Up-to-date, all encompassing; not for ASPers or *designers*!

CSS and XML are introduced with similar tutorial style with references following on CSS 1 and XSL (dec 98), and the same procedure follows for Javascript 1.2 (good), CGI with Perl (ok), PHP (see below) and HTTP (a bit incomplete, but headers listed). There is then information on Apache configuration and optimisation.

I'm not sure about the PHP chapter as I ignored it; they seem to have favoured a full PHP reference but only convered using CGI with Perl - I guess this is as they have other Perl books.

I would recommend this book to webmasters, after considering the following - this book is not about _design_, as it does not cover any style or graphics issues. There is also nothing covering ASP (see _ASP In A Nutshell_) or webservers other than apache.

Excellent Reference For Any Web Designer

     As a part-time web designer, I'm always looking to learn more "web tricks" and WebMaster In a Nutshell allows me to do just that. The second edition of this book covers so many different aspects of web development. It devotes chapters to new developments in HTML (HTML 4) and JavaScript. There are also chapters devoted to Cascading Style Sheets, XML, CGI, Apache modules, and HTTP itself.

All current HTML tags and attributes are listed, along with JavaScript event handlers. Tables, frames, character entries and color values are also covered in various chapters. Very handy material!

While this is definitely not a tutorial book, it does contain lots of reference material and I learned a few new tricks reading through this book. It's one I'll know I'll refer to again and again when I have a question about how to do a particular task while working on one of my websites.

Also recommended: HTML 4 Visual Quick Start Guide by Elizabeth Castro; and UNIX in A Nutshell by Arnold Robbins.