Microsoft has made it possible for ASP.NET Web Developers to enjoy a free video training course on WebMatrix.
The WebMatrix Training is pretty basic and mainly just provides a quick overview of the WebMatrix interface and a few web development tasks you can do with it. The training consists of 6 parts:
- Introducing WebMatrix
- Sites and Files
- Coding ASP.NET Web Pages
- Working with data
- Reporting and deployment
- Enabling PHP and MySQL
There isn't any real coding of ASP.NET Web Pages, however. The video mainly just shows that WebMatrix includes syntax highligting and intellisense. Enabling PHP and MySQL was part of installing WordPress from the Web Gallery, so if you are interested in a quick walkthrough of installing WordPress on your Windows PC you can watch it as part of the training.
You did get some overview of IIS Express, SQL CE, and the Web Pages Framework, but I was waiting for the trainer to mention the Razor Templating Engine but he just kept referring to the files as markup. Still not sure if he is familiar with Razor or not :), but it wasn't necessary to know for the video anyway.
If you haven't played at all with WebMatrix then watch the video just to familiarize yourself with it. I use WebMatrix to create all my custom Orchard Themes so I use it quite a bit. I have probably downloaded and installed Orchard via the WebMatrix Web Gallery well over 200 - 300 times alone :) In fact, I am a bit disappointed the trainer didn't install Orchard with WebMatrix as opposed to WordPress. Creating a new Orchard Website with WebMatrix is really easy!
Check out the link to the free WebMatrix Training on the ASP.NET Website.
David Hayden