Rating: 
Summary: Engaging and thorough - an excellent book!
Review: This book is more than just an HTTP reference. In fact the name of the book may even be a bit misleading. While it does an excellent job of describing the "what", "why", and "how" of HTTP, it goes a great deal further by describing how the various technologies that interact with HTTP work. And since HTTP is the very foundation of the Web, this book ends up being a great guide to the guts of all of WWW. If you ever had a question about how a certain piece of Internet technology works, there is a good chance you will find it described in this book. From various types of Internet gateways, servers, and proxies, to security, content publishing & distribution, and HTTP related performance issues. The topics are dealt in an insightful, practical way - full of useful examples, and "tricks of the trade". The writing style is very engaging, and accessible even to non-technical readers. Authors' knowledge and passion for the subject matter shows through. I have had the good fortune of working with the authors, and I can't think of a more qualified bunch of people to write this book. Size of the book appears a bit daunting first, but you don't need to read it cover to cover. Just pick your topic of interest, or keep the book as a reference. I have been closely involved with developing HTTP related high performance Internet servers/gateways/proxies for six years, and I haven't seen a better book on the topic.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on HTTP I've come across
Review: This book is worth more than its weight in gold. The authors do a phenomenal job of describing the HTTP protocol in an interesting and accessible way. Throughout the book their immense experience with the protocol shines through. For anyone working in the field of web acceleration, caching, load balancing, etc, I can't recommend this book highly enough. BUY IT!
Rating:
Summary: Nicely written but technical guide of web technology
Review: This is a really nice, technical reference of HTTP; the technology that makes the web work. I am a software engineer interested in web services, and this book has rescued me from a pile of confusing technical specifications. I've been waiting for a book like this, and it's no surprise O'Reilly came out with it. The book is technically deep, but it's well written and thoughtfully organized. It's not "HTTP" for dummies (it has 700 pages of meat), but the friendly writing made it easy even for my colleagues who knew nothing about HTTP. There are also hundreds of great illustrations that make technical interactions clear. The book seems useful for anyone that wants to understand how the internet works; but it's deep enough for professional developers and academic types. The authors clearly have clearly spent a lot of work on the book, to make it thorough and readable. The book is very good, but I wish it had more detail about web services and maybe wireless web communications. Those might be slightly off-topic, but I think they'd go great in this book. I agree with most of the other reviews of this book (but the Anton Skederis review below seems to be reviewing the "HTTP pocket reference" which is an entirely different book). All said, if you are a technical or marketing professional involved with internet technology, or a computer science student, this book may be a good addition to your library. I'd give it a 4.7 out of 5. - T.E.B.
Rating:
Summary: Nicely written but technical guide of web technology
Review: This is a really nice, technical reference of HTTP; the technology that makes the web work. I am a software engineer interested in web services, and this book has rescued me from a pile of confusing technical specifications. I've been waiting for a book like this, and it's no surprise O'Reilly came out with it. The book is technically deep, but it's well written and thoughtfully organized. It's not "HTTP" for dummies (it has 700 pages of meat), but the friendly writing made it easy even for my colleagues who knew nothing about HTTP. There are also hundreds of great illustrations that make technical interactions clear. The book seems useful for anyone that wants to understand how the internet works; but it's deep enough for professional developers and academic types. The authors clearly have clearly spent a lot of work on the book, to make it thorough and readable. The book is very good, but I wish it had more detail about web services and maybe wireless web communications. Those might be slightly off-topic, but I think they'd go great in this book. I agree with most of the other reviews of this book (but the Anton Skederis review below seems to be reviewing the "HTTP pocket reference" which is an entirely different book). All said, if you are a technical or marketing professional involved with internet technology, or a computer science student, this book may be a good addition to your library. I'd give it a 4.7 out of 5. - T.E.B.
Rating:
Summary: You will be surprised of how much you don't know about HTTP
Review: You think you may know enough HTTP, it's just a simple application level protocol eh? Hold your thought till you read this book. I borrowed this book from a library merely for doing some research on HTTP connection management and secure authentication. However, the more I read, the more I'm amazed there're lots of practical and interesting topics with so rich but not boring details. The book uses quite numbers of pictures to depict different handshaking protocols and complicated concepts, very easy to follow and understand. It is certainly not the HTTP specification reprint. It tells you what, why, where, and how. It is as the name suggested --- The Definitive Guide. This book gives you very resourceful details on how HTTP works with a wild range of topics like Caching, Proxies, Gateway, Tunneling, Web Robots, Connection Management, Cookies, Various Authentication, Security, i18n, Hosting, and even Load Balancing! For example, it addresses how web crawlers work, really the inside out information, how a web crawler can back track their visited paths and what other alternatives to prevent & resolve loops & dups.
HTTP is becoming the 'operating system' for distributed applications in Internet. No doubt in my mind, from beginners, advanced users, even to researchers, will surely be benefitted from this excellent book. The authors really did a superb job. Five Stars!
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