Learning ASP

[TomWilko]

I am going to be learning ASP this year on my degree course and i want to try and learn a bit before they start teaching it us.

Where do i start? I am looking at some simple guides on the Internet and it says to run stuff on my home PC [to see if it works] i need a copy of an ASP engine, like Personal Web Server?!! What is this?

I am not interested in hosting anything at the mo son will run everything offline.

Some pointers would be useful

Thanks

Tom

[Shad]

If you're running Windows 2000 Pro or XP Pro you can install a cut down version of IIS (Internet Information Services) server to use as a development tool. Then you can navigate to http://localhost/ and execute your code.

Wrox's Beginning ASP 3.0 is a good book if you haven't already got one, though if you're keen then you can pick up most things from samples and guides around the web. www.4guysfromrolla.com and www.devguru.com are invaluable resources for ASP developers

Have you done any programming before?

[fondie]

PWS does pretty much as it says but is only available for up to Windows 98 and NT4 systems, I can't remember if there is a work around to get it installed on Windows XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;304197

If you're using Windows XP Professional then you should have IIS already, use that, if your on Windows XP Home then you can use ChillisoftASP, which is free or...

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/020118.htm

edit: as Shad said the Wrox asp book is pretty good, i only had edition 2.0 which was a bit out of date but it was still very easy to get to grips with. IF you want to get started off with the basic stuff straight away http://www.w3schools.com/ has a bit.

[TomWilko]

Unfortunately I only have XP Home and I cannot find a copy of IIS or Personal Web Server anywhere I am downloading the old edition now but on 56k it is taking an age.

Would ChillisoftASP be recommended then?

[TomWilko]

Have you done any programming before?

None at all

[Stoo]

Easiest way to learn asp.. lear Visual Basic and VBScript because that's mostly what ASP is, then you just use asp <% and %> tags to separate the code from the html

It took me about a week to learn ASP from scratch having done a bit of VB programming years ago

[TomWilko]

UPDATE: What a waste of 2 1/2 hours...i give up...XP Home doesn't take Personal Web Server after all that

[fondie]

UPDATE: What a waste of 2 1/2 hours...i give up...XP Home doesn't take Personal Web Server after all that

i did link you to the KB article that said it doesn't. did you try the suggestion in the other link i gave?

i'd recommend trying to get a M/S ASP solution running, but running ChillisoftASP is better than nothing.

[Shad]

If you get totally stuck Tom give me a shout and I can sort you out with some space on my server.

[TomWilko]

i did link you to the KB article that said it doesn't. did you try the suggestion in the other link i gave?

i'd recommend trying to get a M/S ASP solution running, but running ChillisoftASP is better than nothing.

Yeh fondie thanks for the link I checked out the other thing but I don't fancy messing around with all that stuff....unless someone told me it was guaranteed to work.

If you get totally stuck Tom give me a shout and I can sort you out with some space on my server.

Cheers for the offer mate. I think i'll wait to see how the lectures progress and see what happens from there...I will look into ASP further i reckon once i get some concrete knowledge about it