There are innumerable books and online resources for learning Web-related skills. What this book does is pare them down to a single desktop-sized volume for easy reference. You may be a whiz at CGI programming, but forget how to use Netscape cookies. You may know HTML fairly well, but can never remember the correct syntax for creating tables. You might forget the directive for creating directory aliases on your server, or how to enforce password protection on documents.
By no means is this book a replacement for more detailed books on the Web. But when those books have been digested and placed onto your bookshelves with pride, this one will remain on your desktop.
This book is separated into five distinct subject areas. In turn, each subject area is split into chapters. Some chapters are 70 pages; others are 3 pages.
Introduces you to the book and to the Web in general.
The first section of the book covers the Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML.
Gives a brief background to HTML syntax.
Lists the HTML tags currently in use.
Shows how to use HTML frames.
Shows how to use HTML tables.
Lists the names accepted by HTML attributes that accept color values.
Lists the special characters recognized by HTML.
Briefly describes differences between the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.
The second section of the book covers the Common Gateway Interface, or CGI.
Gives a brief background to CGI.
Lists the form tags and demonstrates their usage in a brief example.
Lists the environment variables available to CGI programs.
Describes SSI, listing directives and environment variables and demonstrating their use.
Describes the Windows CGI, the CGI interface for Windows-based programming languages.
Lists Perl syntax and functions.
Lists URLs with libraries and modules that can facilitate CGI programming.
The third section of the book covers Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP.
Introduces HTTP and its general format.
Lists the three-digit response codes generated on the server end.
Lists the general, request, response, and entity headers for HTTP.
Lists the media (content) types in common use.
The fifth and final section of the book covers server configuration.
Describes how servers work.
Lists the directives used by the Apache and NCSA family of servers.
Lists the directives used by the CERN (W3C) server.
Lists the directives used by the Netscape family of servers.
Describes how to configure the WebSite server.