Top News
Get access to Windows 7 builds, application testing labs and toolkits that can help you ensure that your existing applications and devices will be compatible with Windows 7.
New Content to Get You up to Speed on IE8
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Internet Explorer 8 "How Do I" Video Series
Short YouTube-style videos around key features and functionality in IE8. Includes relevant code samples and corresponding fact sheets.
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Internet Explorer 8 Fact Sheets (28 sheets)
PDF "one-pagers" that explain key features and functionality in IE8, include code samples, and can be used both online and in print. Corresponding fact sheet for every How Do I video. Visit the IE8 Demo Site.
ServerQuest II   
What's your creativity worth? Build, shape and code your game concepts, and you stand to win US$5,000. Through April 15, Microsoft is asking game developers to dust off their best game ideas and bring them to life using Silverlight 2, the flexible new platform for delivering rich online content to your audience.
Featured Content
The patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0 can improve your effectiveness building reliable, scalable, and secure applications on the Microsoft platform. The guide provides design-level guidance for integrating security and other quality attributes into the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework.
Display Planning Server assignments in a SharePoint list and then enable users to open them directly from that list.
Use this SDK to create applications that extend and enhance the SIP-based functionality of Office Communications Server.
The UCMA 2.0 Core SDK abstracts away most of the Office Communications Server protocols by offering an API that exposes almost all of the features of the protocol, but is simpler to understand and use.
Learn to build Office Communications Server applications that use speech recognition and text-to-speech features.
.NET KB Articles
Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio .NET KB Articles
ASP.NET and ASP KB Articles
SQL Server and Data Access KB Articles
Visual FoxPro | XBase KB Articles
Web Resources
New MSDN Videos:
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Use the Visio VBA object model to graphically display data from a SharePoint list in a Visio 2007 drawing.
Learn to create PowerPoint 2007 presentations from data in a database, assemble Word 2007 documents from smaller documents, and bind content controls to custom XML.
Learn to use the Scripting Runtime Library to write to a text file for use with VBA macros, validation, and other automation in the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
Harness the power of SharePoint lists and document libraries, including Web services for lists and libraries, list events, and even RSS feeds.
Steve Lipner tells about security struggles that began with Code Red and led to the Microsoft Security Push. Mike Howard tells the story of the Security Push, the massive security training effort and the other challenges Microsoft overcame to make the SDL part of its development culture.
In this on-demand webcast, we discuss four key benefits of continuous integration that can improve your software quality within a week.
In this episode of geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Geoffrey Emery shows us how developers can use Microsoft Virtual Earth to provide mapping and location features in their applications.
In this on-demand webcast, get a high-level understanding of what Team System is, how Team System differs from Visual Studio alone, who uses Team System, and why.
This lab provides an introduction to the development of a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client with Visual Studio 2008.
After completing this lab, you will be better able to demonstrate the capabilities and tools of Windows Communication Foundation.
After completing this lab, you will be better able to use LINQ to SQL to implement a resource access layer that interacts with an existing Microsoft SQL Server database, manage the DataContext, use where clauses, perform joins, order the results, and handle conflict detection.
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Overview
April 2, 1:00 P.M. Central Time 
In this webcast, we will cover, from a high level, all the tools that make up Visual Studio Team System, including Team Foundation Server and the different editions of Visual Studio Team System.
Team Foundation Server - 2008 Overview
April 9, 1:00 P.M. Central Time 
In this webcast, we will cover, from a high level, all the tools that make up Visual Studio Team System, including Team Foundation Server and the different editions of Visual Studio Team System.
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Developer Edition Overview
April 30, 3:00 P.M. Central Time 
In this webcast, we will cover the Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Developer Edition of Visual Studio. We will show how it can be used by the developer to write better code. Some of the tools that will be covered include static code analysis, unit testing, code coverage, code metrics, and code profiling.
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Professional Edition Overview
March 26, 1:00 P.M. Central Time 
April 16, 1:00 P.M. Central Time 
In this webcast, we will cover the Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Database Edition of Visual Studio. Some of the tools that will be covered include database projects, how to version control your database schema, unit testing of store procedures, automatic test data generation, and comparing data and schema information between databases and database projects.
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Tester Edition Overview
March 26, 3:00 P.M. Central Time 
April 16, 3:00 P.M. Central Time 
In this webcast, we will cover the Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Test Edition of Visual Studio. We will show how it can be used by testers to help them succeed at their job. Some of the tools that will be covered include web testing, load testing, and manual testing.
These 6-course AppDev OnDemand Learning Libraries include a full year of online access to award-winning training for your choice of SharePoint 2007 or SQL Server 2005. Libraries are specially-priced US$495 (discounted from normal price of US$995) each through March 31.
Security for Developers
Early Days of the SDL
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Training
Second Shot provides a free retake offer if you fail your certification exam. And from now until June 30, if you register for Second Shot, you'll get an e-learning collection for just US$35 (usually priced up to US$349). But hurry, once you have activated a discounted e-learning collection it will only be available for 90 days.
Help your career thrive in any economy with training on the latest Microsoft technologies. For a limited time, when you attend select SQL Server 2008 courses with Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions, you'll receive a free copy of SQL Server 2008. Offer is valid through June 30, 2009 or while supplies last.
Free Downloadable E-book Offers From Microsoft Press
Learn at your own pace, on your own schedule. These three free e-book offers are a great way to stay up to date on the latest Microsoft technologies.
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The easy-to-access content (provided by subject-matter gurus) teaches the important skills in a guided path, making the learning process easier and more efficient.
Case Studies
Read or listen to this CIO interview with Break.com, focused on building Web 2.0 apps on Windows vs. Linux. "Microsoft has created a platform that simply lets me architect and build applications in a way that I can't on LAMP."
As its business grew, so did Datatune's need to scale its home-grown solution. The company considered but rejected development solutions based on Cold Fusion, PHP/MySQL, and Java as being too complex, costly, and time-consuming to develop and maintain.
LionWise chose Windows Embedded and the .NET Framework 3.5 managed code programming model because it offered a lower total cost of ownership than Linux.
Kelley Blue Book chose a Windows solution over Linux because it offered less risk and provided security with reduced costs.
Beijing Software Testing & QA Center was running a 10 node HPC cluster on Linux, but was looking to upgrade to improve system performance and better meet customer needs.
In order to create the tens of thousands of individual frames for their digital space shows, the Beijing Planetarium used a Microsoft HPC solution. To increase revenue, the Planetarium need to upgrade to reduce production times while increasing manageability.
Partner News
Designbox for Visual Studio lets you easily capture and reapply finished control designs using the Designbox Gallery. Works with all WinForm Controls. Download the free trial.
Featuring the codeless data binding, multiple hybrid view, super-smooth scrolling, and many more. Download the free Feb 09 CTP now.
Migrate your Visual Basic 6.0 applications to high-quality native Visual Basic .NET or C#. Free trial.
The new version of Resco MobileForms Toolkit 2009 brings three new components, enhanced touch functionality and more attractive GUI.
Visual WebGui integration with Visual Studio and WinForms API compatibility enables quick migration of legacy applications. Just copy any existing WinForms source code to a VWG project and create a fully functional equivalent Web application. Free trial.
WebUI Test Studio (powered by ArtOfTest) is specialized for testing ASP.NET apps. Try now for free.
In this series of web seminars, you'll learn the critical concepts behind S+S, and learn how to get started on the road to a successful S+S implementation.