Explorer via the URL http://localhost, which will redirect you to the starting IIS documentation page, as illustrated in Figure 141.
Figure 14-1 Internet Information Services documentation
The management tool for IIS is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, the Internet Services Manager, which you can find under Administrative Tools in the Control Panel. Figure 142 shows the main window of the Internet Services Manager. You can start and stop the Web server and perform other tasks by right-clicking on Default Web Site. Choosing Properties from the context menu will let you perform a number of configurations on the Web server.
The default home directory for publishing Web files is \Inet-pub\wwwroot on the drive where Windows is installed. You can change this home directory using Internet Services Manager. You can access Web pages stored at any location on your hard drive by creating a virtual directory. The easiest way to create one is from Windows Explorer. Right-click over the desired directory, choose Sharing..., select the Web Sharing tab, click on the Add button, and enter the desired alias, which will be the name of the virtual directory. Figure 143 illustrates creating an alias Chap14, or virtual directory, for the folder \OI\NetVb\Chap14. You should perform this operation now on your own system in order that you may follow along as the chapter's examples are discussed.
Figure 14-2 Internet Services Manager
Figure 14-3 Creating a virtual directory
ASP.NET and Web Forms
Once a virtual directory has been created, you can access files in it by including the virtual directory in the path of the URL. In particular, you can access the file default.htm using the URL http://localhost/Chap14/. The file default.htm contains a home page for all the ASP.NET example programs for this chapter. See Figure 144.
Figure 14-4 Ome page for ASP.NET example programs
An Echo Program
The first example program for this chapter is Hello.aspx, shown as a link on the home page. The example is complete in one file and contains embedded server code. Here is the source code, which consists of HTML along with some VB.NET script code. There are also some special tags for "server controls," recognized by ASP.NET.
<!-- Hello.aspx --> <%@ Page Language="VB" %> <HTML> <SCRIPT RUNAT="SERVER"> Sub cmdEcho_Click(Source As Object, e As EventArgs) lblGreeting.Text="Hello, " & txtName.Text End Sub </SCRIPT> </HEAD> <BODY> <FORM RUNAT="SERVER">Your name: <asp:textbox id=txtName Runat="server"></asp:textbox> <p><asp:button id=cmdEcho onclick=cmdEcho_Click Text="Echo" runat="server" tooltip="Click to echo your name"> </asp:button></p> <asp:label id=lblGreeting runat="server"></asp:label> <P></P> </FORM> </BODY> </HTML>
You can run the program using the URL http://localhost/Chap14/ Hello.aspx or by clicking on the link Hello.aspx in the home page of the examples programs. The page shows a text box where you can type in your name, and there is an "Echo" button. Clicking the button will echo your name back, with a "Hello" greeting. The simple form is again displayed, so you could try out other names. If you slide the browser's mouse cursor over the button, you will see the tool tip "Click to echo your name" displayed in a yellow box. Figure 145 illustrates a run of this example.
Figure 14-5 Running the Hello.asp echo program.
This little program would not be completely trivial to implement with other Web application tools, including ASP. The key user-interface feature of such an application is its thoroughly forms-based nature. The user is presented with a form and interacts with the form. The server does some processing, and the user continues to see the same form. This UI model is second nature in desktop applications but is not so common in Web applications. Typically the Web server will send back a different page.
This kind of application could certainly be implemented using a technology like ASP, but the code would be a little ugly. The server would need to synthesize a new page that looked like the old page, creating the HTML tags for the original p