The ASP.NET environment includes a number of useful server controls which can be used by developers to quickly add sophisticated functionality to a web form. The validation controls found in ASP.NET are used to check the information entered by visitors to your site into form fields and display error messages if there are problems with the entries. This process is referred to as validation and is an essential part of the information gathering process. Validation requires that you lay down some ground rules for each of the key fields in your form. How strict these rules are how strictly you enforce them is up to you. You will probably want to strike a balance between rules which are not so lax that they allow users to submit rubbish via your form and not so strict that they put users off.

Not all controls found in forms require the same type and degree of validation. For example, text boxes in which the user can choose to enter any information they like is likely to require more checking than a check box which can be checked or unchecked and nothing else. In addition, some fields will require multiple validation checks while others will require only one or perhaps none at all.

ASP.NET’s validation server controls offer developers both server-side and client-side validation. Server-side validation takes place on the server and is usually implemented using one of the two main languages used in ASP.NET web development: VB.Net or C#. Client-side validation takes place in the user’s browser and is usually done using JavaScript, before the form is sent to the server.

Client-side and server-side validation both have their benefits and drawbacks. From the user’s point of view, client-side validation is quicker and also frees up the server to perform other tasks. However, it is in no way secure. It is easy for the user to look at the source code of the page and see what type of validation is being performed. It is also possible for the user to disable the execution of JavaScript within their browser’s preferences.

The main problems with server-side validation are that it is slightly slower and uses more of the server’s precious processing power. However, it is secure and allows developers to set up validation procedures which users cannot side-step.

Given that client-side and server-side validation both have definite benefits, it is usually best to implement both of them when creating forms. The validation server controls found in ASP.NET make this very doable and very easy.

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The ASP.NET environment offers a number of built-in solution for displaying information from a database. In ASP.NET, placing a GridView control on your page is one of the simplest ways of displaying databound data. The GridView can be created simply by opening the Database Explorer and dragging the table or view that from which you want to display information. However, the default GridView which is automatically generated in this way almost always needs some tweaking. One typical change you may want to make is to change some of the BoundFields elements to TemplateFields elements.

By default, the GridView displays data using the BoundField object which displays data from a given column in the data source with no real modification. By contrast, any content you desire can be placed inside a TemplateField element. This makes it ideal for setting up validation through the use of validation controls.

TemplateFields offer great flexibility by allowing you to include a variety of templates to cater for the different states of the conditions arising within the GridView. There are several types of template which may be added inside a TemplateField object; the main ones are described below.

Use the HeaderTemplate to customize the information which will be displayed in the header of the column in which the TemplateField is located.

Use the ItemTemplate to hold the information which you want displayed for each row of data when the GridView object is not selected for editing.

The EditItemTemplate is used to display the information which you want displayed for each row of data when the GridView object is in edit mode. It is here that you would place the controls necessary for validation.

Typically, you would display the information currently held in the database by adding a TextBox control inside the EditItemTemplate and databind it to the appropriate column from the data source using a statement like Bind(“FirstName”). Inside the same EditItemTemplate, you would then place the necessary validation control. For example, if you want to ensure that the field is not left blank when the form is submitted, you would insert a RequiredFieldValidator control.

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Microsoft Office Excel is on just about every computer in the western world and a lot of people know the basics. If you are looking for Microsoft Excel training there are several avenues that you can take. You can buy instructional DVDs that will lead you step-by-step through each area. You can see exactly the area of the spreadsheet that the tutorial is and you will be able to follow along if you open your own spreadsheet. These can a great tool to learn and you will always have them for when you to brush up on your skills.

Microsoft Excel training will not only help you to successfully use the application but it can give you an edge on other people that are in the job market.

You may want to see of there is an actual class at community college or at a business school that give the Microsoft Excel training that you are looking for. It is better to find a school that has been certified to teach Microsoft classes.

If you are looking to be really competitive out there in the job market, you might want to considering get enough training and have a solid understanding so that you can become a Microsoft Office Specialist or MOS.

Once one begins to explore the features and a more in-depth fashion — which can be gained through Excel VBA training — one begins to see the truly complex calculations and charts that can be created to illustrate just about any type of data under the sun. There are a multitude of features within the program that most people never find, sadly.

If you pass enough tests, you can then be a Microsoft Office Master. Microsoft tests can be rather challenging but any employer should be impressed that you have the dedication to pursue the certifications. It will definitely pay off at the end of day.

Look for training courses that lay out how to make use of VBA so that you can properly command Excel to do all of the data manipulation, run MS Word and PowerPoint from MS Excel. There are two day workshops available that can help a person really learn quickly how to take advantage of all of the features within the program.

There are several ways that you can learn about Excel. Microsoft has their own tutorials that you may download, if you have a legitimate copy of Microsoft Office on your PC or laptop. There are also many books written about Microsoft Office and specifically Excel.

If you prefer a more hands on approach to learning, you can try and find classes that are offering training for this business program. You should try to stay with a learning institution that has been certified by Microsoft to teach about their products. Especially if you believe that you want to try for any Microsoft certifications that are available for those that proficient in any of the Office applications.

Others out there think of Excel as a kind of word processing software package that lets a user manipulate tables and also set up text and images, and the truth is that it can do those things — which are actually fairly basic to its programming. All of those functions put together really only begin to barely touch upon what Excel is capable of, though.

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Microsoft ASP.NET is the server-side technology ‘par excellence’. Server side technology is already a powerful tool but with Asp Dot Net training, you can learn just how powerful this can be. It is used to develop the most dynamic web pages, it is flexible, powerful and contains a series of classes which may be used for every programming need. The set of classes is found in the Microsoft. Net Framework which encompasses a huge amount of technology to assist in web design.

Essentially this framework training was developed to solve certain fundamental problems that programmers often face. These include reliable time saving for the building of large applications; Allowing various languages to operate on these applications. A cheaper, faster and easier way to get the applications into the hands of the user, no complex codes with complicated languages are required, and programmers are also able to unify the architecture/applications to operate locally on a machine from web accessed applications.

In short you get impressive results with far less complex programming. This is very important when you are required to have many different programming languages, for example, C++ and visual basic. Often these languages overlap, and each of them require different methods for working with data bases, accessing file systems and manipulating strings.

The syntax for both C++ and Visual Basic is written differently but basically functions the same, and this is the case with the majority of programming languages. Variable data in respect of strings and integers is similar and. Net framework is designed to work with this and simplify matters.

Access to database, manipulating text, generating graphics, and handling system files is all taken care of by the organized structure of classes in the. Net framework. Training encompasses learning all about these classes and how they can be applied to programming expression and network protocol management.

Bytes, arrays, integers, strings and characters are all basic data types and this is explained in your training. This training is virtually on the job also as you can access the. Net classes while you are working on a real life scenario, essentially, when you are busy building web pages.

This framework consists of more that three thousand five hundred classes which are structured into namespaces. You are taught to understand namespaces as this is integral to the success of your training. Namespaces are organized logically and grouped together, as jumbling them up would make it difficult to relate them to working with system files.

Before you install and run ASP. Net, you have to understand the difference between this and “ASP”. ASP creates web pages only using script language and ASP dot NET allows the use of any programming language that is supported by Net.

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The fundamentals of The ASP.NET environment have the reputation of being quite easy and there are a number of additional ways of making a smooth start. If you are beginner that is just starting to use ASP dot NET web development then you may want to use one of the starter kits. These starter kits provide you with the basic code that you can then alter to customize your web site or web application. These can be a great tool if you are learning how to use web development with ASP. NET.

There are five different types of starter kits that can be used; the time tracker, portal, commerce, reports and community kits. These kits contain codes that can be reused again and again to create completely new web sites. All the code can be easily customized to fit your needs.

The ASP. NET framework has made web development much easier though you will need to put a bit of effort into building your web page. You can shorten this initial period by using a starter kit. Everyone needs to create their own code, so instead of wasting time by creating your own you can simply modify the existing code and cut down the time it takes you at the beginning.

All of the starter kits can be downloaded easily form the ASP. NET site. He different types of sites that can be created include sample reports, community web sites, project time racking applications and portal sites. There are several different versions available such as basic, C# and J#. You also have options for the data storage.

An example of one of the starter kits is the commerce starter kit. This kit produces a fictitious spy store and contains codes for a three tier architecture form, forms authentication, shopping cart and caching. You can also use the B2B component.

The time tracker kit builds a billing and time application that doesn’t actually contain the billing component. There are three different tabs; administration, reports and logs. The reports kit actually contains eight different applications that can create a series of eight different reports.

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The ASP.NET environment is the premier development environment for creating dynamic server-side content a key element of which is the display of information from data sources. Displaying data on a web page which is bound to information in a database is a very common requirement in web applications. In ASP.NET version 1, the main control for achieving this was the DataGrid. In the current release of ASP.NET, version 3.5, the DataGrid is conspicuously absent from the Toolbox in Visual Web Developer. In fact, although the DataGrid can still be used in ASP.NET pages and will work fine, it is now deprecated. The good news is that there is a good choice of more powerful new controls which have taken its place. Four of these controls (GridView, DataList, Repeater and List View) are suitable for displaying multiple records from a data source and then there are another two (FormView and DetailsView) which are used to display only one record at a time.

Perhaps the most widely-used of ASP.NET’s DataBound controls is the GridView. It displays data items in an automatically-generated table and has a rich set of easily-configurable options. Options include the ability to customize columns and to include custom content in columns such as images or any other relevant HTML column. Command columns can also be added containing links which will enable the user to edit and delete records. The control also supports paging and sorting.

The DataList control also automatically generates a table when it produces its output. However, unlike the GridView control, it allows the display of more than one record per row using its RepeatColumns property. The DataList is also template-driven, requiring the use of an ItemTemplate containing dynamic data. The elements placed inside the ItemTemplate are rendered once for each item in the bound data.

ItemTemplate elements are also used by The Repeater Control to format its output. However, since it does not automatically generate a table, the Repeater offers considerable flexibility of layout. Output can be rendered as paragraphs, as a series of DIV elements, an ordered list, an unordered list or a customized table.

ASP.NET 3.5 introduced us to the ListView control, which also uses templates for displaying its output. However, it is far more sophisticated, allowing the use of a variety of templates, for example: a LayoutTemplate for specifying the overall container for the data; an ItemTemplate for specifying the rendering of each item of data; an ItemSeparator template, used to specify the content displayed between items of data; and so on. The ListView control also supports paging, sorting and editing records as well as the creation of new records.

ASP.NET 3.5 offers a choice of two controls for displaying single items of data: the DetailsView and the FormView. The DetailsView resembles GridView in that it displays its output in an automatically-generated HTML table. The other single record data bound control, the FormView, resembles the ListView control, in that it is entirely template driven. Both of the single record controls support paging and sorting and allow you to edit and delete records as well as adding new ones.

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The text that we use in our documents can be sourced from many different locations and when it gets transferred into Word, there are often elements that need to be deleted or modified before they are good to go. Microsoft Office Word 2007 allows you to change not only text but even invisible characters. It even allows you to specify the format of both the text being searched for and the replacement text.

One of the most common occurrences that needs changing is the use of two spaces after a period. This goes back to the days of typewriters using monospace typefaces in which each character was allocated the same amount of space regardless of the width of the characters. To make it easier for the eye to pick out the end of sentences, the practice of adding two spaces after a period was introduced. Digital typefaces use proportional spacing, allocating each character only the space it needs; so the extra space is not required. To make this change, simply enter “. ” (with two spaces) in the Find box and “. ” (with one space) in the Replace box.

Whenever the Replace command is used, Microsoft Word also offers you the chance of taking the case into account as well as the option of only replacing search string if it occurs on its own rather than as part of a larger string. Thus, for example, if you were replacing “London” with “Paris” throughout a document, you would not want to accidentally replace “Londonderry” with “Parisderry”. This can be avoided by clicking the button marked “More” and activating the option “Find Whole Words Only”.

The options which appear when the “More” button is clicked are what make the Replace command so powerful. They include the ability to search for invisible characters such as Tabs and Returns. Thus, for example, let’s say you have a file with two returns after each paragraph and you find that this creates too much space in your Word publication. You would click in the “Find What” box, click on the button marked “Special” and choose Paragraph Mark twice. This causes Word to insert the codes “^p ^p “. Next, click in the “Replace with” box, click on the button marked “Special” and choose Paragraph Mark once. Click on “Replace All” and Word will replace every occurrence of two Returns with a single Return.

You can also specify the format of the text you search for as well as the format of the replacement text. For example, let’s say that your boss tells you that whenever your organisation name is used within the body of a report it should be bold and dark blue. However, this should not be the case when the company name occurs within headings. Here, you would click in the “Find What” box, click on the button marked “Format” and choose “Style” and then “Normal”. Next, click in the “Replace with” box, click on the button marked “Format”, activate “Bold” and set the font color to blue.

You can learn more about features like this on our Microsoft Word 2007 training classes.

Microsoft Office Word 2007 is often ridiculed by the design community for not affording them the accuracy provided by DTP software such as InDesign and QuarkXpress. However, over the years, the features available for formatting text and paragraphs in Word have been gradually enhanced. Today, there are features to control just about every aspect of your text.

An important distinction which must be made is between character and paragraph formatting. Character formats can be applied to any text you care to select; anything from a single character upwards. Paragraph formats apply to entire paragraphs; a paragraph being any text between two carriage returns. A second distinction is the way in which text is formatted: manually or through the use of styles. Manual formatting, where you specify the formatting attributes you want to apply to your text one item at a time, is suitable for short documents; especially those which will not be repeated at some stage.

Usually, styles are used when creating longer documents. Here, text formatting is encapsulated into a series of named styles, each with its own associated series of formatting attributes. To format one’s text, one simply assigns a particular style to it. If the attributes associated with a particular style are modified, all of the text which has been formatted with that style is updated and inherits the new attributes.

When applying formatting manually, character formats are obtained in the Font group of the Home Tab of the Word ribbon. Character formats include such attributes as the typeface, size and color. Paragraph formats are found in the Paragraph group of the same Tab and include such attributes as the space between paragraphs, alignment and indentation.

When using styles to format you text, you can use Word’s built-in styles, your own styles or a combination of both. Here too, there is a distinction between character styles and paragraph styles. However, it is important to note that while character styles include only character attributes, paragraph styles include both character and paragraph attributes. Paragraph styles are used far more frequently than character styles and most people will be happy to use Word’s built-in styles (especially “Heading 1″, “Heading 2″ etc.) rather than reinventing the wheel and creating their own. The good thing about these styles is that you can modify the attributes associated with them simply by right-clicking on the name of a style and choosing “Modify”.

Character styles are not used that often but they can be quite handy. Suppose you are creating a promotional document about a service offered by your company and you want the name of the service to stand out wherever it occurs. No problem: simply create a character style and use it to format the text in question. If you are doing this as an afterthought, Word will even allow you to use the Replace command to apply the formatting.

You can learn everything you need to know about such features on our Microsoft Word 2007 training courses.