Many Web sites you visit are simply a collection of HTML pages. You type in a URL or navigate the site, and a page displays in your browser. Other Web sites that you visit are interactive, with pages that display text, graphics, and values that change and update themselves as you enter information, make selections, or navigate the site.
There are several ways to put interactivity into a Web site. One way, used by many commercial sites, is to incorporate Microsoft's Active Server Page (ASP) technology and components. In this course, we will introduce you to the structure, syntax, and some common uses of Active Server Pages.
This course begins by describing how ASP scripts function within HTML pages and presents "building blocks" that give those ASP scripts the functionality to perform calculations, store data, make branching and looping decisions, and display results inside the HTML code. Then, you will learn about creating, and retrieving user and system information within a Web site. Next, you will learn ways of maintaining information for multiple users and processes as those users move through your Web site. Finally, the course will present techniques for joining a database of user and product information to your Web site through ASP commands.
Along the way, you'll work on a course project that will give you a chance to use this information and technique in the context of a typical Web application. As you learn new skills in each module, you'll apply those to the next phase of your project, an online catalog for selling T-shirts. When you're done, you will have used features of ASP to build a Web-based application.

1. After completing the course, you will be able to:
2. Create and run ASP scripts within HTML pages
3. Display constants, variables, and results on a Web page
4. Read, store, and display user data input entered through HTML forms
5. Create and read browser cookies
6. Maintain information as a user moves from one HTML page to another
7. Display a banner that rotates through a series of images or text blocks
8. Share a Web-based application among multiple users
9. Connect a database to an ASP application to retrieve, display, update, and write data records

In this course, you'll learn ASP skills with two kinds of widgets:

1. the SlideShow and
2. the MouseOver.

As checks on what you've learned, you will use quizzes and exercises. One type of unscored practice is the QuickCheck, one or more question-and answer pairs within a Lesson that allow you to self-check your understanding of a key skill or concept before you arrive at an Exercise or a Quiz.
To help you understand the syntax and special characters used in ASP scripts, many Lessons and sidebars include code samples and segments that you can copy and paste into your own scripts, run them, and view the results.
In the next Lesson, the prerequisites for this course will be discussed.