Customer Reviews

Webmaster's Guru Pack

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was very disappointed in the content, editing, and xeroxing quality of this "book." The "OCR" typeface used is difficult to read, and there is no reader layout/formatting help with bolding, indentations, etc. It's like reading a line printer listings from the 1960s. The printer to generate the copier original was evidently not high resolution, and the GBC plastic "spiral binding" is flimsy.

There is no overview for the book nor how the examples are organized, and the cutsie/folksy phrases, Whew!, and overusage of exclamation points grow tiresome. The "massive collection" of scripts amounted to 31 basic scripts on a floppy. I have degrees in SW engineering and am used to nerdy styles, but for this book's price I expected something far more professional and accessible.

This is a really great book! I have a little web site and had the programs I wanted up and running in no time. Okay, maybe five minutes. :-) What impressed me most besides the CGI Framing was the Bob100 AI Program. It is really great since my web site has a personality and Bob100 can talk to anyone that comes by at any time. Definately, lots of original thinking went into this book!

I am somewhat new to webpages and CGI. This manual clearly and concisely taught me how to better manipulate my friend's pages for him since features like a search engine was what he wanted. The ability to control 'allowed language' in the Guestbook was a helpful revelation to me (Chapter 4) that keeps profanity out. The disk covered the actual programs and all I had to do was modify the right text, saving me hours of trial and error in writing my own! But helpful doesn't begin to describe this great book as I now better understand how to manipulate the site and more. Two thumbs up! :-)

I found that the Guru Pack was very straight forward and simple to grasp Perl Programming. The mass of programs that required little changing allowed me to have things running swiftly. Even the programs themselves were simple to go through with the top-to-bottom approach akin to reading a page out of a book. Clearly, even with the very advanced topics of Perl, this book made it all very clear to me and I realized that just about ANYBODY can do this. My congratulations!

I'm not new to Web Publishing and I found this book to be very informative. The material will provide both novice and expert new levels of expertise, tips and tricks. Get this book whether you're an expert or a beginner. You won't be sorry. And the price was right compared to the cost of most Web Books.

A beginner at CGI, I needed a book that would take me through every step with clear and concise direction, and this book does that very well. However, I don't think I have ever purchased a book so poorly manufactured! When I opened the book for the first time, I heard a cracking sound, and pages just popped loose from the binding, falling to the floor. Also, it was a real struggle trying remove the enclosed CD - its thin jacket was so heavily glued to the inside back cover that I ended up destroying the back cover in the process, only to discover that the CD's active surface was covered with glue and therefore useless. I was quickly compensated by Amazon with a second copy of the book. This second copy contained a useable CD but the pages were sticking together, transfering the print to one another and making them difficult to read.

I thought the file permissions chapter of the book went into good detail and helped me to get a better grasp on the concept and I understood how to set permissions of files and webpages on a website. I also read the online auction section of the book and I had my own online auction site running in a matter of just changing a few things and it was all automated! I really don't like reading monotonous text, but the author's personal approach to presenting subject matter made it easier for me to understand. With this perfect bound book, however, I would have preferred to have seen some sort of zip locking sleeve for the cd-rom that is included in the book. All in all, with filtering concepts and a lot of user friendly programs, I didn't realize that programming could be this easy.