INTRODUCING VISUAL WEB DEVELOPER in Visual Basic .NET

Generation PDF417 in Visual Basic .NET INTRODUCING VISUAL WEB DEVELOPER

Figure 1-8. Creating the EmailWebsite Your development environment should match Figure 1-9 (or look very similar).

You have in front of you the HTML view of the Default.aspx. When a new website is created, the Default.aspx is included as a first page. You can use this page or delete it and start from scratch. You will use this page for your application. Click on the Design button at the bottom of the screen to go to the Web Form designer. This is where you will put your controls for the user to interact with. You will also require one more web page. When users submit their request to submit, you want to present them with another page to show them the information you have received and demonstrate their request has been accepted. You will add this page to your project after the next few steps. On the left side of the development environment is a side window called the Toolbox. In the Toolbox, click the plus sign beside the word Standard so you can see all of the standard ASP.NET server controls. Now let s begin to add the controls to your web page. 1. From the main menu along the top, select Layout Insert Table. 2. In the layout section of the Insert Table dialog, select four rows and two columns and select Center Align. 3. Check the Caption check box so you can add a title to your table. 4. Ensure that your Insert Table dialog looks like the one in Figure 1-10 and click OK.

This will draw a table on the designer. We will now run through the steps to set up your table so you can receive input from the users of your website. 1. Click in the top row of the table to give it focus and place the cursor in it. Enter the text Sign-Up Now! in the row. 2. Enter the text in the rest of the cells so it looks like Figure 1-11.

Figure 1-11. Labels for the sign-up Web Form Now that your users know what to type, you must give them something to type it into and submit it to the server for processing. You will provide some controls for the user to interact with. You will need a few textboxes and a button to enable submission. You can find these in the Standard section of the Toolbox you just expanded. Drag and drop a textbox into each cell beside the text, and in the last row, drop a button into the right cell. Your form should now look like Figure 1-12 in the designer.

Figure 1-12. The sign-up form with server controls You need to give your control some meaningful names so you can access them more easily from your code when users click the Submit button. Follow these steps to change the name of a control: 1. Select the textbox in the First Name row. 2. Right-click the textbox and select Properties. 3. When the Properties window appears on the right side, scroll to the bottom to nd the ID property (Figure 1-13). 4. In the ID eld, enter FirstNameTextBox.

Figure 1-13. Assign an ID to the first textbox. Repeat the previous steps for the other two textboxes and the button. Call the textbox in the Last Name row LastNameTextBox and the textbox in the E-mail Address row EmailAddressTextBox and the button SignUpButton. While in the properties for the button, change the Text property to Sign Up. Now you have all your controls just about set up. When your button gets clicked by the user, you want to submit the data to another web page. This procedure is called cross-page posting. To do this, first add the other page to your website. To add the new web page, follow these steps: 1. Under the main menu, select File New File. This gives you the dialog in Figure 1-14.