Features of This Text

Each chapter begins with identifiable objectives and a brief overview. Numerous coding examples as well as hands-on projects with guidance for the planning and coding appear throughout. Thought-provoking feedback questions give students time to reflect on the current topic and to evaluate their understanding of the details. The end-of-chapter items include a chapter summary, review questions, programming exercises, and four case studies. The case studies provide a continuing-theme exercise that may be used throughout the course.

Chapter 1, "Introduction to Programming and Visual C# 2008," introduces Microsoft's Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The single environment is used for multiple languages. A step-bystep program gets students into programming very quickly (quicker than most books). The chapter introduces the OOP concepts of objects, properties, methods, and events. The elements of debugging and using the Help system also are introduced.

Chapter 2, "User Interface Design," demonstrates techniques for good program design, including making the interface easy for users as well as guidelines for designing maintainable programs. Several controls are introduced, including text boxes, masked text boxes, rich text boxes, group boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, and picture boxes. A new section covers the controls in the Power Pack including PrintForm and the Shape and Line controls.

Chapter 3, "Variables, Constants, and Calculations," presents the concepts of using data and declaring the data type. Students learn to follow standards to indicate the data type of variables and constants and to use the proper scope. Error handling uses the try/catch/finally structure, which is introduced in this chapter along with calculations. The student learns to display error messages using the MessageBox class and also learns about the OOP concept of overloaded constructors.

Chapter 4, "Decisions and Conditions," introduces taking alternate actions based on expressions formed with the relational and logical operators. This chapter uses if statements to validate user input. Multiple decisions are handled with both nested if statements and the case structure (the switch statement). The debugging features of the IDE are covered, including a stepby- step exercise that covers stepping through program statements and checking intermediate values during execution.

Chapter 5, "Menus, Common Dialog Boxes, and Methods," covers the concepts of writing and calling general methods. Students learn to include both menus and context menus in projects, display common dialog boxes, and use the input provided by the user.

Chapter 6, "Multiform Projects," adds splash forms and About forms to a project. Summary data are presented on a separate form.

Chapter 7, "Lists, Loops, and Printing," incorporates list boxes and combo boxes into projects, providing the opportunity to discuss looping procedures and printing lists of information. Printing is accomplished in .NET using a graphics object and a callback event. The printing controls also include a Print Preview, which allows students and instructors to view output without actually printing it.

Chapter 8, "Arrays," introduces arrays, which follow logically from the lists covered in Chapter 7. Students learn to use single- and multidimension arrays, table lookups, structures, and arrays of structures.

Chapter 9, "Web Applications," introduces programming using Web Forms, which are used to create Web pages that execute in a browser application. Students learn to design and develop simple Web applications. CSS styles and AJAX provide the ability to create improved, more efficient Web sites.

Chapter 10, "Database Applications," introduces ADO.NET, which is Microsoft's technology for accessing data in a database. This chapter shows how to create binding sources, table adapters, and datasets. Programs include accessing data from both Windows Forms and Web Forms. Students learn to bind data tables to a data grid and bind individual data fields to controls such as labels and text boxes. LINQ is used to query an array and a database.

Chapter 11, "Data Files," presents the techniques for data file handling. Students learn to save and read small amounts of data using streams. The StreamWriter and StreamReader objects are used to store and reload the contents of a combo box.

Chapter 12, "OOP: Creating Object-Oriented Programs," explains more of the theory of object-oriented programming. Although we have been using OOP concepts since Chapter 1, in this chapter students learn the terminology and application of OOP. Inheritance is covered for visual objects (forms) and for extending existing classes. The samples are kept simple enough for an introductory class.

Chapter 13, "Graphics, Animation, Sound, and Drag-and-Drop," covers the classes and methods of GDI+. The chapter covers graphics objects, pens, and brushes for drawing shapes and lines. Animation is accomplished using the Timer control and the SetBounds method for moving controls. Students learn to play sounds using the SoundPlayer class. Video files are played using Windows Media Player. Drag-and-drop events are used to transfer images and the contents of a text box to a list box.

Chapter 14, "Additional Topics in C#," introduces some advanced programming topics. This final chapter covers validating user input using Error Providers and the Validating event of controls. Students learn to create applications using multiple document interfaces (MDI), create toolbars and status bars using ToolStrip and StatusStrip controls, and add Web content to a Windows Form using the WebBrowser control. The code-snippet feature is introduced. Reading and writing XML text files is covered. The chapter also covers LINQ to XML. An introduction to Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) includes using WPF Interoperability with a standard Windows Form and creating a WPF Form project.

The appendices offer important additional material.