In This Issue...
Introduction: The Digest is back!
Hello Subscriber,
After a very long period of technical problems and lack of time, the ASPit Digest is back again. I am once again fully dedicated to bringing the latest ASP news to you.
As you might have noticed, the design of the Digest has significantly changed, and this will be the final design for the Digest (unless of course there is a need to make a change). If you have any suggestions or comments, you are always free to e-mail me.
If you would like to contribute to the Digest, by sending in an article, news fact, script or anything else, you are very welcome to do so. Of course you will be fully contributed and a link back to your own website.
In this issue you will find the latest ASP news, a script of the week (Snitz Forums this time) and a piece about the ASP.NET blogs. I have also written a short article about the 'death' of ASP. Is it really gone?
Happy Reading!
Dennis Pallett
dennis@aspit.net
Editor's Perspective: Is ASP dead?
Every programming language has it. In fact, almost every computer program has it. Once a new ‘better’ version is released, the older version slowly fades away. This fading away is different for each program. For example, the earliest version of MSN Messenger faded out very quickly, and hardly anyone uses them anymore. But earlier versions of web browsers (e.g. Netscape 4.0) are still used somewhat often.
The same is happening to ASP. It is slowly fading out, as ASP.NET is taking over. But when can we officially call ASP ‘dead’?
I think ASP is still far from dead. It is still being used in a lot of scripts, and to be honest, I haven’t seen ASP.NET used a lot yet; at least not like ASP is being used. In fact, ASP is probably still more popular than ASP.NET.
On the other hand, some web developer websites, like SitePoint, are not accepting articles about ASP anymore. Web developer Marcus Tucker had written an ASP article (which can now be found at 15Seconds.com), and sent it to SitePoint, but they declined it for the reason ‘they were no longer covering ASP’. A web developer website no longer covering ASP? That must mean ASP is dead, right?
Again, I don’t think so. Just because one website stops covering ASP, doesn’t mean it’s dead. 15Seconds.com did publish the article, and I bet many other ASP websites would (including ASPit). ASP is still being used to develop scripts, so there still needs to be articles and tutorials.
Many web developers haven’t made the switch to ASP.NET either (myself included), so they’re still looking for ASP articles, and writing ASP scripts.
ASP is not near death yet, and it will probably be at least a few more years (I’m guessing around 2007-2008) before it really fades away. That’s when most web developers will have switched already as well.
What's New on ASP & ASP.NET
ASP Free has been really busy lately, posting several new interesting articles. If you like to follow all their articles, I strongly suggest you subscribe to their RSS feed at http://www.aspfree.com/index2.php?option=mos_rss&no_html=1. Anyway, on to their articles.
Their first article, XSL Transformations using ASP.NET, takes a good using ASP.NET to perform XSL transformations. If you do a lot of XML work, these can be very interesting. If you're looking to setup an AWS (Amazon Web Services) shop, this could be of interest as well.
Another article, The ADO Object Model, simply looks at the ADO Object. You know, the object that is used for databases. If you want to learn more about the ADO object, then this is surely an article you wouldn't want to miss.
As I said, ASP Free has been really busy, so I've got another great article for you: Databases and Cookies. As the title suggest, the article is all about using cookies and databases together. Of course a very interesting article, because databases and cookies are used in almost every ASP application.
That's enough for ASP Free. Let's look at what TrooBloo has published lately. First of all, they've got a very interesting article called "ASP.NET Screen Scraping". It should be pretty obvious what is about: how to screen scrape in ASP.NET. If you don't know what screen scraping is; it's automatically retrieving content from another website/page. Very neat, especially to create automatic update notifiers and such.
They've also got a (very) short article on ASP Error Handling. Always useful to read, if you don't know how to handle errors properly in ASP.
And finally, TrooBloo also links to an article on DevArticles, which has a very exciting title, namely
Calorie Counter Using WAP and ASP. A calorie counter in ASP? Funky! This article shows you how to create your own calorie counter, in ASP. Start losing weight now, thanks to ASP.
Of course, 4GuysFromRolla needs a mention as well. As usual, they have published several great articles. The one that really caught my eye is "Maintaining Scroll Position on Postback". Scott Mitchell, the owner of 4Guys, blogged about this article, so if you want to know more about it, read the blog entry.
Did you know that Scott Mitchell's wife also was a ASP developer? In fact, Creating a TextBoxLengthValidator Validator Control was created by his wife, Jisun Lee. The article shows you how to create your own TextBoxLengthValidator Validator Control. Neat!
That's it for this issue. There are dozens of great ASP articles more, but unfortunately, not everything can be included. Until next time!
ASP.NET Blogs
Lately, blogs have been taken a rise in popularity and even BigCo's like Microsoft are getting aboard. In fact, Microsoft is already aboard, and probably already has more than 1500 employee blogs online.
Among these employee blogs are also ASP.NET developers, beta testers and others. I have looked for the best ASP/ASP.NET blogs on http://weblogs.asp.net/. The full list of blogs can be found at http://weblogs.asp.net/bloggers.aspx.
First of all, I found the 15Seconds WebLog, obviously related to the 15Seconds website. Their blog looked interesting, but they didn't posted very frequently. That was a bit of a shame.
I also found Datagrid Girl, which is the blog of Datagrid Girl, the website. It's run by Marcie Robillard, and seems like an interesting blog. As the name suggests, it's all about the ASP.NET Datagrid.
After that I had a look at Phil Winstanley's blog, who is a British Microsoft ASP.NET MVP & ASP Insider. His blog has some interesting entries, but he doesn't post very frequently, which is a shame.
Steven Smith's blog also seems very interesting, with several entries about ASP.NET and related topics. He has a few long entries with information, and short entries with links to other interesting ASP.NET topics. Pretty much like a normal blog.
I had a look at a few more ASP.NET blogs, but they also seems alike. One thing I really noticed was the fact that most, if not all, blogs on weblog.asp.net are updated very infrequently. This is a real shame, but I guess these people just don't have enough time to do any real blogging.
If you own a ASP or ASP.NET blog, let me know, so I can include you as well (and add you to my reading list!).
Script of the Week: Snitz Forums 2000
Snitz Forums 2000 is a free ASP-based Internet Discussion Forum Software. At least, that's how Snitz themselves describe it. In normal terms, Snitz is a script to run your own bulletin board.
Having used Snitz myself, I can definitely say that Snitz is the best ASP bulletin board. It stands miles above the competition, and it's free as well.
It has a rich featureset, good support, and a whole user-community dedicated to Snitz. You can't really go wrong with Snitz.
If you're looking for good ASP BB software, then Snitz is the way to go. Don't waste your time with other scripts; just immediately go with Snitz.
What's New on ASPit
Recently, ASPit has been given a new design, and backend script. ASPit is now even more versatile, and almost anything can be done. It is completely scalable, and ready for the future.
ASPit has also partnered with PHPit. PHPit is the PHP equivalent of ASPit. If you're looking for top-quality PHP articles and tutorials, have a look at PHPit.
What's in for the future of ASPit? I'm looking to increase traffic to ASPit, so I'm going to start trying to write more content for ASPit (after all, content is king). If you want to contribute to ASPit, feel free to e-mail me. If you have anymore suggestions for ASPit, you can also e-mail me.
Closing Words
That's all for this issue. Hopefully you enjoyed reading this issue, after a long time of no ASPit Digest. Any suggestions or comments can also be e-mailed to me. Just reply to this e-mail or e-mail me at dennis@aspit.net.
