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Its been out since IE 5.0 which was released in 2001. I've seen intranet apps use it all the time. Hell quick search, revealed old articles on the subject. I don't get how a 4 year old technology becomes new by simply giving it a stupid name. I even love how the article fails to mention that its been around for 4 years. And i love how the grand parent gets modded flamebait by merely pointing out that it was a Microsoft invention.

I (and my business partner) used this technique 5 years ago to develop the budgeting system used by all Idaho state agencies. It uses IE5 with a few ActiveX controls (grid, custom combo boxes) bound to an XML data source. The result is a rich application-like experience within the browser.

The back end is IIS + SQL Server. The server runs in Boise. Hundreds of users from dozens of agencies around the state manage their complex budgeting process with this app.

XMLHTTP was a key technology in Microsoft's plan to use IE as the business app environment. Databinding to native HTML controls was pretty cool - 5 years ago.

If you want links, try this, this, or this. It's even taught in vocational programming courses.

For 'rich client-side functionality', you can host .Net Windows Forms controls in IE. It's ActiveX all over again except it's .Net. See article Hosting .NET Windows Forms Controls in IE

Also, some of the more advance ASP.Net controls only work in IE such as the TabStrip control available from MSDN.

I use hushmail, the OpenPGP based webmail system. They use a pretty good anti-spam system. If someone sends you encrypted or signed mail, it lets it through. (think of it as a ready-made hashcash). If they are on your whitelist (anyone you send mail to or in your address book automatically is), the mail goes through. Otherwise, the mail is held, and bounced to the sender with a link to a CAPTCHA so which will whitelist you if you pass it (ie. are probably human, not a spambot).

Here we go

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/030610.htm

I noticed a distinct absence of C# in the article describing X-Code. Hmm... I wonder if its close ties with the M$-.NET(C# overview) has irritated Steve.

Obviously there is a reasonable explination for this, C# is just too new for it to have been included... sure. I mean, it has ONLY been out for a year and a half. jeeze

OK, I'll let you all know right up front, I don't know what I'm talking about, but you got me thinking, NT is 64-bit? WTF? So I did a little googleing, and the only references I can find to Microshaft and 64-bit OS are concerning there new Server 2003 and XP special 64-bit versions. 64-bit Windows Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think NT was 64-bit.

it's documented here: "Object Moved Error"

No support from the community, huh?

15 Seconds
Active Server Pages

4 Guys from Rolla
ASP 101

There are a lot more, but I'm getting tired. Oh yeah, and there are all of the companies making components for ASP. Right. No support. Good troll. Try harder next time. Oh, and ASP has nothing to do with CGI. But, good try.

1. Pass the MIME type "application/vnd.ms-excel" to the browser. IE will open Excel in-case, Netscape should allow you to launch Excel.
2. Leave out the HTML, BODY, HEAD and other tags. Just do a straight table of data.
3. You can include a header, etc. above the table by putting in some regular text, experiment a bit.
4. Standard HTML formatting will be used by Excel. If memory serves, this includes bold, italic, cellspan, width, height, font, color, background color (ie cell color), etc.
5. You can use standard Excel formulas like SUM, etc. You do, however, have to use the standard Excel cell names (A1, B1, A2, etc).

If the script itself can't do something I can create a component and call it through ASP. I can also separate my display/data/logic layers that way.

One of the beauties of ASP is you can use vbScript, JavaScript, PerScript (more perlscript), etc...to develop with as well as COM object built in vb, C/C++, etc... There are also MANY good code snippets and help available without having to look hard.

Some good URL's:
ActiveServer pages.COM
4guys from Rolla
Abundance of helpful mailing lists & FAQ's
ASPToday
ASPHole(Under construction right now)
15 Seconds
and a whole slew of other good sites (they usually link back & forth to articles.

If you want a " in your string with vbscript you can stick in two " and it'll be escaped OR you can append the Chr() of it to the string.

So far the only limitation I have come across has nothing to do with ASP: HTML sucks for complex forms. Client side Javascript can do a lot but often you still need to split your forms up if you can't use ActiveX or Java.

Any other Q's?

--Clay

Anything you do at the session level is going to negatively affect performance and scalability. Session variables are stored in the servers memory throughout the lifetime of the users visit. If you ever need to scale to a web farm, session variables will trip you up, because they are stored at the particular server. There are some good tutorials on the web that cover how to avoid using sessions in ASP.

I like ADO(ActiveX Data Objects) because they give you flexibility in how you open your database connection. My advice here is to study all the different methods and use your brain as to which one is appropriate. You can open recordsets dynamically(meaning you can modify the data) or statically(better for things like searches where you all you need is to read it once.) Study all the different cursors, and choose the appropriate one for your specific need. Each is a tradeoff between functionality and performance.

That said, I try to use ADO only when necessary, because native SQL is going to perform better. But you can't do a lot of the ADO tricks with straight SQL.

I notice that ASP has a bad rep on slashdot, being Microsoft. Its actually good when used correctly, unfortunately it makes web development a little too easy so you see a lot of crap being done with ASP as well.