Summary

So now, we hope you have a strong idea of the differences between the client and the server, client-side scripting and server-side scripting, and JavaScript, VBScript and ASP. We also hope you have a good idea about why you'd want to use ASP, and the other kinds of options available for dynamic web pages. We haven't actually showed you how to program in any way – that comes in the chapters that follow – but it's important, before you start programming, to be able to appreciate the differences between programming on the server side with ASP, and programming on the client side.

Briefly, we have learned that the browser and web server have the relationship of 'client and server'. The browser submits a URL to the web server, in the form of a request, using HTTP. The web server fetches the web page that matches the request: if there is any ASP script present, the web server will identify and process the ASP, generating the HTML that will define the content of the page. This new web page is returned to the client as HTML, which the browser then processes in order to create the page display that we see on the screen.

We learned that the most widely-accepted language among web browsers (i.e. on the client side) is JavaScript, while the default language for server-side scripting with ASP is VBScript. We will be using VBScript for our ASP code throughout the rest of the book: it's a less complex language than JavaScript, it's more widely used for ASP, and it is impractical to learn two languages at once.

We also learned that there is an 'order of execution'. The execution sequence of the program depends on the method used to insert the script, and the scripting language used: by using different methods we can produce different results on the screen display. And we prepared ourselves for upcoming chapters by giving the briefest of introductions to the ASP object model; and we and looked at the alternatives to ASP.

We've already programmed a few example pages, but we've avoided the details of their syntax and structure until the necessary foundations were laid. In the next chapter we'll start working on a few of the basic programming techniques we'll need in ASP, and get you to a point where you can start writing your own pages.