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zepner2k
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Posted: Tue Apr 29th, 2003 01:37 pm |
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slightly off topic but companies like macromedia seem to be just as confused as to what ultimately is the best technology. they came out with dreamweaver mx recently, and its not just an upgrade. it is a cross-language development suite. it can write *.aspx files (among others) using drag-and-drop functionality to add database variables right onto the page as well as "master/detail"* pages. then again they make a program called JRUN which they bought from allaire in case jsp and java-based technologies are the real deal.
p.s. i might have skipped over it previously but if you are moving over to mac servers, i think they natively support the php/mysql mix.
Last edited on Tue Apr 29th, 2003 01:49 pm by zepner2k
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tree
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Posted: Tue Apr 29th, 2003 07:40 pm |
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New here to just about everything, sort of a mountain man who just picked up a computer. Trying to sell my own stuff online I stumbled into top listings in search engines, which got me now building websites. Trying to learn as I go, learning ASP seems impossible, I have SQL and microsofts server installed, but using them proved many days fruitless efforts. Then tried to find NT and couldnt in many searches of the MS site. So, I find php! Hey theres tons of nice folks willing to help a person learn this, and as a newbe here, I'm also learning Microsoft really is and wants to be a monopoly- Seems the best we can do here is to use open source, to keep them from exclusive webcontrol? The more We the users of the internet, use the free stuff and help each other, the less MS has contol? Dont get me wrong, I love IE browsers, but the internet should remain available freely to everyone- the concept of total monopoly doesn't support that, especially when I dont have the kind of money they want just to use thier products. php is free (dom) not only do I want to use it but master it, and give something back to this free comunity. I may be ignorant and new here but think my attention is best spent on learning php instead of asp- to empower the free, not the monopoly.
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nightshade
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Posted: Wed Apr 30th, 2003 02:52 am |
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Thanks for all the reponses. Wow.
Yes. Macs natively support PHP/mysql mix but with a little help of ChiliSoft, I should be able to correct that slight problem. (Which seems to be my short-term answer) Nobody has yet posted anything regarding JSP. I didn't think I'd hear too much from JSP users.
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LewisB
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Posted: Thu May 1st, 2003 06:31 pm |
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Have you ever considered Coldfusion? If you need something for a quick turn around - thats the baby. Very logical syntax and command structures - I picked it up within 30mins and cut my development time by about 70%... especialy if you use Dreamweaver MX
Alternatly I am a Microsoft person, ASP was good - but nothing compare to the strength of ASP.NET.
P.S. - ASP is also free, same as PHP.
Last edited on Thu May 1st, 2003 06:32 pm by LewisB
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tree
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Posted: Thu May 1st, 2003 08:41 pm |
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Lewis, you got my attention on this one- I've been focused here on PHP because I got it to work on my standalone apache server- in a snap, after spending DAYS of frustration with ASP. I installed Web Matrix, MSSQL, followed any information I could find, to get it to load the pages to the (offline) server including microsofts PWS..... I got totally frustraighed, even wrote (no understandable reply) microsoft... So I dropped it! Went looking for info on SQL and ran into PHP, had it up and running the same day (with no other experence). Now, if you can tell me here that I can use ASP for free- you have an attentive listener here! Note- I don't have NT, and cannot afford that expense yet. Please explain how ASP is free in newbie terms?! If you think its to long to post, please feel free to email me.
Tree- listening VERY attentively.
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tree
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Posted: Fri May 2nd, 2003 12:47 pm |
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Thanks for that email Lewis- exteemly informitive- and I hope you can outline some of that here for other users to see. I did search for Chilisoft- found Sun ONE and a version available SOA99-400-99Y9 for just under $20.00 (I honestly dont have at the moment). Though I'm not certain enough yet that this will be sufficent to launch an ASP page on my (free) stand alone Apache server. I only have win98 (no NT). You have 3-4 years coding experence- I only learned ASP ment Active Server Pages, 2 weeks ago... So your talking to a very very nieve person here- not just with programing language- but also with learning what languages are out here at presant- and trying to learn the most predominate them, all at once, while trying to write applications with them as I learn... I can't do this offline with ASP until I can set up a way so see the results of what I write. And until I can write and read what I've learned about a language or system- I can read about it all I want but it does me little good compaired to having hands on experence USING it- then it sticks with me, otherwise, I forget it in about a week- especially when trying to learn so many other things at the same time.
As you pointed out in your email to me- MySQL is open source- thus too is its documentation easily available and I dont have to shell out bucks just to learn it enough to know if I really want to apply it (in the middle a a rebuild of my site at the moment). Now the question arises- Will what I'm learning with PHP- Apache- and MySQL, be helpful when I can get around to learning ASP and MS SQL? Or will learning the one language (or application) be a stumbling block when I can afford to start getting up to speed with ASP?
Not wanting others to be left out of a chunk of comunication- could you please post some of what you sent me in email so others as uneducated as myself may benifit also? And if so, out of consideration for your time I could send back to you what you sent me so you could copy and past what you wanted without having to retype it. My personal experence with computers started in '72 but ended abruptly until only relitively recently- so I'm trying really hard to catch back up on 30 years of absence... any help I find to help me comprehend- speeds up the process and is DEEPLY appreceated!
Thanks for that insite- what I didnt understand, I do as I typically do, and copied and pasted it into a search engine to look it up- Gads I love search engines!!!!!!! (and free online tutorials and applications- hint hint micosoft) 
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tobin 13hex
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Posted: Mon Jun 2nd, 2003 05:23 pm |
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hey,
I use JSP for pretty much all my web work. I don't know much about PHP, however I am sure it has pretty much most of the same capabilities as JSP.. I think it's all about preferences. I've heard many reasons why one is worse than the other and most of those are wrong and based on misunderstood capabilities.
As for error handling, with JSP, you get to use java's exception handling. So you can set up try/catch/finalize blocks around your code and handle errors as they happen. If you're not familiar with try/catch blocks... it's simply "run some code", "if something threw an exception [caused an error], catch it and run some other code"... and a finally block(which is optional) executes once the try catch completes, regardless of the exception thrown and caught. The finally block is mostly used for cleanup.
One reason why I've stayed away from ASP/IIS is because of the number of vulnerabilities IIS and Microsft server technologies seem to have. When I see the cert advisories stop for IIS and various other enterprise level solutions from microsoft, then I'd feel more confident in suggesting a solution... However, they've got nothing on Open BSD. So if it's a choice between IIS and PHP, I'd say go for PHP if you're not running it on a microsoft server.
[Side note, Aycan, for some reason when previewing my post a large chunk of it got chopped off.]
Last edited on Mon Jun 2nd, 2003 05:28 pm by tobin 13hex
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nightshade
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Posted: Mon Jun 2nd, 2003 07:57 pm |
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 Hmm..Well, my opinions are biased as ASP gives me a whole lot of power that PHP seems to offer. Although PHP is widely used and very popular, I don't hear much about it as I do ASP/ASP.Net. For example if you happen to go to a book store such as Barnes & Noble and happ to look for a book on programming, you'll come across a whole bunch of ASP related books (Especially those from the Wrox Press.)
I see JSP even less. Do you have any examples of what you have created in JSP? I do know a few Enterprises that use JSP for some things ASP for others. Interesting.
Thanks for the post
- Nighshade
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tobin 13hex
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Posted: Mon Jun 2nd, 2003 11:49 pm |
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Yeah, I use JSP for http://www.texturebox.com. I'll also send you a private message for a LARGE (3mil+ hits a day) site that I work on where we use JSPs.
Just a note about Texture Box, in general my best practice is to pregenerate everything that I can that's not dynamic. So JSPs are used sparingly (I'd do the same if I was using PHP, CGI, or ASP)... I use server side logic only when absolutely needed, as I feel most sites should be. Let the webservers do all the work by actually serving files, and don't let the webserver only act as a proxy/middleman to the server side logic for every page.
Tobin S.
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c0d3fu
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Posted: Sat Jul 5th, 2003 12:57 pm |
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I started all my dynamic web development with PHP, and I still use it the most by far today - PHP gets kudos from beginners as it has by far the most and best documentation of all the server-side languages. The error-reporting is much better than most languages as well; it makes ASP's look downright sad. And it's free, just like MySQL is a free version of the database software SQL. Rarely do you need to do something that PHP/MySQL can't do on their own.
All this said, I ran across Macromedia's Server-Side language, "Cold Fusion", shortly after I started using Dreamweaver 4, and I must say - I really like it. ColdFusion is designed specifically for e-commerce and enterprise Web applications, and it is very easy to both write and maintain. Read the following overview:
*Rapid Development - Intuitive visual tools and an innovative tag-based programming environment make ColdFusion a highly productive platform for delivering applications.
*Scalable Deployment - A high performance, multithreaded architecture and advanced features such as just-in-time compiling, load balancing, and failover ensure that your applications will scale to handle the most demanding sites.
*Open Standards Based - Open integration with databases, email, directories, J2EE, .NET, XML, SOAP, and enterprise systems means you can develop complex Web applications quickly and easily.
*Complete Security - The latest advanced Internet security technologies and clean integration with network and Web server security, give you the services to build secure systems.
*Proven - ColdFusion was the original application server (predating the term itself), is used by over 1/4 million developers on over 60000 servers making it the most popular commercial cross-platform application server on the market.
You should hop over to http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/ and learn more. This language owns, and so does Dreamweaver.
James Jolly [c0d3fu]
jwjb62@umr.edu && james@macrohub.com
http://www.macrohub.com = affordable webspace
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seizethedave
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Posted: Sun Jul 13th, 2003 12:36 am |
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I'd also like to add that ASP won't let you dynamically include scripts.
<!--#include file="<%= page %>"-->
It won't work; the include happens before any script is executed.
Not a huge deal, just something I always found myself doing in ColdFusion.
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Bleu Raeder
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Posted: Thu Jul 31st, 2003 09:41 am |
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I think the single largest thing missed here is the fact that PHP is a language and ASP is a platform. ASP can use or support many languages, VBSCript being the most popular.
M$ technologies are generally much more costly than any of the open source techs being spoken of. MySQL is a robust database platform (it is the primary databse for Yahoo Stocks....and if that ain't big enough for you then I don't know what is). PHP is in place on thousands of Linux and BSD servers along with the webs most popular server software...Apache. Most Apache compiles have PHP support built right in.
I have used ASP (primarily with VBScript) and PHP extensively. Given the choice I side with PHP. There are many details (like have you rounded numbers with VBScript?) that set PHP apart.
Just remember, comparing ASP to PHP is truly apples and oranges. If you want to do a comparison go VBScript or JScript or any other language supported by ASP versus PHP.
Last edited on Thu Jul 31st, 2003 09:42 am by Bleu Raeder
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Brak
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Posted: Mon Aug 11th, 2003 01:56 am |
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Here's my two cents:
I use PHP primarily because of it's ease in implementation. ASP seems to be really popular because it can take a good 2 seconds without any real knowledge of anything to get a PWS/ASP server going on your own computer for testing. However, I notice the major problem is moving it to a public site! Go search around for hosts - you'll find that a good 95% or more support PHP/MySQL but not ASP. NT can be secure, but I'll bet on a Linux/Apache server ANY day over a NT/IIS server. Using something like Chilsoft will slow down script execution time and take out many of the features that ASP.NET has to offer over PHP. IMO the big difference between PHP and ASP is the server it's being served off. A *nix based server is more secure, cheaper to run, and more available. THAT'S why I use PHP.
Also in response to the "there's more books for ASP" that's because it's been around longer AND there's not as many FREE resources around the web for it (free snippets, tutorials, etc)
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zepner2k
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Posted: Mon Aug 11th, 2003 08:52 am |
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>> <!--#include file="<%= page %>"-->
Can you really do this in ColdFusion? that is amazing. I've wanted to be able to do this in ASP forever.
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Bleu Raeder
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Posted: Fri Aug 15th, 2003 12:32 pm |
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zepner2k wrote:
>> <!--#include file="<%= page %>"-->
Can you really do this in ColdFusion? that is amazing. I've wanted to be able to do this in ASP forever.
It's even easier in PHP
<?php
include("filename");
?>
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Brak
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Posted: Sat Aug 16th, 2003 03:01 am |
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| The <!--#include --> is merely a server-side include. It's not language specific. Just make sure your web server is configured to allow this and it will work with any page extention capable (asp, shtml, etc)
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Chrome54
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Posted: Sat Aug 16th, 2003 01:30 pm |
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That ASP SSI tag works exactly the same in Perl
I myself found that ASP was easy to learn, however PHP (if you can grasp it) is much more powerful. They really do have advantages over each other.
With ASP, you can use both VBScript and Javascript (With ASP.net you can use VB, C++, C#, etc...), so you really have many options as to HOW you want to program something, thus you're not limited to a single language. You can learn to program in different methods within ASP based on which syntax you can use best. With PHP, you can only use one language, but it's an extremely robust language. Another large advantage is that, with PHP's SSI, you can add both parsed and unparsed scripts to the final script (including a *.inc file will allow you to include unparsed code, while including a *.php file will add the already parsed version). Couple that with PHP excellent error handling, and you've got everything you really need.
But perhaps PHP's biggest plus is that it's extendable. You can download different extensions off the internet, lots of useful and free stuff, and compile them with PHP (The documentation on doing this is somewhere on PHP.net, I'm too lazy to go find the link  ). For example, the GD extension will allow you to generate basic vector graphics from code, among a few other image manipulation functions.
Looked at Coldfusion MX once, looked kinda similar to ASP.net, but i might be wrong as i didn't really delve into it. Never really looked at JSP, though i hear it can be pretty powerful, especially since it's based on Java. PERL is something i don't really think i will ever look at.
EDIT: By the way I tried working with Dreamweaver and i HATED HATED HATED it.
Last edited on Sat Aug 16th, 2003 01:32 pm by Chrome54
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zepner2k
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Posted: Sun Aug 17th, 2003 12:37 pm |
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what i was impressed by was not the SSI feature. i understood that to be available in any language. Rather, the ability to add a dynamic variable within the SSI. For example:
<!--#include file="<%= request.querystring("page") %>.asp"-->
in ASP. you know, dynamically choosing your include page.
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transio
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Posted: Sat Aug 30th, 2003 10:51 pm |
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UGH... as usual, the self-proclaimed experts at odds again. Take it from someone who's been programming 15 years... with ASP, PHP, Java, and many other languages, plus MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, Informix, and Oracle on databases... each language has its benefits and its weaknesses. Each has its appropriate implementation.
To the "experts" out there who think PHP / MySQL is the solution to every problem, get out of high school first and work a few years before proclaiming your own expertise.
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zepner2k
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Posted: Sun Aug 31st, 2003 04:40 am |
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| yo...transio's pretty funny
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