1.1.2- Using Dynamic Web Pages

Using Dynamic Web Pages

So the idea is to have an extra step, which allows us to generate HTML at runtime. Of course, this extra step doesn't only allow web authors to write web pages that tell the time! We can use it to achieve a huge number of things that are impossible with pure HTML. We can capture all sorts of information that isn't known at the time the instructions are written – for example:

• The user's identity and personal preferences
• The type of browser they're using
• Other information provided by the user's request
• Information contained in databases, text files, XML files, etc

Our HTML-generation instructions can be written in such a way that they use this newly-captured information to create up-to-the-minute, personalized, interactive web pages, that serve fresh information every time they are requested.

You'll find that sites that contain ASP code are more dynamic – they're quite often tailored to the individual user, can reflect the fact that a user has visited the site before, can be customized easily to view preferred topics, and in general offer the user a more interactive and personalized experience.