Overview
Individuals, organizations, and businesses are relying on their web pages to provide and collect information, manage processes, and interact with communities and customers. A reliable, informative, and responsive web site can reduce cost, increase visibility, and create a positive image for the owner of that site.
Behind every successful web page is an overworked and underappreciated webmaster.
Webmasters make sure that the information on a site is accessible and usable; that the site is always available; that performance is good; that users can get the information that they need; and that the site can collect the information it needs to serve those users. These disparate tasks require many different tools and skills. Webmaster in a Nutshell pulls together in a single volume all the essential reference information for webmasters working on UNIX-based web servers.
In this second edition of Webmaster in a Nutshell, we've updated our material to include the latest versions of HTML and Javascript, and also expanded the book to cover the newest technologies emerging on the Web. The book covers:
- HTML 4.0, with special attention to forms, tables and frames
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
- XML, the next-generation markup language for the Web
- CGI, with a chapter dedicated to the Perl module CGI.pm
- JavaScript 1.2
- PHP, the HTML-embedded programming language
- HTTP 1.1, the underlying protocol that drives the Web
- Apache server administration, including Apache modules
- mod_perl, the Apache module for enhancing CGI
- performance and providing a Perl interface to the Apache API
Webmaster in a Nutshell, part of the bestselling O'Reilly series of reference books, makes it easy to find the information you want about the technologies you use. You'll keep your other books on the shelf; you'll keep Webmaster in a Nutshell next to your keyboard.
Web authors and administrators have many sources of information, both in print and online. Webmaster in a Nutshell pulls it all together into one slim volume--for easy desktop access. It will be an essential reference for anyone providing content for the Web, for CGI programmers, and for administrators of Web servers.
Editorials
Ray Duncan
Better the Nutshell than the Nuthouse
Back when the Earth was young, "PC" meant "personal computer" rather than "IBM compatible," and the World-Wide-Web was only a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, O'Reilly built its reputation by recruiting UNIX wizards and gurus to write thoughtful, carefully edited, highly structured "Nutshell" handbooks on complex, esoteric topics such as COFF, DNS, BIND, and sendmail. WebMaster in a Nutshell marks a return to those roots, but arrives in a less civilized age, when the pace of change is frantic, and the competition for shelf space and mind-share intense.
WebMaster in a Nutshell consists of 26 chapters divided into five sections: HTML, CGI, HTTP, JavaScript, and Server Configuration. Much of the material is based on, or adapted from, other Web-related O'Reilly books such as Musciano and Kennedy's HTML: The Definitive Guide, Flanagan's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, and Gundavaram's CGI Programming on the World Wide Web. As with other O'Reilly handbooks, there's wildlife on the cover, but this time it's an spider instead of some obscure vertebrate, and a rather nasty-looking rascal at that.
The HTML section is the most valuable, covering all of the currently-used tags -- along with browser dependencies, tables of character entities, and reserved color names -- clearly and concisely. The CGI section is something of a mish-mosh of HTML form tags, CGI environment variables, server-side includes, and PERL operators and functions. PERL probably should have been given its own section and the material considerably fleshed out. The usefulness of the JavaScript section is, like JavaScript itself, unclear at this point.
I suppose the relevance of the remaining two sections depends largely on what O'Reilly sees as the audience for this book. Certainly most people who call themselves WebMasters these days would have little occasion to turn to the HTTP and Server Management sections; routine operation of a commercial Web server rarely brings one into intimate contact with HTTP protocol issues, and the Server Management discussion is limited to UNIX HTTP daemons and O'Reilly's WebSite product for Windows NT and Windows-95.
After putting WebMaster in a Nutshell to the test in my own work environment over the last couple of months, my impression is that the authors tried to cover too much ground. The overall concept is reasonable, and the book is definitely useful in its present form, but I hope that O'Reilly will rethink the contents and audience carefully before releasing the next edition.--Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books