CGI Programming on the World Wide Web

By Shishir Gundavaram

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) emerged as the first way to present dynamically generated information on the World Wide Web. CGI allows the computer to generate Web pages instantly at the user's request rather than being written by someone in advance. And at the time of this writing, it remains the only stable and well-understood method for creating such pages. Java presents problems that have not yet been solved. Other products are currently just in the announcement stage.

CGI is fun. You can get a kick out of writing scripts that perform tricks for you, and the users enjoy the spice the scripts add to your Web pages. But CGI has a serious side too: It lets the Internet offer the kind of interactive, user-driven applications that modern computer users have come to expect. CGI opens up an entire class of modern applications to the Web.

Today's computer users expect custom answers to particular questions. Gone are the days when people were satisfied by the computing center staff passing out a single, general report to all users. Instead, each salesperson, manager, and engineer wants to enter specific queries and get up-to-date responses. And if a single computer can do that, why not the Web?

This is the promise of CGI. You can display sales figures for particular products month by month, as requested by your staff, using beautiful pie charts or plots. You can let customers enter keywords in order to find information on your products. You can also offer day-to-day conveniences, like collecting comments from users, offering them searches through your archives, and letting them sign your guestbook.

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Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason

By Dave Rolsky and Ken Williams

Preface
Mason is a tool for embedding the Perl programming language into text, in order to create text dynamically, most often in HTML. But Mason does not simply stop at HTML. It can just as easily create XML, WML, POD, configuration files, or the complete works of Shakespeare.

Mason was originally written by Jonathan Swartz, with the help of the rest of the CMP development team at CMP Media in 1996, and in its earliest incarnations it was known as Scribe.
Mason was first made publicly available as Version 0.1 in August of 1998. Since that time, Jonathan Swartz has invited your humble authors to participate in the further development of Mason. Mason has been expanded, and rewritten and is much changed from those early days. This book covers Version 1.12 of Mason.

Intended Audience
This book assumes that the reader is familiar with Perl at an intermediate level and that common Perl idioms don't stop you in your tracks. While you need not have written your own modules previously, familiarity with Perl's object-oriented syntax will be helpful.

Since Mason is most often used in the generation of web sites, this book frequently presents its example in terms of generating HTML pages. You definitely do not need to be an HTML expert to read this book, but a passing familiarity with HTML will be helpful in understanding what the output is intended to look like.

As previously mentioned, Mason is well-suited for the generation of any sort of dynamic text, including markup languages such as XML, as well as configuration files, email bodies (think mail merge, perhaps), or even code.

Finally, experience with mod_perl and Apache will be helpful for Chapter 7 and Chapter 9, which discuss integrating Mason with mod_perl and CGI, respectively, though the rest of the book should be easily comprehensible regardless of your familiarity with those particular topics.

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Special Edition Using JAVASCRIPT

By Mark C. Reynolds

Five years ago the Internet was mostly the province of academics and programmers, and the World Wide Web was an obscure idea in the minds of a few researchers. Today both are experiencing explosive growth and unparalleled interest. Web pages are being created at an astonishing rate. The fundamental challenge of Web page development is that while it is easy to create a Web page, it is more difficult to create an attractive and exciting one.

HTML, the markup language that describes the appearance of a page, is easy to learn, and requires no background in programming. HTML has undergone several revisions in order to meet the expanding needs of Web page authors. However, there are limits to what can be achieved inside HTML. The Java programming language was introduced to dramatically extend the Web developer's set of tools, but is still more complex than HTML. Java is very easy to learn; however, like most programming languages, it isn't easy to master. JavaScript bridges this gap.

JavaScript offers the Web page author a new level of sophistication without requiring him to become a programmer. JavaScript brings dynamic and powerful capabilities to Web pages, yet JavaScript is no more difficult to learn than HTML. JavaScript can be used to solve common problems, such as validating forms input, and can also be used to create dramatic and visually appealing content, which would be impossible with HTML. The goal of this book is to completely explore JavaScript, from the mundane to the extraordinary. It is designed as an introduction, a reference, and a continuous source of ideas, so that you may continually improve the Web pages that you create.

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JavaScript Manual of Style

By Marc Johnson

This is a book about writing exciting Web pages with JavaScript. Before JavaScript or its ancestor, LiveScript, Web pages were written in HTML. The pages could be very sophisticated in their layout, but they just sat there. JavaScript can make your Web pages come alive. Your Web pages can now be dynamic, changing before the user's eyes. JavaScript can make your Web pages both more interesting and more fun.

JavaScript isn't very difficult to learn. I myself picked up the basics in a matter of hours. You can, too.

You don't need to read this book cover to cover, and you don't have to read the chapters in any particular order. Skip around, read what seems interesting, and write some code. It's the best way to learn. You will need a copy of Netscape Navigator, preferably version 2.01 or later, but that's all. I use WebMania! to write some of my code, because it takes care of a lot of the details that I might forget, but all you really need is a simple ASCII text editor-vi, emacs, Notepad, whatever.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part includes three chapters. Chapter 1is a quick introduction to JavaScript that describes what it is and where it came from. Chapter 2explains what JavaScript is good for, outlining what you can do with it. Chapter 3 lets me get up on my soapbox and do a little preaching about what makes a good Web page, what makes a bad Web page, and what you can do to keep your pages on the good list.

The second section consists of six chapters, all of which contain a complete JavaScript Web page. Each chapter introduces a problem, demonstrates how you might solve it without JavaScript, and then shows how you can craft a much better solution with JavaScript. These chapters all conclude with some thoughts on how you can enhance the solution and how you can adapt the techniques to creating your own Web pages with JavaScript. In every chapter, the JavaScript code is discussed in depth, function by function. No mysteries; there's no one behind the curtain. If you don't understand something about the code, write me at marcj@nando.net. I'll be glad to answer your questions!

Finally, the third section contains six appendices, chock full of useful reference material: the character set, reserved words, a review of HTML, the JavaScript operators, JavaScript's built-in objects and functions, and online resources. Again, if there's something I missed, write me. I want to help.

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Javascript Manual of Style

Teach yourself WEB Publishing with HTML in 14 days

By Laura Lemay

What This Book Contains
This book is intended to be read and absorbed over the course of two weeks (although it may take you more or less time depending on how much you can absorb in a day). On each day you'll read two chapters, which describe one or two concepts related to Web presentation design.

Day 1 Getting Started: The World Wide Web and You
You get a general overview of the World Wide Web and what you can do with it, and then come up with a plan for your Web presentation.

Day 2 Creating Simple Web Pages
You learn about the HTML language and how to write simple documents and link them together using hypertext links.

Day 3 Doing More with HTML
You do more text formatting with HTML, including working with text alignment, rule lines, and character formatting. You'll also get an overview of the various HTML editors available to help you write HTML.

Day 4 Images and Backgrounds
Today covers everything you ever wanted to know about images, backgrounds, and using color on the Web.

Day 5 Multimedia on the Web: Animation, Sound, Video, and Other Files
You learn all about adding multimedia capabilities to your Web presentations: using images, sounds, and video to enhance your material.

Day 6 Designing Effective Web Pages
You get some hints for creating a well-constructed Web presentation, and you explore some examples of Web presentations to get an idea of what sort of work you can do.

Day 7 Advanced HTML Features: Tables and Frames
You learn about some of the advanced features of HTML available in Netscape and other browsers: tables and frames.

Day 8 Going Live on the Web
Starting Week 2, you learn how to put your presentation up on the Web, including how to set up a Web server and advertise the work you've done.

Day 9 Creating Interactive Pages
Today covers adding interactive forms and image maps to your Web page, including the new client-side image map tags.

Day 10 All About CGI Programming
Today introduces you to CGI programming; in the first half you learn all about writing CGI scripts and programs, and in the second half you work through a number of examples.

Day 11 Interactive Examples
Today contains nothing but lots of examples-both informational and interactive-for you to look at and explore.

Day 12 JavaScript
You explore JavaScript, a new language available in Netscape to add new features to and interactivity to your Web pages.

Day 13 Java, Plug-ins, and Embedded Objects
Today covers more Netscape enhancements: the use of Java applets inside Web pages, and including other embedded objects through the use of plug-ins.

Day 14 Doing More with Your Server
You learn lots of new tricks for using your server, including using server-includes, security, and authentication.

Bonus Day Creating Professional Sites

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Teach Yourself HTML 3.2 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

In the next 24 hours, approximately 100,000 new Web pages will be posted in publiclyaccessible areas of the Internet. At least as many pages will be placed on privateintranets to be seen by businesspeople connected to local networks. Every one ofthose pages--like over 100 million pages already online--will use the Hypertext MarkupLanguage, or HTML.

If you read on, your Web pages will be among those that appear on the Internetin the next 24 hours. And this will be the day that you gained one of the most valuableskills in the world today: mastery of HTML.

Can you really learn to create top-quality Web pages yourself, without any specializedsoftware, in less time than it takes to schedule and wait for an appointment witha highly-paid HTML wizard? Can this thin, easy-to-read book really enable you toteach yourself state-of-the-art Web page publishing?

Yes. In fact, within two hours of starting this book, someone with no previousHTML experience at all can have a Web page ready to place on the Internet's WorldWide Web.

How can you learn the language of the Web so fast? By example. This book breaksHTML down into simple steps that anyone can learn quickly, and shows you exactlyhow to take each step. Every HTML example is pictured right above the Web page itwill produce. You see it done, you read a brief plain-English explanation of howit works, and you immediately do the same thing with your own page. Ten minutes later,you're on to the next step.

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