Explore Active Local Pages

How-To: Several articles which describe the ALP basics. They cover some of the most interesting areas and can be read as a short ALP tour by developers who meet with ALP for the first time. See the How-To pages. 

ALP includes installer which can be used to install your application bundled with ALP engine. It is designed for unattended installations which require only confirmation from the user.

ALP ships with ALPFrame - special ALP browser which extends the DHTML object model and most importantly allows ALP to run from removable media - e.g. from autorun CD or a Flash drive or memory card without installation on the PC (there are some limitations about how and which components can be used). Read more

Development samples. Wide range of samples is included in the ALP download for developers. Additional examples are published on this page as they become available. The examples on that page are most often a result of questions asked by developers. 

Latest documentation. The ALP download for developers includes NDL (newObjects Development Library) which is a combined documentation for all our products and components. However the library is updated more often than any of the products referred in it. You can download the latest NDL from our site. 

The ALP Run-time library. It is a set of components that can be used through the ASP compatible programming interface supported by ALP. The library is also available separately as newObjects ActiveX Pack1 family. It can be installed on any Windows machine to bring there the ALP Run-time library features even for non-ALP applications. This makes any effort made to learn and implement code in your ALP application with its run-time library portable to other environments and scenarios - such as IIS, VB and so on. In it you can find components such as:

SQLite COM - Zero configuration, lightweight SQL Database engine. See the component's page.

NetStreams which brings the TCP/IP and IRDA networking in form compatible with the file management components.

Storages and files components - Several components that form together a strong hierarchy which allows you access the file system, memory blocks, OLE storages, network connections through a single programming API.

Background thread management - you can run scripts in background threads asynchronously.  

Example deployment packages. Several dummy ALP applications packed with the ALP Installer or configured for autorun with ALPFrame browser. The examples cover the most popular distribution scenarios and allow the developer see what and how must be packed together. Use them as a start point for your custom deployment solutions. Go to deployment examples page. 

Wonder what's the difference between ALP and PWS? While Microsoft's Personal Web Server (PWS) is a WEB server ALP is not. You cannot pack PWS as part of your application or run it from a CD or a flash card without installation. On contrary ALP's programming interface is similar to PWS, but it can be packed with your application, run on-the-fly from a removable media, all the configuration your application needs can be packed with it so that the end-user would not need to do anything but run the application. Read more

Compatibility FAQ. The WEB developers who examine ALP often wonder if they can continue use certain client-side plug-in and controls (Java, Macromedia etc.). Although these browser enhancements are built for HTTP usage they can be used in ALP with some limitations. This FAQ page contains the most often asked questions and answers about them.

ALP General errors reference. The list of the general ALP engine error messages. These messages are issued by the ALP engine and are not specific to a particular programming interface. When such a message is shown to the user it is an indication of a configuration mistake, violation of a protection rule, wrong link and so on. Tracing bugs identified in your application by an end-user will most often begin with a report for one of these messages. The error messages list will give you information about the possible causes of each message. 

Licensing
ALP is a programming platform not a product directing the end-users in a single step. Applications written for ALP need to redistribute the ALP engine or alternatively they need to tell the user to download ALP separately. With the ALP licensing policies we give the developers freedom to buy once and use the ALP for unlimited number of projects without hidden costs. Read more

Developer highlights:

Active Server Pages compatible programming interface. Supports VBScript and JScript, can be configured to use any other Active Script compliant language (such as Active Perl).

Include directives - file and virtual

Virtual sites structure and settings, ALP Application settings (similar to ASP Applications in classic ASP). Structure is defined with files in the physical directory tree. (ALP URL , Server.MapPath )

global.asa - Application initialization script with events and scoped objects

CGI support (Common Gateway Interface)

Simple HTML templates - HTML page with special tags is filled automatically from the request. (read more )

With ALPFrame - extended DHTML model - window menus and shortcut menus are controlled by the pages currently opened. (read more )

Install utility - components and sets of other files can be configured in the setup configuration and deployed easily. (read more )

What can be done with ALP:

• Write desktop application in ASP (VBScript, JScript and so on). Use existing WEB server programming skills, code and developers to build client side software.
• Port certain ASP applications for the desktop or even autorun applications.
• Run CGI programs as well.
• Embed IE browser in VB/C++/Delphi applications and use ALP to generate content for the hosted browser.
• Develop business applications with minimal efforts and run them on both Server and stand alone machines as appropriate.
• Create/Port active WEB sites for offline usage with all the dynamic functionality kept.
• Create applications with extremely minimized dependencies.
• Create flexible integrated or teared-off applications for your IT infrastructure.

Version history

ALP 1.2:

• Helper mechanisms for application protection.
• Configurable browsing restrictions in ALPFrame
• All the core modules are now in the core ALP DLL.
• The Run-time library now includes:
  • independent zero-configuration SQL database engine
  • TCP/IP and IRDA components
  • Powerful String formatting tools
  • More convenient thread objects
  • Synchronization objects
• Improved ALPFrame behavior - copy/paste default support, Windows XP SP2 security features detection and registration with the system.
• Content zone - The ALP local content can be declared as part of an online site and full compatibility with the XP SP2 security features.
• Improved support for composite objects written especially for ASP usage.

ALP 1.1:

• Uploads (Request.BinaryRead)
• SCRIPT and OBJECT RUNAT=SERVER tags
• Mixed script languages in ASP pages
• Global.asa support
• IIS<->ALP compatibility tuning. Less efforts to port from IIS to ALP and vice versa.
• COM aliases
• Application configuration shell extensions
• ASP Objects support
• Bundled with newObjects ActiveX pack1 components and NetProbe (beta).
  • Storages and Files (Text/Binary/Record based access to files and streams)
  • Unified data structures through ConfigFile (work with text data files, binary data streams and registry with the same code)
  • Advanced COM tricks - Threads, Custom apartments, COM object creation from non-registered DLLs
  • Composite objects (build dynamically or register definitions of COM objects composed from scripts and objects)
  • More system functions - DLL/EXE version info, Shell shortcuts etc.
• And much more ...

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