Studying Web design; confused about requirements (ASP3 / InterDev6)

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I am running a Windows 2000 PC and am interested in learning how to design web pages. I

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If this is part of your job, they have to let you post to an IIS server somewhere, either on your PC or on another PC. Otherwise, what are they thinking?

Personal Web Server (PWS) came with Windows 98. It’s very simple by comparison with IIS, or to put that differently, IIS has a lot more administration options. I think you’re better off passing PWS by.

ASP also will run on Apache, I believe, using a plug-in by ChiliSoft (not sure of the spelling on that name). Maybe you can hide a Linux box under your desk if you can’t use your own PC.

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The only problem with ChiliSoft for Apache on Linux, is that it’s not free otherwise that would be a good solution

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There have been several great discussions on this forum that explain how to work around some common mistakes with IIS and PWS.

Since you’re using Windows 2000 you have the capability to run IIS 5.0, which is FAR better than PWS in security, stability, and performance (as Jefferson pointed out). I don’t know how tightly restricted your computer is, but it’s possible that you already have IIS installed, or you can add it without needing any extra assistance from the Admin folks. See post 171285 for some specifics on this.

Also, you might want to explain to the Admin people that you only need to run IIS for development/testing purposes – not production. I imagine that misunderstanding could cause them to sway one way or the other.

Another common mistake is HOW you read an HTML/ASP file in your browser once you have IIS/PWS running. Since browsers will read a “FILE” location, many people simply double-click an HTML/ASP file instead of reading it through the server. For example, the wrong way will show this in your browser’s Address bar: “C:InetpubwwwrootTest.htm”, but the right way will show this: “http://127.0.0.1/Test.htm”

See post 173221 (and following posts in the thread) for more information on that issue.

If all else fails, simply ask the Admins to create and share a folder for you on the webserver. You can connect to it through the network (servermytestfolder) to upload files, and read from it through your web address to test your work (http://server/mytestfolder).

Also, one thing to keep in mind is that ASP is a technology – not an interface. You can write ASP code with ANY text editor (even our beloved Notepad)!

Hope this helps!

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