Does anybody know how to make the test development server ( for people who write active server pages but need to test them before deploying them to the live server, and don't have a staging box, or full-blown IIS ) run ASP code? It runs ASP.NET beautifully. But when I try to get it to run an ASP page, it says "This type of file is not served."

To me that says Microsoft is telling us to move on down the road into the 20th century. Which is all well and good, but a few of us have legacy sites where the code was written on tablets - and I mean the stone kind like Moses had - that we still need to support.

So if anyone can tell me how to get this working so I can run asp files in my web application on my Windows XP Home box, please do tell!

More on the test development server can be found here, for people who've never heard of this cool technology:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/express/aa700797.aspx

Make sure that ASP pages are allowed...I've had the same problem, except with .NET pages (in other words, your scenario backward)...so I know how weird it is.

Open up the IIS snap-in from within Administrative Tools. Select your machine from the snap-in, then select Web Service Extensions. It should say Active Server Pages is allowed. If not, allow them and you should be good to go.

I'm about to look into this and see if I can make it work - then I'll buy one of those PageRank Pens (TM) to draw you some more talkupation.

On that note, what you described, it reminds me you have to tell IIS what version of the .NET Framework you want it to use to run a web site. Your choices are 1.1 or 2.0 - I'd recommend 2.0 if you don't specifically need one or the other.

Oops. Active Server Pages are allowed in Web Service Extensions on the machine I use for a web and sql and other types of server. You still get green rep for trying to help, but apparently my problem is something else.

Try downloading "Visual Web Developer" - you might like it. It's Dreamweaver for non-stupid people for ASP. It defaults to type your own dang code mode although it's got the idiot-box feature with the mouse, too. Anyway, for people like me who's main box runs XP Home and doesn't have / can't run IIS, there's a stripped down version of IIS called the test development server, which is but into Visual Web Developer, and either I'm stupid and missing the check box, or it just refuses to run ASP 3.0 files.

Ahhh...that would explain it. I missed the part where you were running Home. On XP Pro, it's a full-blown IIS version so it's pretty easy to enable ASP. Home has a lot of things stripped out that can be very useful.

Never messed with Visual Web Developer, although I'm not a big fan of idiot boxes and mice for coding. That's just me, though.

I would have sworn it was the extensions not being allowed or some form of a permission issue, though. Usually, when one file type constantly generates a 404 and it's a server-side file type, that's what it is.

You might actually enjoy this one. You can completely ignore the code-by-mouse part, it defaults to not using it, but it's got some handy features. In fact, Notepad++ was modeled on it's user interface. Not trying to tell you how to work or anything, but it really is a nice html editor, and I'm used to believing Microsoft can't make those.

That's good, because I was never especially good at being told what to do.

You can't run asp code through that test server; it's crippleware at best, and a waste of memory and cpu cycles at worst. Just disable the thing, and use the box you checked server extensions on as a staging test box ... create a new virtual directory and do your thing.

The ide is kind of nice, mostly for the code-behind rather than the markup, but the test server just won't do what you want to.

Edit: The fact that you're trying to get it to run on the freeware server is proof that asp is alive, and probably will be for some time.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

Edit: The fact that you're trying to get it to run on the freeware server is proof that asp is alive, and probably will be for some time.

We're pulling them out and replacing them with new aspx versions. But we need to test them do to that properly.

Here's what I don't understand. Font and table tags are bad because they're 10 years old, used to be popular, and now there's a better way. That exact same logic applies between asp old and asp.net, except that .net has lots more advantages than css over tables. So how does the rip out all the old concepts idea not apply here?

In my case, ASP.net created bulkier, more inefficient code than the functions and subs I'd written for classic ASP. If I had been new to the development game, I might have gone the .NET route...but since I'm not, I didn't.

Tables are becoming a thing of the past because they create more problems than they're worth or most people have time to deal with. I don't think that many people are aggressively ripping them out of working pages, though; it seems like css layout is the way of the future, but people leave well enough alone.

Classic asp is the same thing. These days we have a better model, but if you're not working at the enterprise level, it's not drastically better. When you don't need to integrate with disparate systems, re-use code without duplicating it through oop, use the in-built serialization tools, or make use of core Windows functionality like spawning threads, it's an easy choice. I get the idea you're a 9 to 5 developer, so you may need to re-use various product or user or whatever objects in web and Windows applications ... but I think most people here just want to build sites.

If you take a step back, the advantage of .net over c++ is management, of memory, type safety, and all that, right? Your web server manages threads, keeps logs, etc ... it simplifies things in the same way that .net does compared to COM. So most people really don't need the direct access to the operating system that comes along with .net ... depending on the IIS user's permissions.