Sheesh. Spare me the eloquence, eh? Might as well say , "Today's panhandlers must be literate in a number of different--and ever-evolving--languages and technologies, in order to get us stupid shlubs to dole them a handout. All true, of course, but meaningless drivel. What I'm looking for, and will report on, is, is the dang book of any use at all, and did I learn anything from it, and do I recommend it?

Yes. To all of the above. It being an O'Reilly "...in a Nutshell" book, one could hardly expect anything less.

While I do not claim to have a thorough knowledge of all things websight, I have, by osmosis, picked up many practical "how-to"s by copying what others have done, and by letting wepage generators create code for me. This, over the 3 or so years I have been maintaining the MLMUG website. I stress maintaining, because it is significantly different than "creating" from scratch. Not that I have not created many a new page in my tenure, but I have not, yet, reinvented the whole site, nor even the homepage. I mention that because, for this type of book to be useful, one should have some basic knowledge of what webmastering is all about. In fairness, the introductory paragraph(s) to each "part" of the book do explain the essence of each topic at a very basic level, but immediately thereafter it launches into deep detail. It is "in a nutshell," after all.

When I inherited ownership of our site, I knew next to nothing! I did not even know about things like Fetch, much less how to "code'" Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). I cut my teeth on HTML, using a wonderful book that was gifted to me at a Macworld User Group Breakfast several years ago, Creating Cool HTML 4, by Dave Taylor, IDG Books, copyright 1998. A most excellent book and an outstanding reference, even today. I keep it by YosemiteMoe at all times, ready for answers to all those HTML questions which inevitably arise. For purposes of discussion below, I will use the term WIAN for Webmaster in a Nutshell, and CCH4 for Creating Cool HTML 4.

So, my review largely concentrates on comparing and contrasting the two. Bear with me, for those are the only two webbage books I have ever read. In truth I have thoroughly read neither, cover-to-cover. That is not what one does with reference books like these. Instead, you have a question; extract a keyword; then, look it up in the book's index, and go from there. (I would not own any technical book that does have a robust index!) Both are excellent, in that respect.

The back cover of WIAN boasts: "You'll keep your other books on your shelf; you'll keep Webmaster in a Nutshell next to your keyboard." Do I? Well, not exactly. While both cover HTML quite adequately, CCH4 is much more thorough, in that it provides many examples of both code and result, for HTML. WIAN shows the syntax and constructs in sufficient detail, but does not explicitly show what would appear in your browser. In-a-nutshell, remember? So, when I have a question about HTML, CCH4 is my choice.

But HTML is only about one-eighth of WIAN! It also includes in-a-nutshell coverage of these other web 'ologies:

• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• JavaScript
• Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and Perl
• PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
• HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and
• Server Configuation [using Apache]

Others have zinged WIAN for talking exclusively about the free Apache, and ignoring other, more expensive server software. But not me. Not being a servermeister, I could care less.

How do I rate the book? Erm, about ishty-umron out of hontid-urmgon. (This is as meaningful as most ratings, anyway.) Buy it? Of course; if you are into web mastage. If not; not. Peace.