Dan's Shorts

Continuing with Virtual Directories

Continuing on from my post yesterday regarding virtual directories, another nifty tip is that when including files in ASP, you can use either a file or virtual include. Here are two examples:

<!-- #include file="mydirectory/somefile.asp" -->
<!-- #include virtual="/mydirectory/somefile.asp" -->

The first include would pull the file "somefile.asp" off of the disk in the mydirectory folder. The second include would first look for a virtual directory called mydirectory. If it finds it, it loads somefile.asp from that virtual directory. If it doesn't find it, it would then load somefile.asp from the physical mydirectory on disk, just like the first include.

That's it for virtual directory fun for now :).

Discovery of the Day

I'm a big fan of virtual directories. I like sharing assets across sites without having to duplicate a bunch of folders. Angela and I were doing some planning for a site and she asked if you created a Virtual Directory in IIS, what would happen if you also had a physical directory of the same name. Well it turns out that if you have a Virtual Directory defined in IIS, the server will completely ignore the contents of any physical directory in the same location. So if you had this:

assets
wwwroot
|--myassets (virtual directory pointing to assets above root)
|--myassets (physical directory on the disk)

Then all files and folders in the physical myassets folder will be completely ignored.

Another one bites the dust...

I finished up the new Dreamweaver 8 Beyond the Basics title for lynda.com on Friday. After 4 solid days in a little sound-proof room, it's time to head back home and catch up on all of the emails and questions from readers. The Beyond the Basics title covers advanced template usage, building multi-column CSS layouts, using some rapid coding techniques in Dreamweaver you might not have known where there, as well as a chapter on getting your feet wet with dynamic development in Dreamweaver 8.

Before I left I also recorded a few pick ups for the Dynamic Development with Dreamweaver 8 title, which should hopefully be released in the next week or two.