3 comments about Html and Cgi Unleashed/Book and Cd-Rom.

1. For a book that is supposed to be about HTML and CGI, this book spends most of the time talking about everythign BUT HTML and CGI. In fact, if you want to find a discussion of HTML and CGI in this book, you'll have to go lookiing for it.

   I think the only reason this book sells is because people confuse this horrible book (HTML & CGI Unleashed) with a good book (HTML, Java, CGI, VRML, SGML Web Publishing Unleashed).




2. This book on the cover seems to say that it will help you learn more HTML and CGI. It does show you some good code but I think this book is more of a reading book then a reference. In the beginning it tells you everything about the web you can think of. There is a lot of information that I did not know, but this book takes you where you have never been. I would recommend this book to the accomplished HTML person with medium CGI experience.



3. I was looking for a book that would describe the HTML language and more importantly discuss writing CGI programs that interact with HTML. This book was not what I needed.

   A simple search of the 16-page index shows the problems. There are no entries for 'cookies' or 'refresh' (as in client-side pull refresh), and the FORM HTML tag has a total of 3 pages referenced (hardly enough room to describe how to write forms). So if you're looking for detailed technical material, this isn't the book for you.

   This book is useful as a broad-reaching primer about the internet, newsgroups, VMRL and many other obscure (and outdated) topics. But I think you would still do better elsewhere.

5 comments about CGI Programming on the World Wide Web (Nutshell Handbook).

1. i want to review it agai



2. This is an excellent book. I'd recommend it to anyone who is getting started in CGI programming. It will not teach you Perl; for that I used O'Reilly's "Programming perl" while I read through this book's examples. For CGI programming, however, this book does its job very well.I noticed another review that said that code in this book didn't work. I've actually used code from this book in a half-dozen sites now, and it worked fine. More importantly, the code was well-enough explained that I've modified it over and over again to do what I needed.I still pull this book out every so often, and a few of my friends come by my house and read it. It's a very useful tool for anyone who wants to get started with CGI programming.



3. If you have a basic understanding of Perl and HTML, this book helps youlearn CGI. The book also introduced me to postscript and gd, which havebeen quite valuable for a lot of applicatioins. I enjoyed Shishir'smodest, down-to-earth writing style. Since many people have criticizedthis book, let me refute the most common criticisms:"The source code should be on a CD-ROM".No. Programming is in the fingers. You learn by typing. Anyway, you canFTP it if your lazy."The level of detail is poor".That's what man pages and FAQ's are for. Shishir is giving more of a guided tour of CGI, with just enough detail to get started in each area."The source code has mistakes/is missing semicolons."I didn't find this problem. But anyway, you should know enough Perl to put the semicolons where they belong. If you don't know Perl, this bookis not for you.Everything in this book is available on the web, but the book will savethe beginner a ton of time digging around.Also, Shishir does not encourage use of CGI.pm, which is both good and bad. I think it's good because it teaches better understanding of the low-level CGI mechanics. On the flipside, use of CGI.pm can protectyou from a lot of obvious mistakes.I haven't found a better introduction to CGI.



4. CGI Programming on the World Wide We



5. Not easy to understand. Sometimes it is difficult to follow what the author means. There is too much detail, which I feel was getting in the way of understanding CGI.
   I was initlally exicited , but after reading the first few chapters, i think i will have to look elsewhere.

5 comments about Html 3.2 and Cgi Unleashed: Professional Reference Edition (Unleashed).

1. You won't find anything worth reading until you are 500 pages into the book and that is not a joke. The first 10 chapters is all useless garbage the authors threw together to get a big book. Those chapters cover planning and are written by people that don't even understand the word plan. To help the authors out, here is what Websters dictionary says the word plan means "n. a scheme of action or a drawing made to represent the top view." Hey, that's a single sentance. I just saved you 500 pages of reading.

   The remaining 500 pages have dubious value. I mean if you've never heard of HTML and Web publishing, you may want to consider this book. HOWEVER you won't understand a word the authors have to say. I say you can do much better elsewhere.




2. First, I must admit that I only skimmed the initial sections on web philosophy and design. Other reviewers seemed put off by the depth of those sections. Though I have only built small web sites so far, I very much welcome having a source of knowledge to ensure my larger developments do not look like a poorly organized beginner's site. The design sections are really more than you bargained for, and they don't take away from the excellent discussions and reference material on HTML and CGI. The HTML section in particular let's the reader know which version of HTML supports each tag, so browser compatibility can be ensured. Simple samples that focus on the tags being learned are provided. The book is very comprehensive; hopefully, beginners won't find it too overwhelming. This book is highly recommended.



3. This book was quite helpful to starting up Web Development, although if you aren't looking for 10 opening chapters of web fundamentals, you may want to look elsewhere. HOWEVER, This book will cover all you'll need to know to get deep into HTML.



4. Includes extensive background material, useful examples and a wealth of URL's covering all aspects of Web development. Good historical information gives the reader a firm foundation. While some more recent information is lacking (i.e., client side image maps), it is still a good starting point for the serious developer.



5. Very useful book for anyone interested in web development! I applaud Ginsburg and December for putting together this masterpiece. Not only is there abundant information on anything you'd want to know about html and cgi, there's a fabulous section on links. Pick this up while you can... can't wait for a revised edition! BRAVO!

5 comments about The Cgi/Perl Cookbook.

1. This book is basically a poor product that has been successfully sold. It is terrible. It is a lie! On the back of my book it says "Jazz up your site with 20 exclusive, ready-to-use professional CGI scripts and subroutines--no programming required!" It is sold as if it will satisfy the needs of people who do not understand Perl, while it is almost impossible for it to satisfy anyone, as it is. Hours and hours of troubleshooting and trying to figure out what is wrong is part of what you will get from this book. If you survive through that part of it, you will probably learn that it would be easier for you to learn Perl enough to do things in your own way. Buy another book. Find another way!



2. The programs are not really "ready-to-run." They are not "Ready-to-use." Programming is required, because there are bugs in html documents and scripts that must be corrected. The book is a good resource of information for people who want to study and learn and troubleshoot and learn Perl, because it is possible to get the scripts to work if the troubleshooter does not give up until they get things to work satisfactorily. I believe that it is practically impossible for a person to use these scripts without having some experience with Perl and CGI and HTML. The book has a lot of good explanations of code, which I find helpful and useful. I can't blame anyone for selling the book in the way it is sold. Salesmen sell the book. Programmers who successfully learn, don't give up when things don't work easily. This is book for beginning programmers.



3. I purchased this book in 1999 with the intention of developing my CGI skills and implement CGI programs in my website projects. The book does provide 20 usefull CGI scripts that one can fool around with, since there is a line by line explanation of all the scripts, I could figure out what makes it tick without having to actually learn perl.

   On the Good Side:
   1. Explanation of the scripts, line by line.
   2. 20 Ready to use sripts and a few subroutines.
   3. HTML Templates for using the scripts.
   4. A website with updates and a forum.

   On the Not so Good Side:
   1. All the scripts are quite rudimentary, very basic operations.
   2. You need to know how to configure the script to work in the server. This is where you will spend most of your time, yet little documentation on this subject is provided.
   3. The website referred by the book is never updated.

   Overall, I think it is a good book for someone who wants to jump into CGI for the first time, is tenacious, and is ready to invest a good amount of hours figuring things out on his own.




4. The scripts are buggy and don't even work out of the box and they certainly aren't well written enough for a production website. The contact email address in them bounces, perhaps the author's gone into hiding in shame.
   
   On the plus point they do give some ideas on what could be done to improve a site, as long as you write your own Perl.



5. I have only found this book useful very occasionally, and once or twice when I picked it up, so can't recommend it particularly highly. Those more involved in that sort of thing may find it more useful, but just another average computer book from my point of view, in this case.

5 comments about CGI Programming with Visual Basic 5.

1. The problem with this title is its proprietary language. Depending on the server you program for, why would you want to use the Authors version of the interface software. It's well written but lacks being practical.



2. First, I should note that using Visual Basic for a web server application is pathetic. Each instance of the application requires a minimum of 4 megs of RAM, so using it on a high-traffic site is suicidal.

   That said, the book and the code in the book are very good. Ported to C, Delphi or especially PowerBASIC, you can't go wrong. The book also does a fairly good job of covering the CGI spec.

   My suggestion, buy the book and go get yourself a copy of PowerBASIC so that you can create true CGI apps that take only a few K instead of megabytes.




3. Well, in polite terms, somewhat useful but more useless than useful in any way. To be laconic " regretful buy "



4. "Deliver CGI applications easily" says the cover of this book. After spending a whole weekend with the book, I could not get past chapter 2. Every example I tried generated confusing error messages. I'm actually using VB 6 instead of 5, and nothing in this 500+ page book suggests whether or not this is allowed. A quick look at the index tells you it is too short for a 500 page book. One of the most popular CGI applications is a counter, however, the word counter does not even appear in the index. Only 2 entries are under the letter "B" in the index. That's what I'd expect from a 20 page book. This book is written in a language that only someone who already knows the subject matter could possibly understand.



5. Visual Basic is absolutely the wrong language to write CGI applications. The overhead required will drag your server down to a crawl.

   That said, the book itself is fairly well written with lots of useful information. If you are a CGI programmer in general (C, Delphi or PowerBASIC) then there is some really useful information here. Particularly if you are a PowerBASIC programmer, since PowerBASIC can compile stand-alone executables to just a few 'k-bytes'.

5 comments about Cgi Developer's Resource: Web Programming in Tcl and Perl (Resource Series).

1. I found much useful information in this book though it wasn't easy, wading through all the typos and sidebars which blended the backgroud color to the text color. Nearly unreadable. Mr. Ivler's book was not done justice by this publisher.



2. This was required reading for a web applications class. I am sorry I wasted money on it. The writing alternated between tedious and redundant. The editing was so bad I found typos in every page. The graphics looked like something out of an elementary school art project. More important, they interfered with the text and made it difficult to read. Every page was an eyesore. What little valuable information I could glean from the text wasn't worth the wading. The publisher should be ashamed. Midway through the course, I threw the book in a corner in disgust. Save your money.



3. As others pointed out, the sidebars are unreadable because the background is a graduated greyscale that turns as black as midnight toward the bottom.

   The information is poorly organized, incomplete and often incorrect.

   They borrow buggy code from other sources then admonish the readers on page 575 not to copy the code for their own use.




4. I too am sorry I spent the money on this one. I also noticed the bad production techniques on the graphics and found some sections to be very thin on the info. I was looking for (the guts of doing cgi-sendmail, not just the use of a cookbook module ...) I guess I'll just wait for the Black Book version coming out -- I've found these to be real good.



5. This is an introductory book on CGI, with examples written in both TCL and Perl. It is a great idea for a book; unfortunately, this is a poor implementation of that idea.

   Source code listings, tips, and notes are presented in way to make them almost unreadable (black text on a dark gray background). Notes and tips are written in a font designed to mimic handwriting, but makes it even more unreadable. I'm not talking distracting or unique, but unreadable. On page 73, the gray background gets darker the further the text progresses down the page, until you have black on black. A portion of that page is totally unreadable. This continues throughout the book. I am stunned that Prentice Hall didn't catch this. The design of this book is horrible.

   Mr. Ivler aims the book for people comfortable with TCL or Perl (and UNIX), yet spends three chapters introducing the HTML protocol, firewalls, and other topics. The author's focus seems confused throughout the book and the author(s) loose sight of who the audience is frequently.

   More or less, the second half of the book ends up documenting their scripts.

   I also found the copyright notice offensive (page 575)... that informs the readers that Ivler and Husain owned the code (fair enough), but also owned any modifications you make to the code (yeah, right).

   On the plus side, it does have code you can cut and paste into your own projects and demonstrates what you can do with CGI on a limited scale, albeit without a lot of depth.

No comments about Practical Perl with CGI Applications.

No comments about HTML for the Business Developer: with JavaServer Pages, PHP, ASP.NET, CGI, and JavaScript (Business Developers series).

3 comments about The Web Wizard's Guide to Perl and CGI.

1. If you have absolutely no experience with perl and cgi, you'll probably appreciate this book. Assumes no prior knowledge and presents information in manageable, non-intimidating fashion.



2. I really liked this Introductory Perl book. It covers a lot of
   ground without assuming that the reader is a genius. This full
   color book has many features I liked such as call outs (kind of
   like arrow diagrams) on code sections, short code pieces
   with a line-by-line descriptions and things like tip and warning boxes. It covers things from starting your first CGI script to trickier things like regular expressions and using files on the web Server. An excellent starting book for people wanting to
   learn Perl or Perl scripting.



3. Amazon may have copies, but the publisher tells our bookstore its now out of print. I liked the book, and decided to adopt it for our Perl/CGI course because the book we had been using went out of print (CGI/Perl by Diane Zak). The campus bookstore informed me that the book was out of print. oh well.

No comments about How to Conduct Behavioral Research over the Internet: A Beginner's Guide to HTML and CGI/Perl (Methodology In The Social Sciences).