HTTP Developer's Handbook 206
| HTTP Developer's Handbook | |
| author | Chris Shiflett |
| pages | 280 |
| publisher | Developer's Library/SAMS |
| rating | 6 - Serious flaws |
| reviewer | Tony Williams |
| ISBN | 0672324547 |
| summary | Mixed volume with fair look at HTTP protocol |
One of the strangest feelings I've ever had reading a book is that I have a better opinion of it than does the author. Shiflett spends most of the introduction convincing the reader that this is a useful book and it seems that the start of most chapters is another few sentences telling me why the chapter is incredibly useful for me to read. I felt like yelling "I'm convinced, I'm convinced."
The book is broken up into 6 parts: 'Introducing HTTP,' 'HTTP Definition,' 'Maintaining State,' 'Performance,' 'Security,' and 'Evolution of HTTP.'
The first section and a large part of the introduction are the sort of information that is covered elsewhere in just as good a detail: it basically covers the obvious. The second section covers the HTTP protocol itself, with a good discussion of requests and responses, including all the nitty gritty details of the headers in some detail. This is the really useful heart of the book and it covers 80 of the 280 pages. The third, fourth and fifth sections give a too-concise look at their subject matter, I felt the book could have given much more detail here. The last section is a waste of space; in this volume I don't really need to have a small amount of information about SOAP and XML-RPC.
This book is well-written; I believe its two fatal flaws are that Shiflett seems unsure of his own book and that the book itself tries to offer everything for a developer while explaining it all for the newcomer. I think that had Shiflett given up on the newcomer and given the developer greater depth (with a lot more examples) he would have delivered a much better book. For a developer, the volume is much too light on example code, the book is not really 'practical,' more 'informative.'
This might be a good volume for a library, either a corporate or school library. It provides the salient information in one spot in a concise and readable manner. I think that an individual might find it a less than totally useful book for the money -- you're likely to have already have a volume or two that covers most of the information, and with most languages in web development having libraries that take care of most of the low-level stuff for you, it becomes less and less necessary to really understand the bottom level. Personally, I'll keep it for the 80 page section on the HTTP definition so I have it all in one spot.
You can purchase HTTP Developer's Handbook from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I barely understand the acronym... (Score:5, Funny)
What does that second T stand for?
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:2)
Far too many web developers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:2)
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:3, Insightful)
While not the original interpretation, I prefer to think of the WWW as a giant state engine with all possible pages (including possible dynamically-generated content) as already created and available. Then as you navigate from one page to another, i.e., are transferred from page to page, you are changing from one state to another.
This way of envisioning the WWW is called Representational State Transfer(REST) and is documented by Roy Fielding, one of the WWW's architects, in his d [uci.edu]
Re:I barely understand the acronym... (Score:2)
w3c (Score:5, Insightful)
You can also join the W3c mailing lists to get in-depth info on any of the technology stacks.
Re:w3c (Score:4, Insightful)
why would i wanna "buy" a book, that has info that is already available on http://www.w3c.org?
Because (and get ready for this, it's a bit shocking) some people actually prefer reading a book to staring a computer screen (and not everyone has access to a printer to make hardcopies of the w3c specs).
GASP!
Re:w3c (Score:3, Funny)
some people actually prefer reading a book to staring a computer screen
I couldn't agree with you more completely.
I've found the phosphors on my vt100 were getting painful to look at, so I just printed out all 4000 of the published RFCs on my dot matrix printer.
No need to spend money on those needless books when I can learn everything from the source.
I do have a question, though.
I've read up on this HTTP and have been using telnet on port 80 to answer all those GET commands that have been coming into
Re:w3c (Score:5, Funny)
If that was intentional, that was pure genius.
Otherwise, "Oh, The Irony."
Re:w3c (Score:3, Funny)
Re:w3c (Score:3, Funny)
Re:w3c (Score:5, Insightful)
do you work for the riaa or something?
people buy books (and cd's) even though they can be garnered free over the 'net because:
Re:w3c (Score:3, Insightful)
Nor do they mysteriously change, sometimes radically, every time the author has a new idea and hacks his text again.
And don't forget:
5. It's easy to lay out a book on my desk, alongside the six other books I'm referring to concurrently, and see them all at the same time. <hubris>If one book can tell you everything you need to know about your project, what you are doing is too small to be called a "project".</hubris>
Re:w3c (Score:2)
5. No-one looks at you funny when they see you heading for the bathroom with a book.
6. If you fall asleep in bed reading a book and it falls of the bed, you probably won't think about it twice.
7. Many books on a shelf/desktop can make you look intellectual even if you never touch them. Keep one open and with a bookmark for added effect.
Re:w3c (Score:5, Interesting)
Then take a look again. Their mod_perl Developer's Cookbook is great (on my list of Ten Great Non-O'Reilly Books [petdance.com]), and I really enjoyed The Ruby Way. (Full disclosure: I've done tech editing work for SAMS.)
No publisher is consistently brilliant, nor consistently awful. It may be an indicator, but ignoring a publisher because of a product line you don't like is self-defeating.
Not surprising the author didn't know his niche... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche (Score:2)
I think you're right that few people will need to know all of it.
Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche (Score:2)
Really? Please explain. What do I need to know, besides Content-type, Location and cookies, which are the only headers a web developper is ever likely to have to work with - and, as the review mentions, most languages used for web development already have librairies to handle anyway.
Perhaps the part about HTTPS could be of some interest - I'm quite curious about the whole certificate thing - but the review didn't say anything about it.
Coming to think of it, the review is a complete piece of crap and doesn
Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche (Score:2)
One reason is that sometimes it's a lot easier or more effecient to write your own little webserver to fill some niche than it is to write a module or CGI for an existing webserver. That can be especially useful if you have something that is going to be taking a lot of hits but is very simple in nature. Cut out all the overhead of so
HTTP knowledge required? (Score:4, Insightful)
Web-development does not require a knowledge of HTTP, and this is the way it should be. You shouldn't need to understand ASCII, etc., to use a word-processor.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
IMHO, it's web designers who would be better off with a basic grasp of USABILITY.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd especially like to whack developers who put large Java or Flash intro pages.. especially those with no way to skip them. Okay like it's cool that you can write your company name in a fancy font and make it zoom around but really who gives a damn? If you want to make movies then make movies. If you want to make a website the
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever sent a file to a browser that is dynamically generated, and isn't an inline image or a html/txt page?
Or maybe you wanted to handle file uploads, while the languages have built in functions for handling them, those functions are usually pretty bad at handling anything special, or providing feedback to the user on the progress of the upload.
It helps to know HTTP. It's not one of those things you need to know, but without knowing it, you won't be ab
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:5, Insightful)
For hobby sites, no. For proper sites, definitely. Far too many people build a site without any understanding of how the browser talks to the server. Common mistakes include:
It's not a trivial topic that can be glossed over. You could literally waste gigabytes of bandwidth a month on a high profile site (or single slashdotting) if you don't pay attention to the interaction between server and client. While it's certainly possible to build a site without knowing the first thing about HTTP, it shouldn't be encouraged.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:5, Interesting)
By removing the inode portion of the entity tag (ETag) response in HTTP headers we were able to get a 40% reduction in files served because of client-side caching, which reduced the last byte page load times for most users, and allowed us to repurpose several web boxes to serve dynamic pages.
It was a really trivial fix that made a big difference to user experience.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
But these kind of things are mostly dwarfed by making a site overly graphic-heavy. That's the number one problem. Make a site that's lean, and you're 90% of the way there.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:3, Interesting)
I respectfully disagree. Afterall, the argument could be made that an understanding of HTML really isn't that important; rather the web developer should spend their time getting to know Dreamweaver or Frontpage. There are several problems with ignoring the basics. For one thing, when you find yourself in a situation where either the tool is unavailable or the tool cannot accomplish the desired effect, you have no idea how to proceed since there is no understanding of the framework (ie. A Frontpage design
Re:Off topic question: can you elaborate? (Score:2)
Maybe that wasn't the best example, but the basic idea was in regard to dynamic memory allocation. If you are building a dynamic string one character at a time (or a dynamic array one record at a time), for each addition a new memory chunk needs to be allocated that is large enough to hold the original string plus the new character(expensive), the contents copied, the new data appended, and the old memory released. If, however, you either preallocate the memory to a larger value (say 50 characters) or you
Re:Off topic question: can you elaborate? (Score:2)
Yes, the most expensive part of the operation is the allocating of new memory. There are times when you do need to build a string one segment at a time. For example, if you are building a query string:
SELECT name, address, city, state, zip FROM employees WHERE sys_user_id = 25 AND hire_date > '01/01/03'
You might very well have all of the columns in an array, so you would build the query string by adding each element to the array one at a time. You could also build the WHERE clause in a similar fashi
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about a fundamental understanding of cookies?
From the text:
(Shiflett goes on to describe the Set-Cookie and Cookie headers.)
Relying on a given scripting language's manipulation of HTTP requests/respo
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
See Asimov's story "Olympiad" for an interesting take on this notion. It's all economics, man.
(Yes, I am trying to make some of t
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
I've been on interviews where I had to convince the interviewer that I was a competent developer, despite not knowing FP or dreamweaver.
Off the topic, can anyone recommend a good HTML editor for linux? Something like Homesite in terms of features (coloring, validation) would be nice.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
[flamemebaby]
Incidently, what's wrong with PICO for a very basic text editor? I suppose I could use vi, but I refuse to, just like I no longer use copycon for DOS!
[/flamemebaby]
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
No, I don't use pine anymore, unless I can't get my hands on a decent gui app. It's a fine program, but I've moved on.
And it was 'copy con' as I recall. as in 'copy to console', something even the vi guys would look at and go 'eww...'
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
I didn't see a refutation of any of my points...what's right about pico? oh, no, I'm on your 'enemies' list now as well...dreadful. You've done it to me now.
You know, of course, that pico is pine's message composition editor? By all rights it shouldn't be used outside of pine.
Copy con wasn't a text editor, any more than cat > file is a text editor. Look at your post, you said 'copycon'. Perhaps you were thinking of EDLIN.EXE
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
I don't need to justify anything, it's a simple program that does what I need. That's sufficient.
Yeah, you're on my foes list, so I can filter your stupidity out. If I'm so stupid and you're so great, why do you care?
I know what copycon was. It was useful as a last ditch tool, when all else (even edlin) was hosed from the system.
I don't understand this penchant people have for being nasty. Kinda stupid to badmouth a stranger, I think.
We're
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
The only reasons I'm still using winders on a regular basis now is the homesite/topstyle pro combo... if I can find substitutes, I'm golden.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:3, Informative)
- IE's disasterous handling of mime types and Content-Disposition
- Bug in IE client that was dropping packets. I had to view HTTP packets in ethereal to figure that one out
I found O'Reilly's HTTP: The Definitive Guide, 2002 invaluable for solving the first problem.Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
Just as modern application development, apparently, requires no knowledge of programming or computer science.
People who have a deep mental model of the layers below the layer they work in tend to be much better developers. Why is it that these prople are always the problem solvers that everyone else goes to in any shop?
Here's one good reason... (Score:2)
Please don't confuse "designer" with "developer".
I'm engrossed in HTTP at the moment writing a proxy server with HTTP::Proxy in Perl that appends authentication headers to requests from specific IPs that have specific cookies set so that I can log into all sites I visit that use basic authentication without having to remember my damn logins and passwords all the time.
Next step will be to combine with WWW::Mechanize module (probably) to automate logins to other sites that use standard forms for login.
Unde
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
I'm inclined to mostly disagree. While its nice that many developers can code for the web w/o understanding the intracacies of HTTP and TCP/IP, a grounding in such knowledge can only help, and a lack of this knowledge can lead to one looking like a bozo and/or code-monkey.
I am reminded of a situation from a few years ago when I was interviewing for a corporation that wanted to put together an ASP/COM/MTS-based intranet site. The interviewer was/is the project manager for this project, and he very clearly
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:5, Informative)
HTTP has nothing to do with HTML, really. Dreamweaver obscures HTML; it has absolutely nothing to do with HTTP.
HTTP is the protocol by which files are transfered over the world wide web, it can be anything from images to music to HTML files.
Knowing in-depth the protocol information, as this book seems to try to teach, one can use languages such as PHP to specify additional headers for various effects. Have you ever seen pages that seem to be dynamic (php or cgi), and yet they send an image file? What about the ones that are used for cgi-based site counter images? Or, for that matter, link-tracking of file downloads (I think PHPNuke does this) - All of these types of scripts require at least a rudimentary knowledge of HTTP protocol headers.
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:3)
Re:HTTP knowledge required? (Score:2)
In-depth books are few & far between? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In-depth books are few & far between? (Score:2)
I wonder how many people will see this book on HTTP and get excited thinking it is another book t
Re:In-depth books are few & far between? (Score:2)
A couple times I've thought of writing an in depth book about a topic I'd finally fully explored.. to save others the trouble.. but then when I think about it who is likely to publich such a book? How many people would buy it? I could just post the te
As always, "a good reference" (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the mostly-negative review, how am I supposed to believe that it is in fact "a good volume"? The reviewer even says that most people would find it to be a waste of money!
What does it take for a reviewer to come out and declare "THIS BOOK ISN'T WORTH THE PAPER IT IS PRINTED ON"??
Re:As always, "a good reference" (Score:3, Funny)
Ummm ... no check from the publisher?
Re:As always, "a good reference" (Score:2)
I thought that was why Slashdot was only offered online?
-Bill
Re:As always, "a good reference" (Score:2)
Boy, you can that again. It so true.
But the meanest thing that he ever did Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."-J Cash
Shel Silverstein, actually.
KFG
Re:As always, "a good reference" (Score:2)
Try:
Of course, we have those who think that knowing how to spell, and to conjugate verbs, makes them literate, but that is not necessarily the case.
An understanding of usage, and of the principles underlying the construction of a proper sentence, are important too.
The specifics of HTTP are not vital knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
An efficient developer is one who is protected from the details of the technical world, and who can spend his energy and time on the functional aspects of his problem.
That's my conclusion after 20 years of (mainly successful) software projects.
Re:The specifics of HTTP are not vital knowledge (Score:2)
My Book Report, by honestpuck (Score:1, Flamebait)
Good Review (Score:4, Insightful)
Shiflett spends most of the introduction convincing the reader that this is a useful book and it seems that the start of most chapters is another few sentences telling me why the chapter is incredibly useful for me to read. I felt like yelling "I'm convinced, I'm convinced."
This may have been the first sign of trouble. I always hate it when salespeople or authors waste my time telling me what I already have grasped and understood. After a while, I start to question whether I really should be interested it in anymore if they are so concerned that I won't be.
I think I will try to check this out at the library for a quick refresher course, but it doesn't sound like one to add to my own library. It is good to see an honest review that doesn't immediately gush with adoration and praise while glossing over the flaws. While another poster questioned the frequency of reviews from honestpuck, the quality of this review leads me to ask him to keep up the good work.
Re:Good Review (Score:2)
One comment like this makes up for many posts implying I am paid to do this (I'm not) or receive a benefit from the B&N link at the bottom of the review (I don't - OSDN gets that money) or even employed by one of the publishers (I'm actually unemployed at the moment).
I hope you continue to read and appreciate my reviews. I enjoy writing them.
You'll be glad to know that I'm writing two more reviews at the moment and have another couple of books on the stack.
Tony Williams
*shudder* (Score:2, Funny)
what a crock...
it was worth the $ (Score:5, Informative)
it's eminently readable, and while I agree w the reviewer that it's light on examples, the writing is clear enough that in most cases, examples would be redundant.
very little filler and very readable, easy to read in 1 or 2 sittings and come away with a much better handle on the underpinnings and details of the request/response model. the web is not as well understood by page authors / web developers as it should be, and this is an excellent book to help remedy the situation.
I give it a solid 7/10 and am glad I read it.
it's within easy reach on my shelf....
like saying what? (Score:5, Funny)
no, it's like saying "To be able to drink water you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine"
Re:like saying what? (Score:5, Funny)
Sage words in this dangerous day. Imaging Drinking 101:
See these two hydrogens and one oxygen? Drink that.
See these two hydrogens and two oxygens? DON'T DRINK THAT!
Now, throw in some carbon:
Two carbons, six hydrogens, one oxygen: Drink that (carefully, preferably well hopped and poured slow).
One carbon, four hydrogens, one oxygen: Don't drink that (thin paint with it though).
Re:like saying what? (Score:2)
A closer analogy would be "To be able to mix Kool-ade, you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine"
Re:like saying what? (Score:2)
Get the two straight.
Just write your own web server (Score:5, Insightful)
-josh
Re:Just write your own web server (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just write your own web server (Score:2)
Coding at random until all user agents worked with it.
First, reading something about the protocols.
Read the book AND write a web server. The two in combination will result in a much deeper understanding of the protocol.
Myself I just rooted around in specs and RFCs from the early 90s - took a little longer, but it got the job done.
-josh
HTML may be playing a bigger role .. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. most people use it to "design pages", not represent data. H1, H2
2. small fonts (guess what: verdana is NOT cool), sans-serif for main text, low-contrast hard-to-read colors, and so on.
3. propriatery HTML (say IE 6.0+ only), fixed-resolution design
and many other bugs of the sort. Reading W3C's HTML 4.01 & CSS2 specifications and some usability guides (www.useit.com) should be more insightful than following up on HTTP headers. What works for me is knowing it's stateless, what this means, cookies and url rewriting, and SSL/TSL. The only time I used cleancut HTTP was when testing certain servers via telnet 80.
Verisign and networksolutions are an additional problem, but that's another story altogether.
For a webdesigner, the protocol details are of little use. There are more important things to study.
-i
Timewarp.... (Score:2, Funny)
Huh? I thought the HTTP protocol was already developed.
REST? (Score:2)
Not just using POST for changing state server side and GET for other stuff is a mistake that is often made...
The REST stuff [conveyor.com] is good on this...
Also the W3C document on URIs, Addressability, and the use of HTTP GET and POST [w3.org], a document being debated on the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) list [w3.org] is debating at the moment [ thread 1 [w3.org] | thread 2 [w3.org] ] also well worth reading...
I wonder if REST is covered in this book?
Honest Criticism (Score:5, Informative)
I appreciate the honest feedback, and I'd like to address a few concerns/criticisms/whatever that I have seen mentioned.
Convincing the reader of the importance of HTTP - The first few pages do focus a lot on explaining why HTTP is important to a Web developer. Just look at all of the comments that mention how knowing HTTP is useless, and you can hopefully see why I think this is important. I see questions on various mailing lists all the time that reflect a general lack of knowledge in this area; developers don't really understand cookies, when SSL is needed (or what it does), how to secure their sessions (or applications in general), how to keep up with data from one page to the next, and all sorts of things.
The book caters to beginners - I want the book to cater to both the beginner and the experienced developer. HTTP isn't rocket science, and it can provide a great foundation for Web developers to build from. For those who are already experienced, the book can provide a good reference to the protocol (if you're experienced, you should also know that RFC 2616 isn't a substitute for this) and can help people gain a deeper understanding of things they already know a little about. I don't think a book has to confuse the reader to be considered advanced, and I wasn't writing to impress anyone. My approach was to try and help as many people as I could.
Learn Dreamweaver, not HTTP - Well, people with this opinion might be a lost cause, but what happens when your next place of employment thinks FrontPage is the only way to write Web applications? In general, I think it is better to teach people fundamental things and let them apply those things in any way that they want.
I also have a companion Web site for the book at http://shiflett.org/books/http-developers-handbook [shiflett.org].
Re:Honest Criticism (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it's regional or something but to me and people I know, "web developers" are programmers who use server-side technologies like mod_[perl/php/whatever], ASP, JSP etc etc etc who would actually care about what is happening in the HTTP request process because they (can) directly influence it.
I call people who use things like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or notepad t
Avoiding the stuff for newbies (Score:2)
Talk to the editors. They seem to think everything should be For Dummies nowadays. "Lauguage X for People who Already Know How to Program" books are rare gems indeed.
OTOH I think that a lot of those fat books on the store shelves spend *too much* space on sample code. Many of them seen to be primarily code libraries on an eccentric distribution medium, and I often find myself wondering why they didn't just publish the c
Re:Avoiding the stuff for newbies (Score:2)
Granted, I would REALLY love to see more advanced books out there, but you tend to get to a point where you're looking for a book on an entire subject in a particul
HTTP Pocket Reference (Score:3, Informative)
the book is not really 'practical,'. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
And so we descend, bit by pleasant little bit, into hell, where "information" isn't "practical," where knowledge of reality isn't "necessary" and where, it turns out, the enviroment is a cube farm populated by clueless code monkeys happy to be there.
Sorry for wading into this thread after yelling "Flame On!", but reading most of the responses is just plain depressing.
The older I get the more I understand why Fabian Pascal tends to come across as a bit bitchy. He's earned the right.
Helloooooo, are there any geeks left in the house?
My mom has a degree in fine arts. Not a very geeky field, right? She took chemistry for years so she could understand her materials, particularly glazes. Is this necessary to throw a pot? No. Is it necessary to be a good ceramicist? Yes.
A real artist always knows her materials, right down to the last atom.
Otherwise you're just a semiskilled mechanic working on an assembly line.
Of course, it that was your goal when you set out . .
KFG
KFG
Re:the book is not really 'practical,'. . . (Score:2)
Indeed. It's sometimes surprising how often lower-level details that you "shouldn't have to be aware of" stand up and bite you if you don't understand them.
Right now, I'm looking at a bizarre bug that has been plagueing me for a year or so, in which little chunks 3 or 4 extra bytes appear scattered through out downloaded web pages. I finally tracked it down to the HTTP level. How many web developers could tell you what "chunked" dat
You can buy the book OR (Score:4, Informative)
You can buy the book
OR
You can read the documentation of RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 [faqs.org] and save some money.
You can also read: HTTP/1.1 Specifications [w3.org]
Easy to understand and best of all FREE!!
Re:You can buy the book OR (Score:2)
exactly 80 pages? (Score:2)
Pure coincidence? I think not.
.
Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324547
Support the Author (Score:5, Informative)
You can use this one to support the author (me):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324547Or, here is the plain link (it's not cheaper; you just give Amazon more money):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324547Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING! (Score:2)
Of course, buy not buying through the link in the story, you dont support slashdot.
Re:No it's not (Score:2)
Not neccesarily - the pages may look alright but to produce dynamic content and process user input you need to know a bit of programming.
Re:No it's not (Score:2)
I really hope that was meant to be sarcastic. To be a good web developer, one should know HTML as well as XHTML, CSS, Javascript, some server-side programming, SQL, and be well-versed in browser compatibility, accessibility, interface guidelines, and information architecture. Photoshop or Fireworks is a plus too. And of course, it's always a strong point to know Apache fairly well.
A good working knowledge of HTTP is useful, too, but I
The Difference (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:honestly, i've had enough! (Score:2)
While testing some software I'm working on I killed the dates on a few posts on my weblog.
'Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules' I actually started a few months ago - my review's been on /. since early August. I'm not sure what the date on the 'Practical mod_perl' post should be but I know I've had it for a while. (Good book BTW - writing the review at the moment).
Tony Williams
Re:HTTP is crucial for web development??? (Score:2)
Web development is more akin to building a phone than to a phone call, which is more like a simple HTTP GET request.