You may have heard that at PDC 2010 along with the many announcements, the new Windows Azure Portal was announced.
As you’ll see it say when you log on into the Windows Azure Portal (the old one) the new Windows Azure Portal has a ‘substantially enhanced user experience‘. It?s really hard not to agree I think!
When you logon to the old portal you will see the following screen with the message above shown on top.
Once you click on the link to go to the new portal the following screen will show after the Silverlight application has loaded.
There are significant user interface changes in the new portal. One of the big differences between the new & the old portal is Help/Get started Content as well as quicker access to most functions with fewer clicks/drilling into sub-pages. In the screenshot above of the *Home Tab *there are various links to getting started articles, how to navigate the portal ?etc.
The Home Tab
The top section of the screen in the portal displays icons that give you quick access to the various Azure components. These are either general ones as shown above on the Home tab or specific ones related to the functions belonging to the tab you have selected such as Database ?etc. Below are screenshots of the main pages that you can access via the Home tab.
Common Tasks
Help and Support
Beta Programs
In summary the Home tab gives you very quick access to the functions you need to get started with Windows Azure as well as to all the necessary resources and help content you need to assist you with the task. It?s really nice to see the help content & links integrated into the new portal.
In the next few posts I’ll be covering more detail on the remaining portal tabs (the New ? buttons shown above will be covered with each of the relevant tabs as I go through them).
Coming up…
– The Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN tab
– The Database tab
– The Reporting tab
– The Service Bus, Access Control, Cache & Messaging tab
– The Virtual Network tab