The response object is useful, feature rich, and subtle. We are going to focus on it's most fundamental capabilities -- the 20% you will use 80% of the time. The capabilities we think are vital include:

• response.write
• response.write alternate syntax <%= %> which allows ASP simply placed in HTML
• response.end which effectively halts a script in it's tracks.
• response.redirect which transfers control to another page.

Here is a script utilizing response.write to send some information to the browser. It also uses dateadd, a built-in function documented at http://help.activeserverpages.com/iishelp/VBScript/htm/vbs90.html

Does this error message plague you?

Response object error 'ASP 0156 : 80004005'
Header Error
whatever.asp, line #
The HTTP headers are already written to the client browser. Any HTTP header modifications must be made before writing page content.

<%response.buffer=true%>
needs to be added as the very first line to any pages made by any HTML document that mixes redirects/headers and content.  And buffering is a great idea anyway from overall server speed viewpoint see http://www.learnasp.com/advice/whybuffer.asp).

One drawback to <%response.buffer=true%> is if a page takes a while to compose (i.e. a couple thousand records from a database) people see nothing until the page is completely rendered. If a page takes 20 seconds to render, the browser user sees nothing until the 20th second! In that situation to avoid appearing as the page is dead, a well-placed
<%response.flush%> tell server to send HEADER + whatever text so far so lets readers see the portions of the page being built. Increasing percieved speed of database displays is explained at http://www.learnasp.com/learn/speedtables.asp by judicous use of flushing buffer.