Another full day studying nothing but ASP (Active Server Pages). It is outdated technology, having the advantages that I know it works and that it is unlikely to change. There is a lot to be said for sticking with the minimum that will do your work. One thing that still concerns me is whether I’ll live long enough ever pull this off by myself. IA person could specialize in any one of the phases needed to fire this thing up. I’ve found that a lot of people are not sure what a browser and a server are.In a nutshell, a very small nutshell, like maybe a pistachio, a server and browser are what enables your computer use the Internet. The server can be a fancy computer, or just an ordinary computer, but it has special software that allows it to connect to the Internet (it can’t do much else). When you go on the Internet, you are really just connecting to one of these server computers. If you have Hi-speed (Cable company) or DSL (Phone company), you are connecting to one of their servers.
Why not buy your own server and quit paying the utility companies? Two reasons. First, these servers are difficult to maintain 24 hours a day. Server companies are typically triple-redundant, that is, they have three servers at each site. One operational unit, a second ready to kick in if it crashes, and a third server undergoing upgrading and repair. Only then can they guaranty 99.5% “uptime”, the standard that customers expect.
Second, these utility companies own the wiring that connects your house to their office where the server is located. Too many people don’t think about that fact. The utilities own the server and they own the “last mile” wiring. In some way, you have to pay for both. The server office has millions of dollars worth of circuitry to connect to the Internet “backbone”. I’ve heard of rich people having a special line to the backbone from their houses (this line is called a “span”) but mere mortals can’t afford that.
I didn’t forget the browser. A browser is a very small program that resides on your computer. All it does is interpret the signal you get from the Internet server. Never confuse your browser with the “browse” button you sometimes see when saving a file, they are two completely different animals. Even more confusing, most browsers never call themselves a browser, and the top three browsers are Opera, Internet Explorer, and Firefox (which used to be Netscape Navigator).
Since we are enjoying this so much, let’s delve a little further. Nothing you see on your browser is really on your computer. All of it comes from the Internet server except a few error messages. So your browser handles the back-and-forth with the server. But it is not 50/50. No sirree, the vast majority of the signal is from the server to your browser. Think about it. You click one button and billions of bytes of information and advertising come flying back at you. Let’s go further.
The day is nearing when everything on your computer will come from an Internet server. Right now, if you use Excel or Quickbooks, these type of programs are installed on your local computer. In the future, instead of buying software, you will pay a usage fee and use these same programs on the server. When configured to work this way, the programs are said to be “web-based”. You already use a web-based program. Your e-mail. The e-mail is never on your computer. It is on a server that you log on to with your account name and your password using your browser. This explains that little message you sometimes see saying “you have 5 GB of storage left” on the server. See how much you know already?
So what happened to Netscape Navigator? MS drove them out of business. Netscape was a big company in the early 1990s, but MS was even bigger. While Netscape had to charge business users (I think it was $250 a copy) for their browser, MS came out with Win 95 which included a “free” browser included, called “Internet Explorer”. Dumping is illegal, that is, giving away something at less than cost to force the competition under. MS’s defense was nobody knew what Explorer cost because it was part of a bundle. Netscape sued, but by the time the case was settled and MS said “Oops, sorry!” Netscape was nearly bankrupt.
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