New Online SharePoint 2007 Development Training!

Today Microsoft's Ramp Up program launched a new track: SharePoint for Developers, Part I. This is a free, online, community-based program that only requires a Live ID to sign up and dig in.

I worked through all the learning materials for the first module (creating Web Parts) and it looks good. The module includes a Word document that describes web parts, a narrated PowerPoint ("slide-cast", ~20 min), a web-cast style Visual Studio capture ("code-cast", also ~20 min), and a Virtual Lab (up to 90 min) where you can build on a remote control box. The only downside is that all assume you're creating a web part in an IDE where "SharePoint Web Part" is an available project type (so either VSeWSS for VS 2005, or Visual Studio 2008 is installed); while these templates make good demo-ware, they are not recommended for "real" development. STSDEV is one good alternative, though my old-school beliefs say you should build your first web part in Notepad, or at least start minimal with the VS "class" project. Once you get past that, all the core ideas are there (adding attributes, creating properties, connecting web parts for master-detail views, data-binding, etc.) so these are great learning tools even if your implementation will be a little different.

The Word document is an okay (if minimal) introduction, the narrated slides and code-cast are really well done, and the Virtual Lab gives you a chance to apply your learning on a virtual machine. You do need to provide additional business contact information to use the VPC, but this a terrific offering for anyone without the horsepower or inclination to run your own local virtual machine. The speed is surprisingly not awful, and it's pretty cool to be able to get full remote control to write and deploy code in a browser. If the other modules are as good (and I suspect they are), this is a great new offering that takes all the excuses away for learning SharePoint development. Get to it!