ASP with Attitude. 1

[ArifShallwani]

Good day,
So I'm trying to design a website where customers can search our database of inventory. I've set up a Search page and a Results page (the results page is resultspage.asp) using Dreamweaver. The problem is that when you type a word in the text field and click on 'Submit', instead of bringing up the results in tabular form, you see my code on the screen in the frame where results are supposed to be shown. This happens if I try to use the "preview in browser" feature in Dreamweaver. If I try to do the same thing with the online version, i receive an error.
If anyone has any spare time, please let me know what's going wrong. The page is

http://www.educationalbooksandtoys.com/searchpage.htm

If you click on 'Submit', you will see my problem.
Any help is greatly appreciated. (Note: sometimes you get the typical HTTP 500 Internal Server Error, other times it says a particular line, 12 for example, has an error)
And one more thing, are there supposed to be the '<%' and '%>' tags in my .asp page? I haven't seen it in other pages.

Arif

 

[Genimuse]

Because you're just beginning with ASP, there's no quick way to answer your question. I recommend clicking on the W3Schools link at left and going through some of the ASP tutorials there.

To answer some of your most basic problems, first you need to understand that ASP is a server-side language so in order to have it actually do anything you need to have a web server running that can process ASP. When you upload it to your host then the ASP &quot;engine&quot; is running and is processing the code. On your local machine you have to install and set up a web server (Microsoft's IIS for ASP) if you want to see what the ASP generates without uploading the code.

Second, looking at the error page that your search generates it appears that your ASP is written in two different languages, both Javascript and VBScript. It's best to pick one and stick with it. The error that's being generated notes that in a chunk of VBScript you're using a Javascript variable declaration (&quot;var&quot.

If you want to learn ASP for real then go with the link I suggested. If you want to avoid it and just use Dreamweaver I suggest you scrap your existing pages, have Dreamweaver generate new code for you, and then not mess with it.

Hope that helps.

 

[ArifShallwani]

You are a Genimuse.
Your suggestions worked beautifully.
Thank you very much for your help.

Arif.