1.0.0- Getting Started With ASP

Getting Started With ASP

Active Server Pages (ASP) is a great tool for creating dynamic web pages. ASP is a Microsoft technology, and it works by allowing us the functionality of a programming language; we write programming code that will generate the HTML for the web page dynamically. So, whenever a user browses to our web site and requests one of our ASP pages, the ASP code is processed at that time by a special piece of software – the web server. This processing generates the HTML, which is then passed to the browser and used to create the page itself, on the user's screen.

The power of ASP lies in two facts: first, the HTML is not created until the user wants to see the web page, and second, it doesn't care what web browser is being used. ASP isn't the first technology to offer these features, but it's undoubtedly one of the most powerful and widely used in industry; and crucially, it's one of the fastest. Active Server Pages is different from many Microsoft technologies in the following respect: while ASP must be executed on a computer that supports it, we can view ASP-driven web pages from any computer, and with any modern browser. This has enabled developers to enhance their web pages with interactive features, and even to solve common business problems – to such an extent that pages with the .asp suffix are fast becoming as common as those with the .htm suffix.

ASP is potentially one of the most important innovations to emerge on the Web – for developers and users of the Internet and intranets alike.

So what can we do with ASP? Well, arguably the most important advantage that ASP brings is its ability to create pages that are sensitive to factors such as time and place, and the user's identity and previous choices and actions. In other words, we can use ASP to customize our web pages to the specific needs of each individual user. It means that the text, images, tables, forms, and even the layout of the page can be selected automatically at the time the user requests the page – and to suit that user's requirement.

ASP is relatively simple to learn. All you need is a little experience with HTML and a scripting language (this book teaches and uses the VBScript scripting language) – and you can start to build ASP functionality into your existing HTML pages. In short, ASP is a great way to bring the best features of programming to your web pages.

ASP was officially announced to the world by Microsoft on July 16, 1996, codenamed Denali. A beta version was released in November 1996, and ASP version 1.0 was shipped on December 12, 1996. It gained much wider recognition when it was bundled with version 3.0 of Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) web server suite in March 1997; and it has been gaining steadily in popularity since then.

Microsoft has continued to work on the development of ASP. In 1998, they released new versions of their web server software, Internet Information Server 4.0 (IIS 4.0) and Personal Web Server 4.0 (PWS 4.0): both of these supported the new ASP version 2.0. ASP 2.0 offered considerable enhancements over ASP 1.0, including an enriched model for managing communications between browser and web server.

With the release of Windows 2000, we have a further updated version Internet Information Server (version 5.0) and a new version of Active Server Pages (version 3.0). Moreover, IIS 5.0 is more naturally integrated with the Windows 2000 operating system, resulting in a more streamlined overall package.

In this first chapter, we'll be looking at:

• What ASP is, and what ASP code looks like
• Pure HTML pages, and pages which use ASP to generate HTML – and the differences between them
• What a web server is
• An overview of how to install and set up ASP
• How to create your first ASP page
• Common errors that might prevent the page from working in the way you intended
• Which editors you can use to create and test your ASP pages

We'll start by understanding what we mean when we talk about a dynamic web page, and how dynamic web pages are different from static web pages. Then, we'll use that as a springboard into understanding ASP.