Before we can start working on the lessons in this series, you need to make sure that you have a few pieces of software properly installed on your system and that you have the lesson files that where included on the DVD. So let's take a few minutes now to make sure you have everything setup before we start working on the rest of the lessons. So let me close out of this browser and come back to Expression Web.
The first thing you need to do is make sure that you have Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server setup, or you won't be able to display the ASP.NET pages we'll be creating. If you have been trying to follow along already and they haven't been displaying properly, this should solve your problem.
You want to choose Site>Site Settings and under the Preview tab, you want to make sure there is a check mark in the Use Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server box. You have a choice about whether you want to use this Development Server for all web pages or only for ASP.NET pages. It really doesn't matter in this series, we are only going to be working on ASP.NET pages.
You also don't need to worry about the Preview using custom URL setting. You'll only need that, if you are working on a site on a remote computer. Like, if you are working directly on your company or university server or on your ISP. In that case, you would type in the URL for your site. If you are using a testing server, you'd need that address. You'd probably want to check with your ISP or your System Administrator anyway, to make sure you get that address correct.
For this series, we'll be working exclusively on your hard drive. So you don't need that button checked. By the way, if you don't see Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server as an option in this dialog, if it's grayed out, you may actually have to reinstall Expression Web. The Development Server should have automatically installed when you installed the program, unless you chose Custom Settings and opted out of it, or some other problem happened during the installation process. Once you have those settings taken care of, you can click OK.
