Course Description

This class will be a continuation of Beginning Web Development with ASP.NET so I will get right into explaining to students in the first two lessons how to create a web site design template using ASP.NET. I will explain how Master Pages work and how you can create a structured, consistent design for all your web pages (.aspx). I will then continue with more website design examples on showing how to convert an exisiting HTML-based design to ASP.NET. You will learn how you can debug your web pages and find your errors and correct them as well as write code (C#) to help prevent errors from happening. More "intermediate" topics will be covered such as creating objects from classes and how to programmatically maintain state from your pages using different techniques such as cookies, sessions, viewstate and redirects. More involvement in using ASP.NET controls will be covered as well as how to instantiate controls at runtime while your web page is being viewed by the web visitor. This will allow your visitors to have a more customized, unique web experience without having to even use a database. This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Visual Web Developer 2008 Express - Free Download: http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/default.aspx It is fully compatible with any version of Windows 2000, XP or Vista. For important information: http://www.microsoft.com/express/support/ Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

I will assume you have either taken my Beginning Web Development with ASP.NET class or have an understanding of the basics of ASP.NET and C# in using Visual Web Developer Express or Visual Studio as well as experience in basic web design (HTML and CSS). I will be using Visual Web Developer Express 2008 for this class but you can use earlier edition(s) or the commercial VS product too.

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 Master Pages Overview: Designing a website Lesson 2 Master Pages continued: Creating a reuseable design from HTML Lesson 3 Maintaining State: Keeping track of information on your page Lesson 4 Classes: Undersrtanding how OOP works in the real world Lesson 5 Controls: Back to controls and creating them dynamically Lesson 6 Debugging your code and capturing errors

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Master Pages Almost all professionally done websites have a consistent look and feel across their pages. The common look and feel usually include both the layout of the page --- where various user interface elements appear and how they are oriented with respect to one another and the fonts, colors and graphics used within the page. For example, if you visit my favorite web site ESPN.com, you'll find that regardless of where you go on the site, at the top of the page you see the logo, a search box, and a menu listing the sports covered by ESPN as well as similar colors. When you are building web pages in a site, it is important to not add the common site- wide features manually to each and every page. That is, the web designers at ESPN.com would be inconsistent if they had to manually add the search box, logo and common links to each and every page Not only would this add significantly to the time required to build a page, but it would make updating the websites layout a nightmare. The approach used by professional web designers/developers is to create some sort of website template that has the HTML content that should be present on each and every page. That is accomplished in ASP.NET (2.0 and higher) through the use of a master page. A master page is a special ASP.NET page that, like regular ASP.NET pages, contains both a code portion and an HTML portion; with the HTML portion consisting of both static HTML content and Web controls. This master page contains the common layout content. Then, when you're creating a new ASP.NET page, this new page can be assigned to the master page, thereby inheriting its look and feel. With the master page model, updating the single master page automatically updates the common content in all of the pages that inherit that master page. With master pages, creating a unified site layout that can be easily updated is a snap! With ASP.NET 3.5 (or older 2.0) and Visual Web Express, a page developer provides a site wide template by creating a master page. Somewhat similar to template files in Microsoft Expression Web and/or Adobe Dreamweaver, a master page consists of two pieces: content that appears on each and every page that inherits the master page and regions that can be customized by pages using the master page. The master page model in ASP.NET outshines simple HTML-based templates because master pages, like any ASP.NET page, can contain not only HTML markup, but web controls and server-side source code (C#) as well. Master pages have a different file extension than a normal ASP.NET page (.master instead of .aspx), and they can't be viewed directly by a browser. Instead, master pages must be used by other pages, which are known as content pages. Essentially, the master page defines the page structure and the common ingredients. The content pages adopt this structure and just fill it with the appropriate content. A Simple Master Page and Content Page To see how this works, let's create a very simple example. To create a master page: Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

At the end of this class you will have more advanced knowledge of how to create and convert web pages (.aspx) that use the .NET framework and the specific objects and controls of ASP.NET.

Course Reviews

New Class January 2009 More...