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NOTE: The Spider Writer product is no longer being actively developed or supported.
Spider Writer HTML Editor
ASP Features
Active Server Pages (ASP) are a server-side scripting environment created by Microsoft.
With ASP technology, you can create interactive web pages and build powerful Web applications.
When a request for an ASP page is received by a web server, the server
processes any server-side scripts contained in the document.
The scripts can be written in VBScript (the default) or JavaScript.
These scripts build the resulting page that is sent to the requesting browser.
ASP is very powerful because the server-side scripts can make use of COM components
that do everything from processing business logic to working with databases.
In addition to all the standard web development
features that Spider Writer makes
available, Spider Writer has an enormous amount of support specifically for ASP development.
Read this page to see some of the major features you can take advantage of for
ASP development.
New ASP Features in Version 5.01
Spider Writer 5.01 introduces several new features that ASP developers can make use of.
A new result set quick query has been added to the Data Connections. This quick query
allows you to build a where clause for selected fields in a couple clicks and instantly generate
an HTML table containing a live lookup of a single record.
Type library enumeration has been added to the Script Outline sidebar.
This allows you to view the contents of a type library and insert prototypes of members into your documents.
For example, this is very useful when you want to define VBScript constants to be used in function calls instead
of using raw numbers.
The ASP toolbar's Response.Write command has been improved to account for quotes and line breaks when
using it on text selections. This means that you can design an HTML block, select it and use this command
to instantly transform it to a Response.Write call.
This version also adds a Global.asa new document template as well as
adding the Request.Form and Request.QueryString commands to the Request command drop-down menu on the ASP toolbar.
New Documents
When starting new documents, you can choose from a number of various templates,
two of which are ASP. One template is for VBScript ASP and one for JavaScript ASP.
If the provided templates don't provide all the initial markups you want for a new document,
you can create your own user-defined templates.
Syntax Highlighting
Syntax Highlighting is one of the most important features of a web editor
and Spider Writer provides one of the most sophisticated syntax highlighting schemes
available in web editors today. When using ASP parsers on documents, Spider Writer
not only color codes the client-side HTML, script blocks, and style sheet blocks,
but also color codes the server-side ASP code.
IntelliPrompt
IntelliPrompt is one of the most powerful features of Spider Writer.
It dynamically displays helpful popup lists and tooltips containing information about syntax items as you type.
This feature is extremely helpful when coding manually and saves you typing time as well as
time for looking at syntax references for various languages.
IntelliPrompt currently supports prompting for HTML tags, HTML attributes, CSS properties, ASP objects, JavaScript objects,
and DHTML objects.
For example, when entering the Response object in the editor and pressing the period key,
Spider Writer will display all of the Response object's properties, methods, and collections
in a list to choose from.
Script Outline
The Script Outline sidebar provides a tree list of various scripting object models,
including HTML tags, ASP objects, JavaScript objects, and DHTML objects.
In reference to ASP objects, Spider Writer shows all of the basic objects along with their
properties, methods, collections, and events. You can double-click on a syntax item
to insert it into the current document. For instance, to add an Application_OnStart() event,
just double-click on the OnEnd child item of the Application syntax item in the Script Outline.
Code Snippets
The Code Snippets sidebar allows you to store snippets of custom code and insert them easily.
Code snippets can be grouped in various user-defined folders.
In defining code snippets, you can define starting code blocks and ending code blocks.
When you insert a code snippet into a document, its starting block is placed before the current
selection and the end block is placed after the selection.
Other Editor Features
In addition to all of the ASP editor features listed above, Spider Writer
also has a huge number of HTML editor features which ASP developers use as well.
ASP Toolbar
The ASP toolbar provides easy access to server environment variables and some pre-defined ASP code.
Code includes such things as quick access to the Request and Response objects,
If...Else...End If blocks, and more.
Visual SourceSafe Integration
Visual SourceSafe integration allow you to connect to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe databases.
This product provides excellent source control management features and if very useful
in multi-user environments. By using this integration, you can even work with databases
on remote servers.
Spider Writer's integration with Visual SourceSave lets you
add files to source controls, check in and out files, among other operations.
Browse Through URL
Whether you use the Visual SourceSafe project integration (see above) or Spider Writer
projects for your project file management, you can define a URL for all documents
to be viewed through when browsing documents in Spider Writer.
For instance, we at Actipro Software may have a default.asp document at the root of our
spiderwriter.com web site. Since we want to see the results of the server side code when we
work on the document and we work directly off the server, we set the root
URL to be http://www.spiderwriter.com/. Then when we open the default.asp document
in Spider Writer and browse to it, it really browses to http://www.spiderwriter.com/default.asp.
Database Intergration
Spider Writer data connections allow you to connect to various types of databases.
Once connected, you can enumerate assorted database objects and use the data objects in a number of ways.
Spider Writer can currently show objects like tables, views, stored procedures, columns, parameters, and more.
Spider Writer also has tools for quickly generating ASP code for displaying a specified table's columns
at the click of a button!
ASP-Related Web Sites
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