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Many portals collect user opinion by conducting polls. This sample application developed in ASP.NET 2.0 will show how to develop such an application. The administrator can manage poll questions using a web page (PollManager.aspx). The administrator can specify the start and end dates for which the poll remains active. The poll question along with voting options (Yes, No, Don't Know) are displayed to the end user (Default.aspx). The interesting part of the application is the graphical display of the poll results. The code uses System.Drawing classes to render bar graphs. The application uses SQL Server Express database to store the data.

In this installment of Advanced Basics Ted Pattison discusses the localization of Web sites in ASP.NET 2.0.

The MVP pattern helps you separate your logic and keep your UI layer free of clutter. This month learn how.

This article uses a generic collection as the data source for the Gridview. Some code is requried to get the sorting to work. There is an examples of using the pager template along with a simple Gridview printer.

This cloud control displays a list of hyperlinks in varying styles depending on a weight. This is similar to tag clouds in del.icio.us or flickr.

This article describes using the Model-View-Presenter pattern within ASP.NET to encourage proper separation of concerns between presentation and business logic.

Traditionally, web applications have left a lot to be desired from a user experience standpoint, due primarily to the "request/response" lifecycle. Any interaction with a page typically requires a postback to the web server (a "request"), which then performs any server-side tasks needed and returns the updated page's markup (the "response"). Outside of intranet-based applications, such behavior adds a bit of a lag when interacting with a page. One approach to improving the end user's experience is to use AJAX. AJAX is a technique for using JavaScript and the XMLHttpRequest object to make light-weight HTTP requests back to the web server from client-side script. Once a response is received, the web page's layout can be seamlessly refreshed using JavaScript to message the page's Document Object Model (DOM) and CSS settings. AJAX-enabled pages provide a slick, responsive user experience, making web-based applications function more like desktop-based ones.

In the past adding AJAX type behaviors to your web application was difficult and came with a steep learning curve since AJAX encompasses a bevy of technologies (JavaScript, XML, XmlHttpObject, HTTP requests, DHTML, and so on). With the advent of the ASP.NET Atlas framework, however, there is much less of a reason to feel so overwhelmed when it comes to AJAX!

SharePoint users have known how useful Web parts are for a long time, but it wasn't until recently that every .NET developer had access to the ease and grace of Web parts using ASP.NET 2.0. Find out how you can use these handy content containers to create Web sites that put routine content sharing capabilities into the hands of your end users.

An updated version of the AutoActivateControl class posted by Dundas Software.

The wizard - a standard user interface element in desktop applications - takes the user through a series of discrete steps in order to accomplish some task. A wizard step typically includes instructions, input controls, and an interface for moving between the wizard's steps (typically Next and Previous buttons, with a Finish button at the last step). Furthermore, wizards often include different steps depending on the inputs chosen in previous steps.

Wizards have typically been the domain of desktop applications, but have recently become more prevalent in web applications. In ASP.NET 1.x, developers who wanted to implement a wizard-like user interface would often use multiple Panel Web controls, one for each Wizard step. As they user progressed through the wizard by hitting the Next and Previous buttons, the appropriate Panel could be displayed (have its Visible property set to True), while the others hidden (have their Visible properties set to False).

ASP.NET 2.0 makes creating wizard interfaces a lot less work thanks to its new Wizard control. With the Wizard control, we can define a series of Wizard steps and specify the content - static HTML and Web controls - that belongs in each step along with the function of the step, whether it's the first step, one step in the series of steps, the final step, or a summary step to appear after the wizard has completed. The Wizard control automatically includes the appropriate navigation elements for each step, remembers the values entered into the Web controls in each step, and includes a rich event model from which programmatic logic can be added to perform the desired task upon finishing the wizard (among other tasks)..