I am thinking about creating a web site based on ASP.NET but I first I
would
like a couple of answers to my questions.
Can .aspx pages be viewed on linux browsers?
It depends on how they are written. The aspx designation means nothing to
the client - there is a new file extension so that the server knows which
application should handle it. If it sees .htm or .html, then it will just
spit it back to the requestor. If it sees .asp, then it will hand it over to
the ASP processor, which will process the script and spit html back to the
requestor. If it sees .aspx, then it will hand it over to the ASP.NET
processor, which will process the script and spit html back to the
requestor. In general, you are always going to be receiving html and client
side scripts in return. There is nothing that ASP.NET will give back to the
browser that an .html file couldn't give as well.
If so, why does some msn.com web pages say you need IE5.5+?
There are still plenty of things you can do with your html and javascript
code that depends on having a particular browser. While I don't know about
msn in particular, one concept that is extensively used on sites that target
IE is DHTML behaviors. Behaviors are very, very cool, and a very logical way
to approach web site development. However, despite having been submitted to
standards boards, there are still no other implementations. So, if you use
them, then you target IE specifically. There are plenty of other examples of
this as well.
Furthermore, if asp.net is as good as people say, why isn't hotmail.com
using it?
Because it takes a lot of time to re-write code? Given the choice between
going back and re-writing hotmail, or else writing some new functionality
for some other site, you typically aren't going to go back and re-write
unless you have a business need to. Right now, my company is doing all new
development on ASP.NET, but we don't have anywhere near the resources to go
back and re-write everything we ever did in ASP Classic. Instead, if we need
to go in to an old application and make extensive changes to it, we'll
evaluate if it's worthwhile to re-do it with ASP.NET. Otherwise, we leave it
as it is. Users don't care what technology is used, as long as it works. Our
new stuff is definitively produced faster, but re-doing software that works
just because it's old, when you don't have features to add, is pure folly.
--
Chris Jackson
Software Engineer
Microsoft MVP - Windows XP
Windows XP Associate Expert
--
