ASP.NET, Introduction to

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1
In this first lesson, you'll download and install free software that will help you start creating your own Web sites using ASP.NET. What exactly is ASP.NET? You'll find that out here, too. You'll also see just what makes a Web site tick and we'll work together with a Web browser. You'll discover how the better sites don't just send Web pages to a browser, but rather they create and customize pages right on the spot to produce an exciting user experience.

Lesson 2
Today, you'll start creating Web pages that include buttons and text boxes, which visitors can use to submit information. You'll see how you can write ASP.NET programs that read this information and use it to create a new Web page in response. The sequence of events that does this is called a postback, and it's a crucial and exciting element of developing interactive Web sites.

Lesson 3
In this lesson, you'll delve further into creating interactive Web sites, picking up a few programming tricks that will help make your life easier. One such technique is the use of object-oriented programming. Many people have heard of this type of programming, and you'll discover how easy it really is to master. You'll also add another control to your Web site, a list box. Then you'll see how you can write code that will run on the Web server in response to the user interacting with your Web page by pushing buttons.

Lesson 4
An exciting way to fancy up a Web site is to customize its overall look. You can choose a site's colors, fonts, borders, and general look using a technology called styles. Today, you'll combine everything you've learned so far to make some really attractive pages that incorporate various styles and controls.

Lesson 5
While creating Web sites with ASP.NET, you're free to make use of an entire programming language, and you're free to pick from two exciting ones: VB.NET and C# (pronounced C Sharp). In this course, we'll focus on VB.NET, and in this lesson, you'll see how you can keep track of small pieces of information using variables. Then, to try out some of the techniques we'll go over, you'll create a really cool calendar?and see just how incredibly easy it is to do. But then the excitement really begins as you find out how to store large amounts of data in a database. Professional Web sites make use of databases to store information on millions of customers, and with your newfound knowledge of databases, you'll be able to build Web sites that do this, too.

Lesson 6
In order to make use of a database, your Web server needs to connect to it. Then the data can start flowing, whether it consists of only a small amount of data or information on millions of customers. Today, you'll see how to connect to a database. Then you'll learn two ways to display this data on a Web page in the browser. You'll find out how to display data in a grid fashion using a control called a GridView, and how to display it in more of a tabular fashion using a DetailsView control. These controls are so easy to use that you'll have a fancy data-processing Web site up in no time.

Lesson 7
In this lesson, you'll start getting into the nuts and bolts of databases. You'll see how data is stored using relationships, whereby a customer in the database might, for example, be related to several orders that he or she made. You'll see that databases are all about relationships, and as such are called relational. As you explore relational data techniques, you'll make use of yet another control for displaying data called the FormView control. This control is incredibly powerful and can display data exactly the way you want it to.

Lesson 8
We'll continue exploring relational data today, and you'll discover how to use a simple, special language called SQL to read data from a database. These days, most database systems use SQL, and we'll make sure you get the skills you need to work with it. We'll also discuss another control called a Repeater that lets you display several pieces of data in exactly the format you choose.

Lesson 9
In this lesson, we'll step away from the world of databases and see how you can make all the pages in your Web site look similar using Master Pages. With the help of Master Pages, you can provide a common set of controls to all your pages, much like the navigation links you see across the top of many Web sites. You'll discover how you can set these controls up once and make them appear on all the pages of your Web site.

Lesson 10
Today, you'll get to pull together everything you've learned and start building your own community Web site, much like the popular ones you often hear about. You'll build a site that includes login and registration boxes so people can register with your site and then log in. You'll find out what pages are necessary and what data you need to include. You'll create a Master Page that contains a navigation bar that will be accessible throughout your site. And you'll set up the styles to give a common set of colors and fonts throughout your site.

Lesson 11
In this lesson, you'll finish building your community Web site. You'll put together pages that let users create profiles. Your users will be able to type in the text for their profiles and provide images to go with them. You'll also create a page that lets visitors view the profiles of other users. You'll find out how to present your users with a list of everybody in the community. And you'll even create a forum where people can exchange messages. It's hard to believe you could accomplish all this in just two lessons, but with ASP.NET, it's incredibly easy!

Lesson 12
To end this course, we'll cover the important topic of Web security. You'll learn how to protect your Web sites from hackers and prevent some common types of attacks. You'll also see how to make smooth transitions between the different pages of your sites to provide a nice user experience. Finally, we'll go through some advanced topics you can explore on your own if you'd like to learn even more about the world of ASP.NET programming. You'll leave today armed with the knowledge you need to build some really great, sophisticated, interactive Web sites.