Learning ASP Series -- Your First ASP Page

By Amrit Hallan
Posted Wednesday, December 1, 2004

ASP pages (Active Server Pages page sounds a bit melodramatic but its easier to refer to them like this) are nothing but web pages. The difference is that they have an extension .ASP and you write the code in a Server Side Scripting language.

Do we know what's Server Side Scripting? This doesn't actually matter if we delve into such nitty-gritty, but let's sound a bit philosophically intellectual. Now, there are two sorts of scripting languages:

Server Side (the hosting server where all the pages and programs reside)

Client Side (the web surfer using the browser - actually the browser is the client)

No, we are not talking about some corporate politics with all this "siding" talk. Ok, before I begin with my bad sense of humor, "Client Side Scripting" is what we generally see when we code basic Java Scripts in our web pages to validate HTML forms or implementing those cool image rollover effects or opening custom popup windows etc. When you view the source of an HTML page, and if the Java Script has been written in the page itself (they have external Java Scripts too, but then that's a different story), then you can see the script with all it's gory details. A simple example of a Client Side Script written in Java Script is:

function welcome()
{
alert("Welcome to the Incredible world of Amrit Hallan!!");
}

And then you can use it when the page loads:

A Server Side Script, on the other hand, does not manifest itself when you try to use the "View Source" option of your browser. It is a server side matter so unless you have the actual access to the server, you cannot view the portion containing the server side coding. But yes, the rest of the HTML matter is visible.

A typical ASP page looks like:

==> Page Begins Page Ends End of Chapter Two

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