The engine reads through the file. It ignores the standard HTML but stops whenever it sees special tags (like <% ... %> ). Everything inside those tags is treated as a command to be executed, not text to be displayed. 3. The Helping Hands (COM Components)
The foundational model that introduced server-side scripting. ASP 2.0 (1997): Added more robust features for web hosting. Active Server Pages Architecture
Active Server Pages (ASP) support in Windows - Microsoft Learn The engine reads through the file
The server sends this HTML back to the user’s browser. The user sees a dynamic, personalized page, but they never see the "secret sauce" code that created it. To the browser, it looks just like any other webpage, but to the server, it was a carefully choreographed performance of scripts and components. Historical Timeline According to GeoPlugin , the architecture evolved rapidly: Active Server Pages (ASP) support in Windows -
The story begins when a user types a URL into their browser. If that URL ends in .asp , the browser sends an HTTP request to a server running .
Imagine it’s 1996. The web is a collection of static posters—text and images that just sit there. If you want a website to do something "active," like check a database or greet a user by name, you have to wrestle with complex low-level code like CGI.
Session & Application : To remember who the user is as they click from page to page. 4. The Final Reveal (The Response)