Sharepoint developer

What i really liked about microsoft technologies is the availability of learning material, forum help, technical support, including videos, how-to's etc which is relatively less for other technologies.

Microsoft should really be appreciated in the extent of materials they provide for developers to learn their technologies.

What if you do not have the required infrastructure or software or licenses to install their stuff to learn - dont worry they have online hands on labs, all you need is a internet connection, and you can join a lab and login to a virtual server and you can configure and learn their stuff (only thing is you need a big monitor like i have at home, as once you are in a test lab, there are test instructions to read as well as to see the server desktop so it is kind of tough to do on a normal monitor).

I recently came across this excellent site which provides all the necessary material for a share point developer.

http://www.microsoft.com/click/SharePointDeveloper/

It has quick start papers, hands on labs and web casts to learn developing using sharepoint.

Sharepoint enable anonymous access and extranet sites

It is very common practice to create 2 sites one for intranet and one for extranet users and also enable anonymous access for extranet sites for certain pages and parts.

Unfortunately doing this is not a piece of cake in sharepoint and requires few manual interventions, here is an excellent article with snapshots which explains how to do this.

http://andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/HowToConfigPublishingSiteWithDualAuthProvidersAndAnonAccess.aspx

Sharepoint Developer Videos

One great thing about microsoft is the amount of resources they spend on developing videos to learn their stuff.

There is a chinese proverb which says a picture can express thousand words, like that all these "How to........" series videos and lots of other how to code how to use sharepoint videos helps the developers.

There are more developer videos which a developer can download and see and learn, they are found at,

1) Videos on KPI, Web Parts,
Microsoft Office System Developers Conference 2006
Download this series of developer-oriented videos to view conference breakout sessions about building smart client and browser-based BI solutions leveraging a wide array of extensible capabilities, including key performance indicators, PivotTables, Web parts, and spreadsheet-based Web services.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=621566FD-A3D8-4628-A2CB-538CC173509F&displaylang=en


2) Videos on How to serieshttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AAFBC288-9F1E-4398-AE06-617CEFEC5823&displaylang=en

3) Videos on Collaboration Tools:
Microsoft Office System Developers Conference 2006
Download this series of developer-oriented videos to view conference breakout sessions about how developers can use the 2007 Microsoft Office system to create powerful collaboration tools.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=029706C1-F20E-4BD1-99BB-78810E16F3D8&displaylang=en

4) Videos on Enterprise Content ManagementMicrosoft Office System Developers Conference 2006
Download this series of developer-oriented videos to view conference breakout sessions about the new, extensible content management
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=562B9B75-55B7-4F5D-AFE4-1F78C8B7FC6D&displaylang=en

5) Videos on Portal Customization
Microsoft Office System Developers Conference 2006
Download this series of developer-oriented videos to view conference breakout sessions about customizing search capabilities, building custom portal interfaces, providing personalized views, and aggregating connections to line-of-business data.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5EC4193A-8061-4FD8-8CA4-574540049FE9&displaylang=en

6) Videos on Business Intelligence

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AAFBC288-9F1E-4398-AE06-617CEFEC5823&displaylang=en

Blog of Eric Legault - sharepoint / outlook MVP

Eric is an outlook MVP and also is a specialist using Sharepoint 2007 collaborative workspaces and meeting workspaces.

His MVP profile - http://aspnet2.com/mvp.ashx?EricLegault
His personal website - http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca/
His Sharepoint blog - http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/

Few good share point links

Share point university - a website which has lots of links to learn about share point
http://www.sharepointu.com/

105 features of share point - a blog link which links to another site
http://markharrison.co.uk/blog/2006/02/sharepoint-show-105-features-in.htm

Online live test lab to learn share point
http://www.gbg.runaware.com/microsoft/en-us/office2007/td/launch?lbredir=1