Welcome to the HTML version of the book CGI Manual of Style, by Robert McDaniel. To get started right away, use the link below to the Table of Contents. From this page you can link to any chapter as well as to the Quick Reference section. We've also included some script files from the book. Download CGIMOS.ZIP, this zip file contains a dozen or so scripts. Please use a utility that allows long file names when decompressing this file.
The Common Gateway Interface, or CGI, is a standard for communication between Web documents and CGI scripts you write. CGI scripting, or programming, is the act of creating a program that adheres to this standard of communication. A CGI script is simply a program that in some way communicates with your Web documents. Web documents are any kind of file used on the Web. They can be HTML documents, text files, image files, or any number of other file formats. The existence of this gateway between programs you write and your Web documents allows you to create much more dynamic and interactive Web pages than you could with HTML alone.