What Is an ASP File? Files created with Active Server Pages have the extension .ASP. This story is an example; take a look at the address above. With ASP files, you can activate your Web site using any combination of HTML, scripting such as JavaScript or Visual Basic?

Is It Hard to Use? I don't know about you, but whenever people start talking about doing things on the server, I start to get nervous. I think a lot about threading issues, synchronization, and generally stuff without a user interface. I assume it's going to be hard to do. Well, using ASP is about as easy as anything I've come across in years.

Aw, Mom. Not Another Object Model! I really hate doing this to you, but I'm going to have to use that overused and overcomplex term "object model" again. Here's how it works. When a browser requests an ASP file from your Web server, your Web server calls Active Server Pages to read through the ASP file, executing any of the commands contained within and sending the resulting HTML page to the browser.

I don't know about you, but whenever people start talking about doing things on the server, I start to get nervous. I think a lot about threading issues, synchronization, and generally stuff without a user interface. I assume it's going to be hard to do. Well, using ASP is about as easy as anything I've come across in years.

If you're an experienced programmer, you don't even have to learn a new language to create ASP files¡ªyou can use any language that supports ActiveX scripting. If you already develop with Visual Basic, using VBScript is a snap!

Or, if you know how to author pages in HTML, you're probably ready to advance your skills a notch¡ªand ASP is the perfect reason. Learning VBScript is not hard. Neither is JScript , Microsoft's implementation of JavaScript.

You don't even have to write your own controls to start using Active Server Pages. You can use any off-the-shelf-control that can be run on a server and has no user interface The reason it should not have a user interface becomes obvious when you picture some hapless computer operator sitting in front of the server, dismissing dialog boxes meant for the user's machine. I mean, why should the operator care whether you've logged on successfully? User interfaces are for client applications (applications that the user is running)--not for server-side scripting.