ASP.NET Journal

Chapter 1

Initial thoughts

In this chapter we talked about the history of the World Wide Web. Although the internet has only been around for like 50 years, it is the most important mean of communication today. So as a web developer it is extremely important to know how steps the web has been through. Yes, this is the first time I have heard of ASP.NET, although I kind of expected that I after visual basic I wouldn't have to take any other class alike. Without this sort of programs web sites would be static, interaction would be extremely limited. So programs like C# or visual basic are needed in order to make the web work like it does today. If someone asked me why anyone would want to be a web developer, for starters I would say that web developers have a really good average income on an associate?s degree. Also this is a degree for someone that likes to design web sites. Not only you are able to design the web site but also to go from a static web site to a site that has interaction with the users. This major is for someone that likes to sit in front of a computer and type lots of code. The person also has to be good at finding ways to solve problems.

Chapter 2

.Net Languages

Right now I have about 0.001 experience with C#. And Since I had visual basic last semester I would say that my favorite is Visual Basic. The fact that I am used visual basic, and now C# is giving me a head ache because the code has to be typed in a different way. But it also seems that once the user gets used to it, C# could be a little less complicated. For example when declaring variables, C# sharp only uses to words; while Visual Basic uses more words. Also I really like the way C# outputs data to a web page. At the end its just preference. Although I have to add that I am not the kind that likes to take sides in anything. Most likely I will go with the one I learn first. Other than that they both are programming languages that can accomplish about the same. So I just don’t get why people would get defensive about one program or the other. But according to what I have seen in the web, C# seems to be more popular than Visual Basic. Looks like youtube.com has more videos about C# than Visual Basic as well.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 reflection

At this point on the class, I am quite confused about C#. Am pretty sure it’s because I am so used to Visual Basic. Even when I see applications that are already completed, I’m still not able to figure out a few things. Then again it’s probably because I am trying to do things the same way they are done in Visual Basic. This time there were no AHA moments. The first exercise was relatively easy to figure it out on paper. Although I had to get help on the coding part because I still didn’t know how get user input. At first I was doing trial and error expecting the code to be more or less like in Visual Basic. But in the direction I was going I could probably have spent 1000 years and still wouldn’t figure it out. The second problem was a whole different deal. This time I knew the code but I didn’t knew how to fix the problem. I meet the deadline and I didn’t figure it out, so no aha moments. About the differences between programs, well if it’s between C# VS HTML and CSS, I have been using HTML for a while so I can tell which code is C# and which code is HTML. Although I may confuse the tag when is the middle of a C# block. The one thing that surprised me was how different are the ways of gathering input between C# and Visual Basic.

Chapter 4

Reflection & Page Life Cycle

Although we learned about Web forms in chapter 3, in chapter 4 I was able to learn about them in more depth. In chapter 3 I was only coping and pasting code so I didn’t really know what I was doing, nor I knew how the forms were working. After going through chapter 4, I don’t have to limit myself to copy and paste those forms, now I am also able to modify those forms to my advantage; although I still have to be looking at the book most of the time. Other topic that I read about on the chapter is about the events of a web page. But right now I am still a little confused about those, so I’m going to jump that topic. Anyway, the most important thing I learned in this chapter are the validation controls. Back in VB validating data was a pain. I don’t really know if it is because it is a different language or because I’m using a newer version. Either way ASP.Net makes it quite easy to do validations.

The first step of a page life cycle is the Page Request. The page request occurs after the page life cycle begins. When the page is requested by the user and the sever determines whether the page needs to be parsed. The second step is the Start stage. This is the step where requests are made. In this step the page also determinates whether the request is a new request or postback. The third step is the initialization step; I am not quite sure I understand this even so I am going to skip it. The fourth even is the load even. According to Microsoft this is probably the most used event by developers. In this state is where the data recovered from the user gets processed by the browser. The fifth step is the event handling; this is also the event where the validation takes place. According to the user input, the data gets submitted or prompts the user for valid data. Next is the rendering step, where the page is saved and then output to as HTML markup. Last is the upload event of a page. After the page is fully rendered, the output cannot be changed.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Reflection & IE 9

To start with, I am a FireFox user. Even worse not only a fire fox user but I am also an anti Internet Explore. Anyway just I have been using IE for 2 days now and for the most part I can pretty much ensure you all I am going back to FireFox. Although there are a few things that I like about IE9, since my computer has a really small screen, in a way I do like that they put everything in a single tab. The one thing I really like about IE9 is that when you go the plug-ins window it tells you about how much time you are losing if you enable that specific plug in. I hope FireFox comes up with something like that. That is about all I like about IE9 so far. But there are lots of things that I dislike about it. The first is that when I mouse over IE on the task bar it shows all the tabs I have open with that browser. Since I rarely ever have less than 5, it usually fills my screen with windows. The major problem I notice is that IE9 doesn’t work with yahoo email classic. Thankfully I stopped using that yahoo classic about 4 years ago; but sister stills uses it and the links don’t work. Over all, I think I tried it enough so now I am going back to FireFox. I may use in a few months when they do some debugging. About the article, I didn’t know that Chrome is the fastest browser out there, I haven’t ever used it before but I will try it one of these days.