For “kicks” I tried a number of things using your first example as a starting point. Then I tried variations of htm/html, and asp extensions while using response.write, alert(“”), runat=server, and so on. I think I can write a book about what works and why.
I am new to IIS. I fooled around with my "hello World" DCOM (and drained a lot of this boards capapcity<s>)for a few days - only to learn that i needed to start IIS before anything would work.

By the way, what were you attempting to accomplish? Did you succeed? And now there is APS.NET for our “pleasure”.
Working on a site to show software products; log certain end user events; (as well as) automated notices and sp installations. ASP.NET may also be employed (why not?). Still alot of non-XP desktops out there. Don't know enough to ask questions about NET and non X/P users.

By the way I work with ASP using Visual Interdev 6.0, only because it is our corporate standard. That is my main tool at work. I am about to start using ASP.NET at home to learn a few things before we get surprised with, “our new corporate standard is .NET”!
Sometimes the MSDE pops up when my scripts break. I'm doing simple stuff - and mostly use the VFP editor to write my scripts.
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I.E. works with ASP and other browsers – well do not waste your time is the short answer. This limits your audience thus Intranet applications are a natural along with a corporate standard of I.E. Browsers only.
I've mixed VB server script and Java3.1 client scripts in both IE6 and NS6. No activex. Suprisingly, both browsers returned a page. NS was a little quicker, but used more memory than IE. It would be good to serve "any" browser that hit the site. The project will eventually use activex. IE handles it well.

A change of code for 5.5 and 6.0 browsers solved that problem. So not even I.E. is a "standard".
Are you suggesting the project would be more reasonable using "primitive" functionality to accomodate a broarder range of browsers?

Now you have me going!
I know what you mean - I used to think myself too-cool to stoop to learning any system administration. Translating verticle market business rules to project specifications keeps us busy enough, right? Now I am actually starting to read "software" documentation.<g>

Thanks for the follow up!
Terry