When you read about ASP (Active Server Pages) it can be a bit confusing (read about some of the differences between Windows and Unix web hosting). This is because Active Server Pages are only a part of the evolution of dynamic web pages. So, in order to understand Active Server Pages, you have to look at how and why they were developed. The first thing that you have to understand, however, is that ASP, which works along with the Information Internet Server, ASP.NET, and FrontPage are all Microsoft products that were developed as Microsoft Windows made its move to increase its product line for the Internet. These Microsoft products were developed from existing open source software and built so that the average user could develop dynamic web pages without learning as much computer code or scripting languages. In order to explain ASP, it is necessary to start with explaining what these open source languages are and why they were developed.
Just what are Dynamic Web Pages?
Before dynamic web pages became widespread, the Internet was in no way being used to its full potential. This is because, at the time, all that was available for web development were static web pages, which are pages that are mainly only text and pictures. Dynamic web pages are HTML pages, which are web pages that contain Hypertext Markup Language. This markup language allows the user to insert scripts which are embedded in the web page and tell either the viewer’s browser or your server to execute the code and produce a dynamic page. Dynamic pages revolutionized the Internet.
Short History of Dynamic Web Pages
Dynamic web pages were first introduced in the mid 90’s when a Danish web developer started working with a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries in the C programming language and came up with the first version of PHP, an open source server side scripting language used for creating dynamic web pages. Originally, PHP stood for Personal Home Page before it meant Hypertext Preprocessor and it was the beginning of dynamic web pages that could be processed on the server side. At the same time, JavaScript was being developed by Sun Microsystems for Navigator Netscape browser as a client side script that could also process dynamic web pages. Now, it’s important to understand these two applications in order to appreciate what ASP can do for you when it comes to processing dynamic pages.
JavaScript and How it Interacts with a Web Page (client side scripting)
To further explain JavaScript, it is a computer script that is processed on the client side to produce dynamic pages, so it has limitations. First, in order to really interact with HTML to produce truly dynamic pages it needs to be used with Dynamic HTML (or DHTML) as well as the AJAX framework to be fully functional. As well, JavaScript has to process pages on the client side or client browser, so the resulting pages may not always be the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) results that you are looking for because web browsers (client side tools) may process the code differently. Also, because a viewer’s browser has access to your code, the user can take it. Microsoft also came up with a similar client side scripting language to JavaScript at this time, which they called Jscript, with about the same results. As well, whenever you hear about JavaScript and Jscript, you will usually hear the similar VBScript mentioned.
That quickly explains client side scripting. Going back to the server side scripting (PHP), there were pluses and minuses there as well. PHP, which is also code that is embedded into the HTML pages and was being set up to be processed on the server side, was also fairly revolutionary. Using PHP on your server meant that every viewer would see your web pages the same, no matter what browser they used. Also, it was programmed to work with forms and databases on the web developer’s server to open up entire new possibilities for dynamic web pages. However, while PHP (along with MYSQL), created dynamic web pages on the server side in the same way as ASP soon would – you still had to learn how to code everything. In terms of difficulty, when it came to coding dynamic pages, PHP was extremely simple for computer experts. However, ASP and ASP.NET, which generally accomplishes the same thing as PHP, was developed by Microsoft for people with less of a computer background to use.
Many professional web developers prefer using CGI, PHP, and MySQL on a Linux platform to develop dynamic web pages. This is because these are all open source languages and are updated by the free software community. They are generally free, easy to work with, and also scalable when it comes to working on larger web sites. Even better, when you sign up for a cheap web hosting plan, you usually get a Linux operating system with free PHP 4 or 5 (the latest versions) and MySQL databases included. These are all programmed to work together and are perfect if you know what you are doing. So why then is ASP so popular? That’s easy. It does a lot of the coding for you. You see, when you use free open source software like PHP, you also have to understand how to use it because it doesn’t come with instructions. Many web developers go to technical college or at least get some kind of continuing IT education in order to be able to understand languages like PHP, how to use them, and where to keep up with the free updates. This is why if you read an article on PHP/MySQL hosting on the Internet, you may walk away thinking, “What did I just read?” With ASP, a lot of this homework is done for you by the people at Microsoft.
Microsoft ASP, ASP.NET, Internet Information Server, and FrontPage are all based on open source program languages, but the big difference between these licensed software products and the open source computer application is that Microsoft has gone one step further by making these web applications easy to use by anyone. The licensed part of these Microsoft products isn’t so much what they do, it’s that you don’t have to know as much about HTML, PHP, CGI, JavaScript, VBScript, or any of the other computer scripting languages in order to create the same kind of dynamic web pages that professional web developers can. In fact, if you are familiar with the point and click ease of the Microsoft Windows personal computer environment, you can start learning to develop a dynamic web site in a weekend using ASP, ASP.NET and FrontPage.
This is a far cry from what you can do by using the free site builder that comes with a low cost web hosting package. With the same point and click technology as a free site builder, you can create drop down menus, rollover buttons, tables, forms, databases and everything else that a professional web developer can create.
When ASP was introduced in 1995 by Microsoft, it actually had problems as well, but eventually the ASP.Net Framework was introduced to make the development of Web applications by ASP simple and cleaner. ASP.NET is the next step in the process of creating dynamic web pages and so now you may hear ASP referred to as ASP Classic. This is similar in the way that AJAX is being used to help out JavaScript and the Zend Engine is augmenting PHP.
In order to use ASP to create your web pages, you will have to sign up with an affordable web hosting company that has a Windows hosting platform. Their web hosting package should include the Internet Information Server which is Windows’ operating system, ASP and ASP.NET. Because it uses licensed software from Microsoft, a Windows hosting environment is more expensive, but if you are new to web hosting, you will be able to do much more with your web site than with the open source software offered with a Linux operating system, because you will pick up on ASP and ASP.NET more quickly.
With ASP and ASP.Net, you can greatly reduce the amount of code that you need to use to build web applications. This is because when dynamic pages are created with classic ASP and ASP.NET, the HTML and the source code are together. ASP and ASP.Net also have fewer problems because if the code is incorrect, ASP.NET will correct it. If you are having problems with learning ASP or ASP.Net, you can go even one step further and use FrontPage, which creates similar code for you and places it right in the HTML pages with point and click technology.
Even without FrontPage, however, ASP is still easier to use to build dynamic web pages even if you don’t have a strong computer background and is particularly suited for a busy ecommerce web site with a small staff. Active Server Pages are the quickest pages to download for viewers and also the quickest to create. One reason for this is that ASP code is reusable, so it only has to be written once for use on a website. ASP is the best way for creating pages on the fly and will help you to create much more powerful, creative, and flexible dynamic web pages.
