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I have a large project in classic ASP, VBScript, and Javascript. It’s a hassle dealing with it because developer tools don’t support it that well or at all. I recently poked around the open source editor Notepad++ and got it adjusted to work decently well with the project. Check out Notepad++ on the official website here . In the past I had used Eclipse with an old VBScript ASP syntax highlighter. It wasn’t perfect, but worked alright overall. The main issue is that the highlighting stopped working every so often, and not to mention Eclipse is bulky and a pain to use for various reasons. Here is a screenshot of Notepad++ adjusted to work with the project: Here are my main adjustments: “View” >> “Folder as Workspace” “View” >> “Document Map” “View” >> “Function List” “Settings” >> “Preferences…” >> “Editing” >> “Display line number” The function list feature won’t work without modification. My project is broken into a large number of “.asp” files and ...

Manually filling rows of data in ASP.NET controls can be a bit unintuitive. I’ll go over a few things I learned recently. I’m writing up this posting off the top of my head, so I can’t say for certain the code examples are correct in syntax. Use the template field in your grid view as it’s the most flexible to deal with as apposed to using asp bind field tags or other means. <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="A Column"> <ItemTemplate> <a href="http://address"><%# Bind("dbField") %></a> </ItemTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> The example above is a column template field with the Bind() function call. Bind() is a special function that can be used to link data that the template field has access to within the grid row. You can also use Eval() which just prints the data and does not hard link the control and data like Bind() does. Also take note of the # in the asp tags <%# %> this is shorthand for...

There are quite a few issues in getting classic asp scripts working on vista. I want to quickly go over what I did, so that when I need this information available in the future I have an easy place to find it. So to save time I am just trying to get this written as fast as possible and continue on with my work. Sorry for any typos. Install IIS through control panel -> programs and features -> (left panel) “turn windows features on or off” Once the feature listing window populates: expand the “internet information services” item check web management tools and world wide web services …really I went through the options and selected the majority of them. Key ASP related items to make sure you have selected: “world wide web services” -> “application development features” -> ASP I needed windows authentication, so I needed: “world wide web services” -> “sercurity” -> “windows authentication” After tha...

I’ve been working with server side scripts that rely on xml files to define the structure of the site.  It seems quite fast compared to using a database and also makes direct changes to the structure easy.  My post here is about how to use the DOM in VBSCRIPT/ASP.  Some aspects of how the DOM works are a bit “wiggy” in my opinion, but I’ve figured out a lot of it so far. Here is a quick example on how to parse a file (VBSCRIPT/ASP): function parseXmlFile(filename, byRef emptyVarToFillWithXmlObj)     dim completeFilePath, functionSuccess, filePointer          completeFilePath = getFullPath() & filename          ' Convert the xml file into an xmldoc object     ' First check to see that the file exists     set filePointer = server.createObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")     if filePointer.fileExists(completeFilePath) then         ' Initialize the xml object ...

I started playing around with Visual Web Developer Express 2005 (VWD). I had originally planned on using VWD with MySQL. The problem is that to use the new stuff in ASP.NET 2.0 like the pre-made authentication you have to use Microsoft’s own SQL server, or try to get some convoluted method of making MySQL work as the provider. I’m sure that I could eventually get it working, but in the end it would not provide me the free easy to use fast development solution I was looking for in asp.net and MySQL. I had a plan to develop a dynamic small business website with user authentication, but I see now that it probably won’t be with VWD Express and MySQL. If I have to reinvent the wheel for everything I’d rather just use PHP and MySQL. That being said, I still plan on messing around with VWD and Microsoft’s SQL Express. I might be doing some research about Ruby On Rails to see if that would better meet my needs.

Microsoft has a great site with video tutorials here . They cover various aspects of visual web developer in VB and C#. They can’t cover topics in too much detail, but more then enough to be worth while. Plus they are free…