Introduction:

I almost attended & passed more than 10 Microsoft Certification Exams. With the assist of self-learning paced training as well as official Microsoft Learning products. And before taking the exam, I used to practice the exam using some of the available exam simulators as well as assessments provided by Microsoft. And sometimes I just took the exam using my person experience.

And today uCertify gave me the chance to review one of their best exam simulation tools & preparation kits produced and provided by uCertify for exam 070-553: UPGRADE, MCSD.NET Skills to MCPD Enterprise Developer using C#.

About uCertify:

Founded in 1996, uCertify is a leading provider of exam preparation solutions for IT certifications from leading vendors such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Sun Java, Oracle, CIW, Adobe and Cisco. They are committed to help their clients to pass their certification exams by providing the highest quality preparation software. uCertify has devoted much of its resources in Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) research. Through continuous research and development, our products are designed and updated to cater to the needs of changing technology. uCertify PrepKits replicate the actual online exams, and help you experience the real exam environment. This gives you the confidence to pass your certification exams in the first attempt.

My Story:

I have a simple challenging story with exam 070-553 which I’m going to review its preparation software provided by uCertify. I passed this exam on 2006. I didn’t prepare for it. I was moving beside an exam center then I decided to take the exam. And I took it on the same day. Challenging my knowledge and experience, I hardly passed this exam with score 700.

Today and after 2 years, I found this exam preparation and test simulation software from uCertify, I wonder what would be my life and how would be my score if such product were available at that time. I would simply use my knowledge with assist of this product and pass the exam, gaining much more score I’m sure.

This collection of 3 2-hour premium clinics teaches about the new capabilities provided by the .NET Framework 3.5. These clinics are for experienced Developers and Software Architects who are looking to adopt Microsoft's next generation technology within their solutions.

Collection 6261: Developing Rich Experiences using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008:

• Clinic 6262: Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008
• Clinic 6263: Introducing Windows Presentation Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008
• Clinic 6264: Introducing Windows Communication Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008

This is a one year subscription offer for free. I've already take Clinic 6262 and started with Clinic 6264. I must say I am ignorant about these new technology and I decided to start from scratch and have an overview over them before starting reading more detailed materials. And it needs total of 2 hours for each clinic.

Few days ago Microsoft released both Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 & VPC 2007 SP1 updates.

Microsoft Virtual Server R2 SP1 includes support for the following additional Host and Guest Operating Systems:

Additonal Guest Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Server® 2008 Core
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter
Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise
Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Additional Host Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)(non-production use only)
Windows Server® 2008 Core
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter
Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise
Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (non-production use only) 

While Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 includes support for the following additional Host and Guest Operating Systems:

Additonal Guest Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Additional Host Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

 You can optain the download from the following links:

• Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Update
• Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1
  

The WPF team at Microsoft is going give us “WPF Application Quality Guide”. They plan to release the Guide in stages, updating and fine-tuning the content, based on feedback provided by audiences.

Current version is 0.2, this version contains -as specified in the link above- more examples that illustrate how to find the AutomationElement object by using UI Automation; introduction to the WPF programming stack and software testing; high level overview of test methodology, planning, and strategies; visual verification testing; media testing; verification of animations and other transitions; performance best practices resources; security testing considerations; a list of tools for creating, debugging, and testing WPF applications; and additional topics in the Appendix about resources for WPF data binding and debugging, and about WPF interoperability with Win32 and Windows Forms.

Introduction:
Last month Matt Berseth posted very good post about how to build Master-Detail with the GridView, DetailsView and ModalPopup Controls. Today I'm going to clone his post and build the same feature using jQuery with jQuery Plugins; one for popup windows jqModal& and the other is for Color Animation. You can view a demo of this sample here [View Demo].

Prerequisites:
Because I'm using some design tips and styles posted in Matt's posts, I recommend to return to his original posts regarding styling and UI enhancement. I used the styles and design shown on his post Building a VS2008 Styled Grid with the GridView Control.

In my sample I'm using UpdatePanel, and used a client side technique to update the UpdatePanel. To read and review more about this technique please read Dave's post Easily refresh an UpdatePanel, using JavaScript.

It is important also to review documentation of jqModalas I'm not going to explain its APIs.

Implementation:
To make a long story short, I just modified Matt's sample and replaced ModalPopup control of AJAX Control Toolkit with jqModal. Also Matt used to indicate the updated row by setting a style sheet class to the updated row for certain period of time then remove it to make it look as before. I did the same, but I used some kind of animation provided by Color Animationplugin for jQuery.

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Introduction:
Last month I posted about Building a grouping Grid with GridView and JQuery. And I got feedbacks about how to do the same thing using AJAX (on demand retrieving of detail data). In fact I was thinking of that too, and I had couple of ideas in mind. One of them it to use nested update panels, or use AJAX Data Controls with page method/web service method calls along with ASP.NET AJAX. You can view the [demo here].

I didn't like the nested update panel idea, although it is the easiest I think. And was started to think about the second idea but I was about to check another way other than ASP.NET AJAX as long as I'm using jQuery. So I was thinking of using jQuery AJAX. That was just after reading Dave Ward's post Using jQuery to consume ASP.NET JSON Web Services.

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Brief Description:
.NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit containing Labs, Demos and PPTs.

Overview:
The .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the .NET 3.5 Enhancement features including: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Silverlight controls, ADO.NET Data Services and ADO.NET Entity Framework.

I think it is different thanThe Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit which you can also have a look at it.

You can subscribe to Microsoft Download Notificationsto alwasy be updated about new downloads from Microsoft.

Download

In Introducing SQL Server 2008by Peter DeBetta (ISBN: 9780735625587), you’ll learn about major new features in SQL Server 2008, including security, administration, and performance. Downloading the book require registration.

This initial installment of the book is very small; it is devided into 11 chapters and about 33 PDF pages. I guess it is a good focused book on the new features of SQL Server 2008. Myself didn't read it yet.

I also recommend to visit SQL Server 2008 Learning Portalthere you'll find free e-learning offers such as  Collection 6187: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (includes three free clinics).

At the end of last Month March 2008, exactly on 23rd and 24th of March, Microsoft Egypt hold an event for Heroes Happen {Here} announcing the launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008.

I couldn't attend the event as I was out of country. But my brother Ahmad Mosa and my colleagues including Amr Elsehemy attended the event.

At the event Ahmad Mosa was recognized as a Hero for his cooperation and hard work in participating in the early adopters’ program for the launch products that made this launch such a great success!

Below is his picture with Mr. Kareem Ramada the General Manager of Microsoft Egypt.

 
Left to right: Kareem Ramadan, Ahmad Mosa

Last year on October, Matt Berseth wrote few posts about improving styles of GridView, these posts are the following:

• Improving the Presentation of an Extra-Wide GridView
• GridViewControlExtender - Row MouseOver and Click Styles
• GridViewControlExtender II - Header Cell MouseOver Styles and a Few More Live Examples

Last month, I posted a revised version of his work using Script#. And in this post I'm going to show that same features can be applied using jQuery. And I was really amazed by the simplicty and less of code that I had to write to get the same feature on hand.

I've implemented this using jQuery plugins. So I had to author a plugin and I can call it very simple one as the idea was already done and I had it on my head. I'm not going to explore how jQuery plugins can be authored, but you can return to the following links:

• Plugins/Authoring.
• jQuery Plugin Development Pattern, and this is the best tutorial you can follow to learn more.

You can view demos here [demo 1] & [demo 2]. I will start from the end, on how to use the plugin. Actually it is very simple, all you need to do is to add this JavaScript line to your code when the page, or as a startup script. I did that using onLoad event of the ASP.NET AJAX Application as I have ScriptManager installed on the page:

$(selector).gridviewex(options);

For example:

<script type="text/javascript">
function pageLoad(s,e)
{
    $('#gvProducts').gridviewex({hasPageRow:true,dataRowClass:'row',altDataRowClass:'altrow',
                                rowHoverClass:'rowhover', rowSelectClass:'rowselect',
                                cellHoverClass:'cellhover',cellSelectClass:'cellselect',
                                columnHoverClass:'columnhover'});
}
</script>

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