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. And later in the course, you'll find out how to make your program interact with sequential files, random access files, and databases.

This six-week 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.

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Syllabus:

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when the lesson is released, but you must complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each month. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

C# is a wonderful new programming language that's been recently updated, and the improvements have made programming using C# even easier than before. In this lesson, I'll 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.

Friday - Lesson 02

Programs aren't much fun without interactions, so today we'll start learning to communicate with our users. We'll 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!

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Now that you've used the basic controls to make attractive programs, we'll turn our attention to working calculations. I'll show you 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. We'll also take some time to go over some other features that will make the user enjoy his or her experience with your programs.

Friday - Lesson 04

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? Well maybe not, but there are definitely people out there who can't or prefer not to use a mouse. So today, you'll find out how to set up your applications 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.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Lists, lists, lists. We all have them and we all need a way to keep track of them. So in today's 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.

Friday - Lesson 06

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.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

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.

Friday - Lesson 08

Have you ever used a program and gotten 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, I'll show you how to make it so that those messages don't come up and ruin your user's experience. I'll also show you how to work with data files so that your programs can save the data to be used at a later time.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

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.

Friday - Lesson 10

Databases are very important to the world we live in today. 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.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

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 Web sites. I'll even show you 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!

Friday - Lesson 12

For our final lesson, we'll turn our attention back to making our 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, we'll finish up the course with a quick look at how to deploy your program so that everyone can enjoy it.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Mike Orsega.

Mike Orsega has a diverse background, with a Bachelor's Degree in Physics from Pennsylvania State University and a Master's Degree in Applied Math from the University of Georgia. Upon graduation, Orsega turned to teaching and discovered the exciting potential of online education. He has more than five years of online teaching experience in university and college coursework ranging from basic computer literacy to advanced programming languages, including online courses in Alice and C# programming.

Requirements:

Completion of Mike Orsega's "Introduction to C# Programming" course (or equivalent experience), Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

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