Visual C# 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Bootcamp, Day 3

"I have to admit, it's getting better, it's getting better all the time..." (The Beatles, "Getting Better"). It's true - each day of class is better than the one before. I'm getting to know my classmates on a more personal level, and have discovered that most of them come from more creative backgrounds (art, music, literature) than I had thought based on their professional experience - they are truly a fun and fantastic group of people to learn with. Here are the highlights from today's class:

• Validation: Visual Studio 2010 provides developers with simple, yet powerful tools (controls) to validate user input. By dragging and dropping one of the standard controls into your UI and editing a few properties, you can make a field required (the user cannot submit the form without that field populated with some type of data), you can validate age, you can make sure an email address follows standard formatting (text@text.com), you can compare fields (ex: Password and Confirm Password - this control enables you to validate that the contents of both fields really match), and many more custom controls. This is one of the coolest tools I've learned yet!
• LINQ (Language-Integrated Query): I am now able to insert, query, and remove data into tables in a database to store information entered through the user interface. I know there is much, much, much more to LINQ than my simple statement, but this is an area I will need to study more in-depth after my class is over. For now, I am content with only understanding the basic functionality.
• AJAX (Asynchronus JavaScript and XML): AJAX allows developers to determine specific portions of a page that PostBack to the server instead of forcing the entire page to reload each time something is changed during a browsing session. AJAX controls allow for significantly increased efficiency in page loads, and also allow for some wicked-awesome UI tricks like creating tabs that load and reload on their own and deep-level zooming and interactive image viewing. I still have a ton to study up on this subject matter.

 I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's class, where we finish up the content for this course, but I will be sad when this course is over. I have learned a lot and had a ton of fun while doing so. I can't wait for my Advanced .NET and MVC course in January! "It's getting better all the time...Better....Better....Better..."