It also supports serialization of objects, for data persistence. Silverlight can handle data in either RSS, POX, and JSON formats, in addition to XML. The BCL provides enhanced support for working with XML data, including the XMLReader and XMLWriter classes. Silverlight also includes classes for data access over XML-based Web services (POX), REST and WCF Services. The networking support in Silverlight can be used by Silverlight applications to communicate over HTTP. However, in the current release of Silverlight 1.1, cross domain communication is not allowed, though it will be in the next release of Silverlight 2.0. Silverlight also supports asynchronous programming via the use of the threading libraries
Silverlight 2.0 includes the Dynamic Language Runtime which allows dynamic compilation and execution of dynamic (scripting) languages. The first upcoming languages written for the DLR are Managed JScript, IronPython 2.0, and IronRuby. Microsoft also plan to build Visual Basic .NET 10.0 (VBx) on the DLR. All four languages share the same infrastructure to allow Silverlight to compile and execute the language source. Conversely, other .NET languages must be compiled ahead of time and delivered to Silverlight as .NET assemblies. The implementation of Managed JScript conforms to the ECMAScript 3.0 specification, and Microsoft claims that it is 250 times faster than interpreted JScript.
With the integration of .NET Framework, Silverlight also allows HTML-managed code interaction, which allows manipulation of HTML DOM elements from managed code,[13] as well as allow JavaScript code to call managed code and use objects instantiated by managed code. Silverlight encloses JavaScript objects and DOM elements in managed wrappers to make them available from managed code. However, in the 1.1 alpha release directly calling JavaScript code is not implemented, but managed code events can fire JavaScript handlers. A Silverlight instance does not need to have a UI component in order to manipulate the HTML DOM from managed code. It is done by creating a XAML Canvas with its width and height set to zero, and using its code-behind code to modify the Document Object Model of the HTML page via the APIs in the System.Browser namespace.
Silverlight 2.0 also allows limited filesystem access to Silverlight applications. It can use the operating system's native Open file dialog box to browse to any file (which the user has access to). The file will be sanitized of path information to prevent the application from getting access to information like user name. It will be opened in read-only mode. For local storage of data, Silverlight provides isolated local storage (isostorage), which is stored, outside the browser cache, in a hidden folder inside the user profile's private folder. In the current releases, isostorage is limited to 1 MB per URL, though this limit will later be made configurable. Data stored by a Silverlight application, identified by the URL that it loads from, can be accessed by that application only. All instances of Silverlight share the same isostorage, so all instances of a Silverlight application can share the saved data, even if they are running on different browsers.
Silverlight CoreCLR uses an attribute based security model, as opposed to the Code Access Security (CAS) model of the desktop version of .NET Framework. All assemblies are marked with a security attribute, which can be either transparent (SecurityTransparentAttribute), safecritical (SecuritySafeCriticalAttribute) or critical (SecurityCriticalAttribute). Methods in transparent assemblies runs with partial trust, and any code in such assemblies cannot call critical methods. They also cannot contain unverifiable code (use the unsafe C# keyword or use pointers) or invoke system functions by means of P/Invoke. Code in both critical and safecritical assemblies run with full trust, and are not subject to such limitations. However, critical methods can only be called from safecritical methods and not transparent methods. Thus transparent methods are prevented from using methods that can cause system wide changes. Instead, they have to call safecritical methods which will verify that the call is safe and within the limited rights of the caller, and then proxy it to the critical methods. In fact, the IsoStorage APIs are exposed as safecritical methods. An assembly that does not have any attribute set is run as a transparent method. The limitations also apply for type inheritance, virtual method calls and interface method calls as well. Silverlight assemblies can contain members that are not usable by CoreCLR but can be by .NET Framework CLR; such methods will not be loaded when the assembly is being executed by CoreCLR
Reference:
Thursday, January 31, 2008
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