Useful Books and Software

JavaScript Design shows designers how to create interactive JavaScript applications for the web. It provides detailed descriptions of JavaScript structures, statements and objects, using JavaScript to create different elements of a web page,controlling a page's overall design and function with JavaScript, passing data and variables between clients and servers. Also covered are advanced topics server-side languages: PHP, Perl, ASP, CGI, XML, connections to Java and Cold Fusion. The line between developers and designers is fading. Designers are challenged with projects that require them to have a strong knowledge of the server side issues traditionally fielded by a web developer. Designers are looking for books that teach them the web developer knowledge in a language in which they are accustomed.

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The Web is a vast data source that contains everything from stock prices to movie credits, and with LWP all that data is just a few lines of code away. Anything you do on the Web, whether it's buying or selling, reading or writing, uploading or downloading, news to e-commerce, can be controlled with Perl and LWP. You can automate Web-based purchase orders as easily as you can set up a program to download MP3 files from a web site.

"Perl & LWP" covers:

Understanding LWP and its design

Fetching and analyzing URLs

Extracting information from HTML using regular expressions and tokens

Working with the structure of HTML documents using trees

Setting and inspecting HTTP headers and response codes

Managing cookies

Accessing information that requires authentication

Extracting links

Cooperating with proxy caches

Writing web spiders (also known as robots) in a safe fashion

"Perl & LWP" includes many step-by-step examples that show how to apply the various techniques. Programs to extract information from the web sites of BBC News, Altavista, ABEBooks.com, and the Weather Underground, to name just a few, are explained in detail, so that you understand how and why they work.

Perl programmers who want to automate and mine the web can pick up this book and be immediately productive. Written by a contributor to LWP, and with a foreword by one of LWP's creators, "Perl & LWP" is the authoritative guide to thispowerful and popular toolkit.

Perl & LWP sets out to unwrap the Library for the Web in Perl (LWP), which is a collection of modules that make it easier to access and pick apart Web pages (and FTP-accessible files, and outgoing e-mail messages) from within your Perl programs. The book succeeds wonderfully, not only in conveying the technical aspects of LWP programming, but in making clear the fun of doing work that's very well suited to Perl. Sean Burke assumes that his readers know something about Perl, albeit not much, and a similar amount about HTML. He does a great job of explaining how LWP functions fit into Perl programs, and how you can use them to make reference to Internet resources far more easily than before.

Burke's narrative takes the form of a guided tour in which he introduces his readers to aspects of the LWP modules one by one. His tone is generally straightforward (sharp commentary alternates with brief code listings, with occasional passages of reference material), but there's sometimes an undercurrent of exuberance that makes the reader want to get going with his or her own programming right away. Overall, the emphasis is on teaching both LWP and Perl itself to the extent necessary to do LWP work. Because of the concise and nicely indexed code modules, though, you'll find this book useful as a reference after you're under way with LWP. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to program with LWP and Perl itself. All of LWP's strong points--including HTML parsing (with tokens and trees as well as with regular expressions), HTML generation and modification, manipulation of HTML forms, and the operation of spiders--are covered. This book has more of a tutorial tone than any similar reference material on the Internet.

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Author: Sean M. Burke
Release Date: 2002-06-26
ISBN/EAN: 0596001789 / 9780596001780

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Pure Visual Basic 6 is a substantial and focused reference for professional programmers. This book begins with an accelerated introduction to Visual Basic concepts from Projects, forms, and controls to using the Windows API, debugging, and error handling. The heart of Pure Visual Basic 6 is the hundreds of programming techniques, complete with well-commented code examples that you can immediately use in your own VB programs.

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HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and JavaScript are the three basic web programming languages that web programmers use to build functional, attractive, and interactive web sites. HTML creates the text, images, and other content on a web page; CSS formats and positions those elements; and JavaScript adds interactivity to websites by responding to user choices. The Web Programmer's Desk Reference is the only book to serve as a single point of reference to all three primary web programming languages. It begins with a web programming primer that gives beginning and intermediate programmers an understanding of the core elements of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then moves on to a reference section that lists every element of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Each listing includes the latest syntax and functionality, compatibility with other elements, and cross-browser compatibility issues. Whether you are a professional web programmer, professional web designer, or a recreational webmaster with a dynamic web site, this will be the book that you use whenever you need to know how to use a particular HTML element, JavaScript object, or CSS style.

New Price: $12.89 / Used Price: $4.96

New Price: $4.96 / Used Price: $4.96

ActivePerl with ASP and ADO is aimed at Windows developers, though it isn't obvious why they'd want to use Perl rather than Microsoft's native VBScript. This text explains the basics of the Perl language, along with ASP and ADO, but you really need more than this book if you're going to realize the full power of Perl as an ASP-scripting language.

On the ASP side, the book provides good explanations of how and why things happen and how to make them happen the way you want them to. It discusses statefulness and cookies, along with simple ASP pages and database connectivity. The text discusses ADO usage in depth--including such esoterica as converting between ActivePerl scripts and command-line Perl for more efficient client-data presentations.

The book ends with the Record object, a hierarchical data structure, followed by appendices--which include a collection of useful scripts. ActivePerl and all the code is on the companion CD-ROM.

ActivePerl with ASP and ADO is authoritative and its author is clearly an expert, but pity the poor beginner who has to master all three languages at once. Despite the roller-coaster ride, the book is well structured and provides a concise source for Windows developers looking to move to a more powerful scripting language. --Steve Patient, Amazon.co.uk

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Author: Tobias Martinsson
Release Date: 2000-04-04
ISBN/EAN: 0471383147 / 9780471383147

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There is a new emphasis on building rich, web-based applications. These applications can be difficult to build because they rely on JavaScript, which lacks the sophisticated object-oriented structures and static typing of Java, they are tricky to debug, and they require you to manage numerous browser inconsistencies.

In May of 2006 Google released the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). GWT enables developers to create Ajax applications in Java. With GWT, you can build your applications using a real object-oriented language and take advantage of Java tools like Eclipse that are already available. Instead of trying to bring tool support to Ajax, Google brought Ajax to a place where the tools already existed.

GWT in Action shows you how to take advantage of these exciting new tools. Readers will follow an example running throughout the book and quickly master the basics of GWT: widgets, panels, and event handling. The book covers the full development cycle, from setting up your development environment, to building the application, then deploying it to the web server. The entire core GWT library is discussed, with details and examples on how it can be extended.

GWT helps you make the most of Ajax in your web applications and GWT in Action helps you get more out of GWT. Readers can download Early Access Chapters of GWT in Action now and participate in the Author Forum by visiting at the Manning site.

Publisher: Manning Publications
Authors: Robert Hanson, Adam Tacy
Release Date: 2007-06-05
ISBN/EAN: 1933988231 / 9781933988238

New Price: $10.00 / Used Price: $10.00

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Publisher: M & T Books
Authors: Steven E. Brenner, Edwin Aoki
Release Date: 1995-12
ISBN/EAN: 1558514783 / 9781558514782

New Price: $3.75 / Used Price: $0.01