There it is.  That’s it.  The MSDN top navigation bar.  While it looks simple, the places it’ll take you are amazing (sounds like an advertisement for an airline).  Pretty boring by itself, but important to understanding the breakdown of the content available on MSDN.   Week two of The Weekly MSDN finds us exploring the places you can get to from the top navigation bar.  Today I’ll try and show you some snippets of each of these sections and give a brief overview/review of them, but I would encourage you to take a tour through them yourself.  When you do, make sure you look for something that will make you say “Wow, I didn’t know that”.   

Let’s start with Home.  The main landing page.  From here you can get to the Developer Centers, great for those wanting to dive into a specific technology and learn more or see what’s new.  This is one area where Microsoft excels.  Regardless of your language/tool they have content for you.  If your VB, C# or SQL Server (Hmm, where is the Azure Developer Center?) they have content for you and passionate evangelists to show you things along the way. One area on the main page to check out is the “Networkwide” section which has a very “Google” feel to it (possibly a little better organized).  From here you can explore other areas of developer interest, like Channel 9, CodePlex, or MSDN Magazine.  All great places to learn more.

The next logical place to go on the navbar is the “Library”.  Wow this one is huge and I’m not sure I’m ready to go here yet.  I’ll have to come back, since this is one key area for all developers to get familiar with.  This section is the heart of Microsoft information for developers.  It’s the source for all things API.  If there is a function you need to details on you’ll find it here.  If you want to use technology like ClickOnce in your .Net app you find the details here.  This is the source for all things on White Paper, API documentation, class details, method signatures, code samples and way more, information my brain is not large enough to hold.  If you’re a developer you’re already familiar with this area.  Therefore, it will be my goal to find some unknown nuggets of information in here to highlight for you as we explore the MSDN.

Want to find a how-to video or some beginner training? Click here.  Need to transition your knowledge from PHP or Java to .Net?  Start here.    Want to learn what’s new in Visual Studio 2010? This is it.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of quick 10-15 minute videos on almost every Microsoft development topic imaginable.  They have material on MSDN Certifications, A full Learning catalog of courses including learning plans to help you advance your career or become certified.  The areas of this MSDN section that stand out to me are the “How Do I” videos and the learning manager.  With the “How Do I” video series you can quickly learn through short Silverlight videos.  For those visual and auditory learners out there is nothing better than a short video on a topic of interest.  I would encourage you to take a few minutes each week to explore a new video and see how much you can learn.  If your serious about learning and like to take formal courses  or track your progress, then take a look at the Learning Manager and the My Learning section.  Register and setup a learning plan which will customize the courses you’ll need to meet your goals.  For those perpetual learners out there (that are Microsoft Techies at heart) you’ll love this place (especially if your employer is buying).

Knowing how I think and research sites, I should’ve listed this one first.  Almost every site I explore with the intent of finding their download page.  Most of the time I’m looking for a freebie or some cool new tool, but sometimes I’m actually use their download manager to keep track software I’ve purchased or to download an available update.  Microsoft's download center is no different.  From here you’ll find many different types of downloads, beta software, trial downloads, service packs and more.  You can see what the popular downloads are (although 99.999% of the time it’s the .Net 2.0 Framework Redistributable Runtime, so I’m not sure the value of that section).  I specifically like the breakdown of downloads by product or technology.  It allows you to quickly filter a huge list of downloads to just the area you need.  If your an MSDN Subscriber, you’ll be frequenting this area a lot to get the downloads that your subscription provides.

Well that’s four out of the seven sections and I’ve run out of time.  I’ll be back next week with the rest (Support, Community and Forums).  Till then head to the store, buy some gourmet coffee and grab some flavored syrup to go with it.  I’ll be back with part two of the MSDN Navigation Bar.

TTYL!