What Are Active Server Pages?

Active Server Pages (ASPs) are Web pages that contain server-side scripts in addition to the mixture of text and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tags. Server-side scripts arespecial commands you put in Web pages that are processed before the pages are sent fromyour Personal Web Server to the Web browser of someone who's visiting your Web site. .When you type a URL in the Address box or click a link on a Web page, you're asking a Webserver on a computer somewhere to send a file to the Web browser on your computer. If that file is a normal HTML file, it looks exactly the same whenyour Web browser receives it as it did before the Web server sent it. After receiving the file,your Web browser displays its contents as a combination of text, images, and sounds.In the case of an Active Server Page, the process is similar, except there's an extra processingstep that takes place just before the Web server sends the file. Before the Web server sendsthe Active Server Page to the Web browser, it runs all server-side scripts contained in thepage.The difference comes in the extension given to the pages. The Active server pages are given the extension .asp. Active server pages provide additional features for example, displaying time, date and other information in different ways that makes your site more attractive.