What are all these .asp web pages all about nower days?

[Zebo]

First everything was .html then microsoft came along with .hml -I am finally getting used to seeing .xml and .cgi but really don't have a clue what .asp is? Can someone help me with what these file extensions mean and how you would apply them to a site. Are there any security problems when I see them? I am using web washer and IE 6 with netcaptor on top.

 

[Nothinman]

.asp are MS' Active Server Pages. Basically VB scripting to generate dynamic web pages.

The only security problems with them is that they require IIS, which is swiss cheese for security, but that's nothing you need to worry about unless you're the webmaster.

 

[Workin']

<< The only security problems with them is that they require IIS, which is swiss cheese for security, but that's nothing you need to worry about unless you're the webmaster. >>

ASP pages can also run on Apache and *nix with 3rd-party software like ChiliSoft's ASP. But most are run from IIS.

 

[Nothinman]

ASP pages can also run on Apache and *nix with 3rd-party software like ChiliSoft's ASP. But most are run from IIS.

I realize that, but with ASP on unix you lose access to pretty much all the functionality ASP has with COM objects.

 

[Gaunt]

To expand on Nothinman's explanation, .ASP pages are parsed by the web server before they are sent to the user, so the content sent to the user is dynamic. All of the code in the actual ASP page is hidden from the user (unless it's client side stuff) and is used by the server. The code can be vbscript or jscript (possibly others) but vbscript is used most often.

An example of this could be a .ASP file on a server which displays entries from a database. On the server, when a user requests the page, the .ASP file is parsed, and the code to retrieve the data from the server is run, and the output from that code is sent in HTML format to the client, so when you look at the source for the page (view source in your browser) all you see is HTML content, and not the code that was used to generate it.

Hope that helps a little...

 

[Workin']

<< ASP pages can also run on Apache and *nix with 3rd-party software like ChiliSoft's ASP. But most are run from IIS.

I realize that, but with ASP on unix you lose access to pretty much all the functionality ASP has with COM objects. >>

Well you said it requires IIS You can still do a lot without using COM objects. Sorry to nitpick.

 

[Nothinman]

Well you said it requires IIS You can still do a lot without using COM objects. Sorry to nitpick.

True, I should have said 'requires IIS to be usefull' And if you're using Apache you're probably also using perl or php because they work better anyway =)