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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.