This three-day course provides a practical introduction to developing rich Internet applications using ASP.NET AJAX and Visual Basic. Because of the rich support provided by Microsofts AJAX tools, an ASP.NET programmer can get up and running in this new environment quickly. This course shows the way. It is current to ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.
The course begins with a discussion of rich Internet applications, which include substantial client-side code, typically JavaScript. Microsofts AJAX tools are surveyed, and a simple AJAX application is illustrated. The JavaScript programming language is covered in enough detail to give the student a good working knowledge of writing client scripts. To retrieve and update information on a Web page from client-side code, the programmer needs to use DHTML or the Document Object Model (DOM), which are discussed in the third chapter along with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Chapter 4 covers the AJAX Client Library, which simplifies client-side programming with JavaScript extensions, a debugging trace facility, and various API shortcuts. The next chapter covers partial page rendering, which enables part of a page to be updated asynchronously, resulting in an improved user experience. The next chapter covers various techniques for making remote-method calls, resulting in greater efficiency in an AJAX application. The next chapter introduces the AJAX Control Toolkit, which provides many very useful controls enabling sophisticated client-side effects with relatively little programming. The last chapter covers built-in application services, which provides a client-side API to various services on the server, such as authentication and user profiles.
Numerous programming examples and exercises are provided. A case study illustrates a number of features of ASP.NET AJAX working together. The student will receive a complete set of notes and all the programming examples.