Microsoft declared to be "Best Employer to work for" in India

 

Business Today declared Microsoft India to be the best company to work for in India... You can read the complete story here

WDP Project does not show in "Add Existing Project" Dialog

If you remove an existing Web Deployment Project from the solution by mistake and then try adding it to the solution back again (or to new solution) then WDProj won't show up in the "Add Existing Project" dialog box...

As wdproj is an out of band addition to the Visual Studio, it is not by default recognized as a project when you try to add a project to the solution... The easy way to work around this is by putting *.* in the File Name box and clicking Open, this will display wdproj file which can then be loaded into the VS in same way if it showed up at the first place...

The current limitation is by-design but we will looking at integrating deployment solution to VS in future releases... Hope this work around will help in the meantime...

Web Deployment Project (WDP) do not support Remote web

WDP is not designed to work on a remote web site so it you are using FTP to connect to a remote location and are trying to use WDP for pre-compiling your web site then you will realize that you will see no WDP command in either the build or the solution explorer.   Some times users are confused whether their WDP installation or Visual Studio installation has some issues hence thought it would be worth clarifying...

The work around for the same is to copy the web site locally pre-compile it using WDP and then publish it using "Copy Web Site" to the remote location.

Fig1. WDP available on local web site in both solution explorer and Build command

 

Fig 2. WDP not  available on remote web site in both solution explorer and Build command

.Net Framework Libraries Source Code will be released...

 

.Net Framework libraries source will be released along with .Net 3.5 and VS 2008... It will supported to be debugged with VS 2008 as well which will take Debugging your application to entirely new level...

You should check out Scott Guthrie's blog for the complete story... Click here

Go Daddy customer service

 

Thought this would be interesting... I opened up a new hosting account on GoDaddy.com last week and this week I received a call (actually voice mail coz I was not in my office) from a REAL HUMAN BEING from godaddy.com thanking me for my business with them and also asking me if they could do anything which could make my experience better... Am I really living in 2007?... Does everyone who opens an account with godaddy gets a call like this?

Hat's Off to their customer service... Now I need to figure out if they will support IIS7, ASP.NET Ajax and .Net 3.5... If they give me that too I will sing praises for them like everywhere... :-)

My Learning is cool

 

Go visit http://learning.microsoft.com/Manager/Catalog.aspx

Windows Live Writer

 

I just installed Windows Liver Writer and this post is being created from Windows Live Writer... It is an awesome tool which makes your blogging experience amazing... I believe it works with most of the blogging providers so most likely your blog should be included...

I recommend that you should try the beta by downloading the Windows Live Writer from below url:

http://get.live.com/betas/writer_betas

Just to give you an idea of how the experience is below is a screenshot of the screen while I am writing this post:

Joining Visual Studio Web Team

It has been a while since I wrote and hence it is a little strange to write... It seems like past 1.5 years of my work life has been hidden somewhere and that is kind of true as well... Hopefully I will be able to write about it in next 2-3 months, but anyways the reason for today's post is a little different...

I wanted to let you folks know that I am joining Visual Studio Web Developer team from Sept 10th 2007 (Monday) onwards... It is an exciting move for me coz I have always loved the web world and working on the team which help shapes the future of the web is super exciting to me... Hopefully in time to come I will be able to write a lot more and provide some useful info to you all...

Q. So what will I be doing in Visual Studio Web Developer team...?
A. I will be the Program Manager for Visual Studio Project System for Web... Ofcouse that is very vague right!! So let me give some more details... Visual Studio Project System for Web comprises of creation, compilation and deployment of Web based XXX from Visual Studio...
The reason I said XXX is coz XXX can include Web Site, Web Applications and any other web properties that you may want to create from Visual Studio...

Q. So what can you expect from me?
A. Well, as usual feel free to contact me whenever and however way you want... If you have any thoughts, issues, suggestions, concerns or feedback about Web Development with Visual Studio then do not think twice before writing... I promise I will conciously spend time and energy in taking the feedback in the most positive way in the most positive direction...

Q. So what kind of things can you reach out to me for?
A. Practically anything to do with Visual Studio Web Development... If it falls under the area that I am responsible for I will work on it myself, if it is beyond my area then I will send it across to the right people...

Some Random thoughts:
I feel, lot of time we take Visual Studio for granted... Many times we think that whatever is available within Visual Studio or via available add-ins is what you can do with the technology !! But Visual Studio is a product for us developers and you can say out loud the things that you love or hate about it... At Microsoft we will love to take your thoughts and suggestions and try to turn them into reality... It does not mean everything that everyone hopes will become Visual Studio feature, honestly not everything that I will hope will also become Visual Studio feature but the laundry list will be something which can become the base for discussion for the Visual Studio team... Your thoughts and suggestions will be something that will be debated and then probably the top requests will be taken up...

I am intending to talk to as many developers as possible and try to find out what features would they expect in the next version of Visual Studio that would make their life easier, their experience enjoyable and their productivity higher and higher... I will be more than willing to have a phone calls set up with you to talk about your expectations and feedbacks so if you are interested in doing so do not hesitate to let me know... If you think you would like to join the discussion along with your team then that is great too...

In anycase, to know more about the area that my team is responsible for visit our team blog below... It will provide you a lot of context on the things that we can talk about more...

http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/

I will internalize our team motto and end by saying "Your websites will be my passion!!"

Looking forward to writing more often in the future...

Numbers of Bloggers in Microsoft

From a recent Wired magazine article about Microsoft:"In fact, the 71,000-employee company now has more than 4,800 bloggers posting on every imaginable tech topic, from startups to SQL." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_microsoft_pr.html

PS: Thanks to my colleague Gus who provided the pointer to this article...

Disclaimer: This is probably a very conservative estimate coz there might be many many more employees who might have blogs on other private blog site and also on live spaces etc... I guess the above number is TechNet and MSDN blogs (exludes me too :-))...

Upgrade News For MCSD .Net

MCSD.Nets can upgrade to all three MCPD (i.e. Web Dev, Windows Dev and Enterprise Apps Dev) using only 3 Upgrade Exams instead of 4... So here is the quick FAQ...

Q: Can exam 554 be taken without 553 having already being taken and passed?
A: YES, 554 CAN BE TAKEN WITHOUT 553 (BUT ONLY MCSDs WILL GET CREDIT FOR 553 OR 554).
Q: If so would that mean that an MCSD.NET can obtain all MCTS and MCPD certs by passing just three exams 551, 552 & 554?
A: YES, AFTER AN MCSD EARNS THE MCPD: WEB AND MCPD: WINDOWS WITH EXAMS 551 AND 552 (AND IN DOING SO, BOTH MCTS WEB AND WINDOWS), HE OR SHE CAN TAKE 554 TO EARN MCPD: ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS (AND MCTS: DISTRIBUTED).

You can also see the rationale behind this on one of my previous posts... Click Here

We will upgrade the microsoft.com pages soon for more updates on this thread check Trika's blog too...

PDC 2007 Announced

Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is announced and is planned to be in Los Angeles from Oct 2-5 2007

Click Here for updates... You can also subscribe to RSS feeds here...

Registrations will open in first half of 2007...

News about Vista, Exchange and Office Exams

With release of Vista, Exchange and Office new certifications associated with them are also announced... Check out few of the press releases for details...

Vista, Office, Exchange Certs on Track

Upcoming releases spur new certification exams

New Exchange exams likely to emphasize roles, security

Microsoft certification program to get a makeover

Also I would encourage interested people to attend the live meeting planned on December 6th 2007... To register Click Here

Microsoft Official Distance Learning (MODL) Announced

A cool new way of learning Microsoft Technologies has been announced recently... I have personally seen the experience and it is pretty exciting... A real world environment is created remotely and a student is tought as if he/she was working on that problem in his/her office...
All of this is done remotely so you do not need to travel far away to learn from the best Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) in the world...

Check out these links

Lutz Ziob's video on MODL

Europe Annoucement

On IT News Online

On Playful's.com

On ManufactingTalk.com

25% Off On VS 2005 Upgrade Exams

To get more info Click Here

VS 2005 Upgrade Questions V1

A Colleague sent a few interesting questions on VS 2005 Upgrades am answering them here for everyone...

Q. Can exam 554 be taken without 553 having already being taken and passed?
A. Yes, it can be… Order of taking the exam is recommended not enforced... Although you will not get the complete credential till you pass all the required exams...

Q. After 551 and 552 an MCAD requries the Distributed TS (529) and the Enterprise PRO certification (549) but these two are obtained when passing 554 are they not?
A.Yes they are covered in 554 but 554 is built considering MCSD curriculum so MCAD will not receive any credit for 554…

Microsoft announces certification for Project 2007

Long awaited certification on "Microsoft Project" is announced... We have heard multiple times from Project Managers using Project as their primary tool that there needs to be a certification on this topic so finally it has been announced...

Check out some of the press releases when you find time...

Microsoft to Unveil New Certification Program for Office Project 2007

Microsoft Adds New Certification for Project Managers


Microsoft to Release New Certification

Introducing Howard Dierking's Blog

Howard Dierking has succeded me as a Technical Product Planner for Database and Developer certifications... He too will be bring Certification News to you along with me... Hope you enjoy his blog too...

Cost of New Generation Exams

The cost of new generation exams is the same as earlier MCP exams... So basically whether you are appearing any of the below categories of exams you should be paying the same amount (ofcouse if you have some promotions then you may be paying a different amount)

MCSD, MCSE or MCDBA exams
Upgrade to New Gen exams
New Gen exams

The DLL Hell Song

Really funny and catchy composition on DLL Hell by Spike Xavier & Dan Wahlin...

Click Here

Keep Checking Certification NewsGroups

If you are preparing for certifications, you should keep an eye on the respective news groups where people have pretty interesting discussions...

Click here to check out Microsoft News Groups for Certifications

Also check out the newsgroup rules and explore many other newsgroups on specific technologies by Clicking Here

Use Outlook Express to browse through the newsgroups with ease... Below are some articles that may help you in getting acquainted with Outlook Express and subscriptions...
Outlook Express newsgroups 101

Got a tough problem? Become a newsgroupie