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

Special Offer: 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: 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

Special Offer: 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

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

AJAX Support

Yes

Yes

Cross-Browser (Firefox, IE, Safari)

Yes

Yes

Cross-Platform (Windows, Mac)

Yes

Yes

Framework Languages
(Visual Basic, Visual C#, IronRuby, Ironpython)

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 HTML Bridge

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,
WMA, MP3)

Yes

Yes

Media – Image Support (JPG, PNG)

Yes

Yes

Media Markers

Yes

Yes

Rich Core Framework (e.g. Generics,
collections)

No

Yes

Security Enforcement

No

Yes

Silverlight ASP.NET Controls
(asp:media, asp:xaml)

Yes

Yes

Type Safety Verification

No

Yes

Windows Meda Server Support

Yes

Yes

XAML Parser (based on WPF)

Yes

Yes

XMLReader/Writer

No

Yes