Firstly, Hi members of CF
I've signed up today and after some serious 'lurking' and ofcourse, reading of the Rules & Posting Guidelines,
I've come to the conclusion that typing this question is my last resort.
My issue is an extremely basic, yet frustrating one:
After copying
Code:
<html>
<body>
<%
response.write("My first ASP script!")
%>
</body>
</html>
directly form W3Schools into a text document, saved as a .ASP file, which I then uploaded to my FTP server,
I'm left with a webpage that looks like this:
(The webpage shown in the print screen can be viewed here)
I would also be interested to know if any of you were able to view it differently.
So anyway here come the variables:
I'm using a dinky little Eee PC laptop (however I do have it connected up to a 1024x768 monitor), it's running a legitimate copy of Windows XP professional, but, this bad boy doesn't have a disc drive! Besides it was provided by my school and so Windows XP was pre-installed and we were not given the disc. The reason I'm mentioning all of this is because I'm unsure whether this issue is being caused by my lack of IIS or any form of web server software per se; I thought being the owner of an actual website would allow me to bypass the need for a program like IIS or Apache, am I wrong?
Thankyou for any help or advice in advanced, and apologies for the length of this question and my incompetence as an ASP newb.
*IF* you had IIS installed on your machine, then you could have served up the ASP page right on that machine. So if you could convince the school to install IIS, you could test your code right there.
As for uploading to a server: What *KIND* of server??? Maybe you FTP'ed to a Linux server, and of course Linux doesn't support ASP.
I did try to check out the link you provided, but I get only an "Under Construction" banner.
Might I ask why you are starting to learn ASP at this point in time?? ASP is far obsolescent and unsupported by MicroSlop. You certainly aren't going to make any money in ASP coding at this point in time. If you would, instead, use ASP.NET, then you could download the free Web Developer Express from MS and guess what, it *includes* a mini web server (for testing purposes).
p.s.: Hi, Richard Baker
__________________
An optimist sees the glass as half full.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
A realist drinks it no matter how much there is.
Last edited by Old Pedant; 11-24-2010 at 06:51 PM..
And one more thing: Why did you choose JScript as your ASP scripting language? Yes, you can do so, but 98% of all the stuff you will find on the web for ASP is using VBScript and you will have a devil of a time translating it to JScript if you are indeed a newbie.
I *STRONGLY* urge you to learn VBScript, instead. Assuming I can't convince you to do the right thing and move to ASP.NET.
__________________
An optimist sees the glass as half full.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
A realist drinks it no matter how much there is.
'Whois' is a wonderful tool, (Btw Richard Baker is infact my dad, he bought an account with 2 domains so I nabbed the other one)
I'm not fussed about what I use, I'm just really keen on learning a server side script, I previously thought you either chose between ASP or PHP and I've tried using MySQL but I couldn't get my head around it. My basic knowledge of XML drove me t'ward ASP, but thanks for the advice; I'm installing ASP.NET as I'm typing this, but I've got to say: I have absoloutely no idea what I am doing. D'you think you could recomend any basic intro tutorials?
(As for the 'Under Construction' thing, I'm not sure what's gone wrong there...)
LOL! Actually, I used whois to find out where you were hosted. Hoping to identify the IP address range. And it worked.
Re tutorials: Just go back to msdn.microsoft.com/express and look at the wonderful tutorials they have there! And then you can check out www.asp.net and their tutorials. You've probably got at least a month's worth of tutorials from those two sites, alone. After that, you can look for more detail.
__________________
An optimist sees the glass as half full.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
A realist drinks it no matter how much there is.
Definitely moving from ASP to ASP.NET is the right move.
I'd suggest also to learn C# instead of VB.NET when coding ASP.NET sites. You have a choice to use either C# or VB.NET (and actually you can mix in both in the same application), but there are advantages to using C# these days. Some of the newer enhancements in ASP.NET 4.0 only work in C# as the syntax isn't present in VB.NET. Also lately, I've been noticing more ASP.NET books presenting code in only C# rather than both VB.NET and C# these days.
Also the added benefit of learning C# is that you can more easily to switch to other languages, like Java which has a similar syntax. It'll make learning other C-style languages easier like Objective-C, C++, etc and scripting languages like JavaScript, ActionScript, etc.
One confusing area for when learning is the difference between ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC framework as both let you make web applications. Which to learn? For a beginner, just stick with Webforms, which most of the beginner tutorials will concentrate on. Webforms was the defacto standard of making sites with ASP.NET. if the tutorial doesn't explicitly say "MVC", then it's most likely for ASP.NET Webforms.
If later, you feel advanced, you can tackle making sites with the new ASP.NET MVC framework, but I'd leave that alone until you are comfortable with programming and using OOP (object-oriented programming) principles and design patterns. In MVC, all there are no web controls , so everything is largely coded by you and less hand holding is involved. I personally love it, but it's a lot of learning involved.
Only "maybe" would be if (a) you are doing this solely for your own entertainment *AND* (b) you are already familiar with, say, Visual Basic. *THEN* you might want to use VB.NET, rather than learning C#.
But if you have any designs toward making programming a career, then C# will stand you in better stead.
And I say this even though I spent 2.5 years at Micro$lop on the VB.NET team. Sort of.
__________________
An optimist sees the glass as half full.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
A realist drinks it no matter how much there is.
Only "maybe" would be if (a) you are doing this solely for your own entertainment *AND* (b) you are already familiar with, say, Visual Basic. *THEN* you might want to use VB.NET, rather than learning C#.
But if you have any designs toward making programming a career, then C# will stand you in better stead.
And I say this even though I spent 2.5 years at Micro$lop on the VB.NET team. Sort of.
Interesting, Old Pendant. I had a chance to interview at Microsoft, for a web developer position for one of their gaming studios up in Washington. They would have flown me up there but I took too long to decide, as I as had a pretty nice job at the time and wasn't too keen on moving states, but I've always been curious at how it would have gone.
What language did you move to after you left the VB.NET team?
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