Charlotte Code Camp Presentation

Saturday 15th was the Charlotte Code Camp, and it was a great success!  We had over 370 people register, and last I heard, we had over 200 during one session.

We had 10 tracks running covering content from helping with your job, to SQL, .Net and of course SharePoint.  I was very pleasantly surprised to see so many show up for my SharePoint preso, especially since SharePoint Saturday Charlotte was just a few weeks ago, and SharePoint Saturday DC was on Saturday as well.

I gave a presentation on the options available for learning SharePoint 2010 Development.  I had a great turn out, but unfortunately ran a bit over.  <blushes>

 

I was impressed with the enthusiasm in the room.  The attendees were there to learn about training options for developing SP2010 solutions, but when I polled the class, 90% had yet to even see SharePoint 2010!  Doh!  So I spent some time showing, very briefly, the new UI and the Developer Dashboard in 2010, before showing off VS 2010 by making and deploying a very simple workflow.

I apologize again to the attendees for getting my ending time wrong and not being able to show as much as I would have liked.

Here is a link to my presentation for you all. – http://cid-29e046e8cfc92645.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/CodeCamp2010

If you have any troubles accessing this, please post a comment for me and I will address it.

 

Thank you all for the great reviews and feedback!!

 

See you around the community!

Brian

VS 2010 – disappointment

I just read through the blog post from Steve Fox, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee309510.aspx, where he shows what SharePoint web part development will be like in VS 2010.  I have to say I am rather disappointed.

What it boils down to is that instead of doing it right, MS has decided to integrate a solution created By Jan Tielens called a ‘Smart Part’. http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2005/02/17/375139.aspx.  This allows you to create a Web User Control ( .ascx ) and wrap it with code to be rendered in SharePoint as a web part.  This technology has been available for years and has it’s place in the SharePoint space, but it is NOT a real SharePoint web part.

Jan, I hope you are getting a big paycheck from MS for taking what you created and building it into VS!

The “purists” in the community will often recommend against simply wrapping a .ascx control, recommending instead that you learn the correct and proper way to develop true SharePoint web parts, as they give you much more power and control.

One of the main areas that Steve’s article does not cover is how they will be adding custom properties and custom tool panes using this approach.  These are very common practices in SharePoint web parts and is a big part of what makes SharePoint so versatile and powerful.   

It has always amazed me that Microsoft never got two of its flagship products ( Visual Studio and SharePoint ) to talk to each other properly.  I was really hoping that this newest version of Visual Studio would finally get it right and allow actual “visual” development to create true and robust web parts for SharePoint. But, alas, once again they fall rather short. 

It’s not all bad news though.  Apparently VS 2010 does provide you with some better integration with SharePoint by exposing the SharePoint objects inside Studio. So now we can see the lists/libs and get better exposure to the object model.  That’s nice.  Thanks for that.

It will be interesting in the near future to see what skills a person has when they call themselves a “SharePoint Developer”.  Especially when the “old guard” bumps heads with the “newbies” that surely will be sprouting up as a result of this release. 

I look forward to the fireworks!  I love a good show!!  🙂

Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint announced!

At TechEd EMEA, the new SharePoint tools for Visual Studio 2010 were announced!

Jason Zander (General Manager for Visual Studio) did a presentation on the tools. Here are a couple of the thinfs he covered…

1. Server Explorer for SharePoint viewing Lists and other artifacts in SharePoint directly inside of Visual Studio
2. Windows SharePoint Services Project (WSP file) Import to create a new solution
3. Added a new web part project item and showed the Visual web part designer which loads a user control as a web part for SharePoint

To get more details see the post by Paul Andrew here – http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2008/11/10/visual-studio-2010-tools-for-sharepoint-announced-at-teched-emea-developers-2008.aspx

Here is a link to the Visual Studio 2010 home page – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/cc948977.aspx

Looking real good folks!! Enjoy!!