Virtual vs. Physical Directories. While you may not be interested in getting Microsoft's Internet Information Service (IIS) running on your windows machine, you should at least look at the section on virtual (vs. physical ) directories and setting up permissions (pages 33-40). This will give you some idea of how servers are able to give short names for URL's, instead of very long directory chains.
Index.html. Using Index.html on your server route folder for quick access to project pages. The alternative to setting up your own server is to use the IIS that runs on our server ( www.pse.uri.edu ), and to run files out of your directory on that server. Here, we have already set up a virtual directory to take you down to C:/inetpub/wwwroot on the server. So if you have a file on the server under C:/inetpub/wwwroot/class/yourfile.asp, to see it on your browser you just need to remember www.pse.uri.edu/class/myfile.asp. If you have a few projects that you'd like to get to without having to remember names, you might set up your folder with an index.html or index.asp page that has simple links to your various projects—You have to set up this page and maintain the links, of course!. Each project could go into a folder, and in each folder you could have an index.htm or index.asp page for that project. That way, you just have to remember the name of your folder to get quick browser access.
For example, if I am using folder Logan, and am working on two projects, Project1and Project2, my server directory structure would be
C:/inetpub/wwwroot/ Logan
C:/inetpub/wwwroot/Logan/index.asp
{contains links to the following…}
C:/inetpub/wwwroot/Logan/Project1/index.asp
C:/inetpub/wwwroot/Logan/Project2/index.asp
That way I only have to remember www.pse.uri.edu/Logan, the virtual directory name which will take me to the index for all the projects that I'm working on. (Even quicker, I could stash this in my favorites folder, or make it my browser's choice for home page, if I could get that past my wife and kids, who prefer google as our home page).
Limits to Editing Interfaces for ASP pages. As we experienced with Dreamweaver MX (2003 edition), the graphic user interface (GUI) has major limitations when it comes to rendering CSS. This is better in MX2004, which uses the W3C-friendly Opera browser to render. However, when it comes to a gui for ASP, it is nearly impossible to render effectively. This is true for Microsoft's Visual InterDev and FrontPage (p. 49-53), although the text is dated here.
ASP, remember, is designed in part to handle conditions, with choices made at the server in response to user input. Until it has received this user input, the interface attempts to render any html it encounters, which usually means that all alternatives are included on the page, making it a real jumble. This won't be a problem for you, however, because you are learning to code directly, and to use a server technology for rendering in an interactive test environment.