ASP vs. ASP.net

[YaymeQ]

So what is the difference?

Also, when referring to the .net framework, is it asp.net or other stuff too? I'm considering learning asp.net (a relatively cheep class has been made available to me) I know html and css but I have no clue what asp is or how it's connected to the dot net framework. I know it makes dynamic pages and interacts with a server but that's about it.

I always hear it talked about as "Microsoft's" .net so is it good for linux servers too?

I looked at microsofts asp.net page but it wasn't very useful (something I'm learning to expect from them)

I'd appreciate whatever answers you could give.
<edit> Oh yeah, could you suggest some web pages for further reading?</edit>
~YaymeQ

[Old Pedant]

So what is the difference?

Might be better to ask what, if anything, is the same?

Answer to that: Not much. A few standard builtin objects, such as Request and Response. But other than that...

ASP.NET is no more similar to ASP than, say, JSP is. In fact, original JSP (that is, without frameworks) and ASP are much more similar than is ASP.NET to either of them.

The .Net framework is used in ASP.NET *and* in standalone executables (you know, ".exe" files) *and* in DLLs. In general, this means that most everything except web-specific (especially HTML-specific versus graphical Windows-specific) libraries are identical. Anything you can do with a database in ASP.NET you can also do in a ".exe" created in (say) VB.NET or C#.

No, ASP.NET is not good for Linux servers. There's a version of the .NET framework that runs, in a limited fashion, on Linux. But so far as I know nobody has ported ASP.NET to Linux, nor would you want to. ASP.NET is pretty tightly tied to MS's IIS Web Server.

I dunno what MS pages you looked at, but I think you are dead wrong. The *right* pages at MS are incredibly helpful for learning ASP.NET. I'd start with http://msdn.microsoft.com/Express so you can download the Express edition of Visual Web Developer. A really great free version of Visual Studio that allows creation of ASP.NET pages/sites. If you poke around on that sub-site, you'll find *tons* of tutorial material and several "starter kits" that will go a very very long way towards getting you going. The other major url to look at is http://www.asp.net -- again more tutorials than you could absorb in a month or more. Videos, helpful hints, and more.

[YaymeQ]

Thank you so much, if you don't mind me asking yet another question, why do they have the same acronym?

[Old Pedant]

ASP was created about 1997. An acronym for "ActiveX Server Pages". Because it was all based on COM/ActiveX components. But then the "X" was dropped and officially the "A" stood for just "Active".

Actually, MS used a different name than ASP.NET in the early days. But I guess they wanted customers who were already invested in ASP to fell comfortable swittching over, so they changed the name to ASP.NET.

To be fair, version 1 of ASP.NET "felt" more like ASP. Yes, a ton of differences. The languages used--VB.NET and C#--are much much more sophisticated and tons more efficient than the VBScript and JScript used in ASP. But a lot of the sophisticated features of ASP.NET didn't appear until version 2. Still, why "A"SP when the "A" part was no longer meaningful? Who knows. I'd bet that, if they had it to do over, they'd choose a different acronym today.