CSC-ITC8402 - Intermediate C# Programming

Course Description

Build upon your current knowledge of programming logic by writing Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications in the C# programming language. This course will show you how to write professional looking applications with many of the common GUI controls, such as buttons, labels, text boxes, check boxes, and radio buttons. You'll also learn how to put menus and toolbars into your program to make them easier to use. Later on in the course, you'll find out how to make your program interact with sequential files, random access files, and databases.

This course will walk you through computer application design and implementation by giving you real examples that you can enter as you learn. Since practicing is the best way to learn programming, most lessons have more than one example, and each provides a programming problem you can solve to demonstrate your new knowledge.

Course Outline

Lesson 01 - Overview of C#
C# is a wonderful programming language that's been recently updated, and the improvements have made programming using C# even easier than before. This lesson will give you a brief overview of the C# language, then a tour of the fantastic, user-friendly Integrated Development Environment (IDE). You'll learn how easy it is to rapidly develop a simple graphical program with the IDE, and by the end of the lesson, you'll create your first interactive C# program.
Lesson 02 - Visual C# IDE and Common Properties
Programs aren't much fun without interactions, so in this lesson you'll start learning to communicate with your users. The lesson will discuss buttons, text boxes, and labels, and how you can use them for interaction. You'll also learn more about the IDE's Properties window, which allows you to customize your application so that you can grab a user's attention and make your program a work of art!
Lesson 03 - Text Boxes and User-Friendly Techniques
Now that you've used the basic controls to make attractive programs, you'll turn your attention to working calculations. You'll see how to design your program to do simple math calculations and how easy it is to format numbers to make everything easy on your users. You'll also take some time to go over some other features that will make the user enjoy their experience with your programs.
Lesson 04 - Check Boxes and Radio Buttons
Are you one of those people who loves to use keyboard shortcuts? Maybe you take pride in your ability to use a graphical program without ever touching your mouse? Whatever the case, there are definitely people out there who can't use a mouse or just prefer not to. This lesson will teach you how to accommodate them. You'll also learn all about radio buttons and check boxes and the best ways to use them to make your users' experience as great as possible.
Lesson 05 - Arrays and List Boxes
Lists, lists, lists. Everyone has them and needs a way to keep track of them, so in this lesson, you'll learn how to put a list box in your program. You'll also find out about arrays and loops, which allow you to work with your lists to store, search, and remove items from a list.
Lesson 06 - Menu Strips, Tool Strips, and Tab Controls
Now you're ready for some more complex, and more interesting, graphical elements. Have you ever noticed that almost every program you use has similar items in the menu? Well, the developers of C# have made this process pretty simple, and you'll learn all about it in this lesson. You'll also see how easy it is to make a toolbar and separate your program into multiple pages or tabs. These elements will help you to maximize the space on the screen.
Lesson 07 - Object-Oriented Programming: Classes and Inheritance
You may have heard that C# is an object-oriented programming (OOP) language, but do you know what that means? It turns out that it's just a different way of viewing a program and it's much different from procedural programming. In this lesson, you'll not only learn about the OOP model, but you'll also get your hands wet by creating such a program. You'll even get to experience the beauty of inheritance and polymorphism and see how they can allow you to structure your code so that it can be reused in future programs.
Lesson 08 - Exceptions, Files, and Common Dialog Boxes
Have you ever used a program and received one of those awful pop-ups that says a problem occurred and the program had to shut down? Usually this comes at a point in the program when you'll lose an hour or two worth of work. In this lesson, you'll learn how to make it so that those messages don't come up and ruin your user's experience. You'll also see how to work with data files so that your programs can save the data to be used at a later time.
Lesson 09 - The RichTextBox and More Common Dialogs
In this lesson, you'll learn all about the Rich Text Box. This graphical element accepts formatted input from your user. As you learn more about this control in the lesson, you'll build your very own text editor that will allow the user to use bold, italics, color, and even a bulleted list.
Lesson 10 - Database Interaction With ADO.NET
Databases are very important in today's world. It seems that everyone has large amounts of information they want to store and access later. This lesson is the first of two database lessons in the course. You'll start with a small database and learn about the different elements that go into a database application. Continuing on, you'll see how easy it is to write a simple query to get information out of the database.
Lesson 11 - More Database Interaction
This lesson builds upon your current database knowledge and adds more complex database interactions to it. To practice, you'll create an application that works with a database to organize your favorite websites. You'll even learn how to display a web page inside your application. In the end, you'll have a program that's part organizer and part web browser!
Lesson 12 - Custom Controls and Deploying Your Application
For the final lesson, you'll turn your attention back to making your users' lives easier. Here, you'll learn about adding tool tips and context, or shortcut menus to your programs. You'll also learn how to make custom controls and splash screens to put your personal touch on your programs and make them unique. And what good is a program if you can't share it? For that reason, you'll finish up the course with a quick look at how to deploy your program so that everyone can enjoy it.

Notes

This is an asynchronous online course offered through the third party vendor ed2go. This course can be taken on either a PC or Mac. The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online. There are twelve lessons in the course, and two lessons are released each week on Wednesdays and Fridays. 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.