Since I initially posted that I would be speaking at the SharePoint 2010 Evolution Conference in London this April, I’ve picked up an additional session. Not only am I delivering my, “Things that Should be Easy in SharePoint Development” session, but also am delivering the new development deep dive session, “Advanced Web Part development in SharePoint 2010.”

This is a 400-level development session targeted at mid-level to senior-level developers. Custom Web Parts development has been a staple of SharePoint application development since 2001. This session focuses on Visual Studio 2010 enhancements for SharePoint 2010 Web Part developers, such as Visual Web Parts, the Web Part Page Services, AJAX Web Parts, and web part connections. Advanced topics such as sandbox Web Parts, connections to Service Applications, and writing web parts that work on SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server 2010 will be discussed as well.

Here’s the session outline:

• Visual Web Parts
  Just about every developer’s first effort at SharePoint code is in the form of a Web Part. But Web Part development and deployment in SharePoint 2003 and 2007 was very involved with lots of code. We’ll look at the welcomed web part designer in Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010 and see how we can adapt the technique for creating visual web parts that work with SharePoint 2007.
   
• AJAX Web Parts
  SharePoint 2010 has full support ASP.Net AJAX turn on by default. Learn how your web parts can take advantage.
   
  • ASP.Net AJAX
  • Web Part Page Service
     
• Sandbox Web Parts
  Microsoft has made a big push in their 2010 product line to make the platforms more “cloud-friendly”. For SharePoint 2010, that means allowing owners of individual site collections more freedom in deploying web parts without impacting the stability and performance of the entire farm. We will look at how to create, package, and deploy Sandbox Web Parts, and learn what restrictions the sandbox solution model places on these web parts’ behavior.
   
• Connections to Service Applications
  MOSS 2007’s Shared Service Provider model has been completely revamped as the Service Application model and integrated into the SharePoint Foundation. Learn how to build web parts that communicate with Service Applications to initiate long-running operations that do not tie up the UI process or impace web server performance.
   
  • Intro to Services Applications
  • Service Application Architecture
     
• Web Part Connections
   
  • Connections Model Overview
  • Connecting to out of the box SharePoint web parts
  • AJAX Web Part Connections
     
• Multi-platform Web Parts
  There are 6 major SharePoint platform versions. Write code that will dynamically detect the SharePoint platform type and version, whether the code is running on the SharePoint farm or remotely.
   
  Once you can detect on which of the 6 major SharePoint platform versions your web part is running, how do you make sure your web part will run without error, and without settling for “lowest common denominator” feature set? Of course we’ll want to do it all with a single code base. 
   
  • Platform Detection Mechanisms
    • Object Model
    • Registry
    • File System
    • HTTP Code
  • Multi-platform Code
    • Object Model
    • HTTP Code

Join me for in London, UK April 19-21, 2010. This is going to be a great conference. If you can’t make it, don’t worry; I’ll write up blog posts on the more popular topics from my sessions. Leave a comment on which topic you’d like to see a post.