Rating: 
Summary: A Must Buy
Review: Examples solve real life programming needs. It is a real time and life saver. (note to publisher:Print it darker. It is hard to tell difference between commas and periods.
Rating: 
Summary: a good start -- but it needs more specifics
Review: I bought this book thinking it would tell me everything I could ever want to know about CGI.pm.Well, it doesn't. While the book provides a good starting point for anyone using the CGI.pm module for the first time, it offers few specifics about functions and the examples are hard to follow. I found a better study of the module in "The Perl Black Book," a hefty and rather expensive book, but far more useful than this one. If you only want to print a one-page form using CGI.pm, then this book may be for you. If your needs are more complex, spend the money on a better text.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is a necessity but the examples don't all work
Review: I must confess that I could do virtually none of the programming that I do without Lincoln's fine work, but it's sometimes frustrating with so many broken examples. Once you figure out the syntax, you'll be OK. There's a lot of easy-to-find reference. Make sure you test very small sections of code on their own and insert it into your programs when you get it working. Then refer to your working programs (copy & paste) when you make others.
Again, much credit needs to be given to Mr Stein, but Paul DuBois' Book MySql and Perl For The Web explains CGI.pm much better (you'll still need Stein's book if you're going to be serious about CGI) with examples that really,really, work, extreme attention to detail, and incredible organization.
Rating:
Summary: Necessary documentation for an excellent (FREE) product.
Review: I rated this book as 5 stars, not because I can't see how it could be improved, but because the product it documents is so valuable, and the book is necessary to get full value from CGI.pm. While the book's content mostly duplicates information which can be found at the CGI.pm web site, and/or in the CGI.pm source code, it does present it in a much more convenient manner, and seems to contain additional, valuable information. I've used this book for a couple of months now, and wish to refute some of the criticism by other reviewers. The example font is much less bold than the text, but I use reading glasses, and wouldn't even have noticed the lighter font, if it hadn't been pointed out to me in other reviews. Perhaps it doesn't photocopy well? The reference section is a little confusing since it contains some subsections which, in turn, contain alphabetic organization, rather than being strictly alphabetic throughout. The book has a decent index, however, so this isn't a real problem. Besides the organization is beginning to make sense. The book is not quite up-to-date with the product it documents, but publishing a book does have some turn around time after all. My boss and I could use another copy, we'll probably get one as soon as the next edition is available.
Rating:
Summary: man pages are designed better
Review: I've bought this book basically not to burn my eyes reading man pages from the screen. The text itself is good and is exactly what the title tells you - a printed user's manual to (most) popular Perl module. Now I have to ask: how on earth can a book be designed as poorly as that? Whoever the designer is, I'd strongly recommed him(her?) to buy "The Form of the Book" by Jan Tchicold (hope I spelled it correctly).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent text; questionable typography
Review: I've enjoyed this latest book of Lincoln's, and recommend it highly. This is an interesting book with many good examples. I am happily using it as a text in my Programming the World Wide Web classes. This is one of very, very few books on CGI programming that use fluent Perl (Perl 5 constructs in particular) *and* up-to-date language features (CGI.pm, obviously). The only drawback of the book, and the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars, is that I think the typography is lousy. In particular, the font for the code samples is too light, and the excessive leading in general makes the book harder to read. The book has its share of first printing typos, but then again, mine had them too, so I can hardly complain about that. :-) Good work, Lincoln!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for essential perl module.
Review: If you write CGI scripts in perl and are not taking advantage of cgi.pm, then you're doing things the hard way. Written to take the tedium out of scripting, the module allows you to use easy to remember shortcuts to code some of the more difficult things in perl. Cookie setting and retrival is a snap, as is allowing users to upload files, and more. For advanced programmers, the object oriented method is supported and also very easy to use. The book is easy to follow and contains some illustrative examples that are also available on a companion website. My one and only complaint is the price of the book: it seems a little steep given that most of the material in there is available on the web in one form or another for free. If you don't want to take the time printing and compiling, then this is an excellent manual that will soon sport bookmarks and highlights throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for essential perl module.
Review: If you write CGI scripts in perl and are not taking advantage of cgi.pm, then you're doing things the hard way. Written to take the tedium out of scripting, the module allows you to use easy to remember shortcuts to code some of the more difficult things in perl. Cookie setting and retrival is a snap, as is allowing users to upload files, and more. For advanced programmers, the object oriented method is supported and also very easy to use. The book is easy to follow and contains some illustrative examples that are also available on a companion website. My one and only complaint is the price of the book: it seems a little steep given that most of the material in there is available on the web in one form or another for free. If you don't want to take the time printing and compiling, then this is an excellent manual that will soon sport bookmarks and highlights throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Wow, incredible high-level power in this module.
Review: The author has done a wonderful job of explaining how to use the CGIpm module. If you understand the basics of perl, you should be able to go through the bulk of this book. And with just a slight acquaintance with Perl references and anonmous list, you'll be surprised how quick and easy this is to master. This book puts other CGI books to shame because other books shy away from discussing all the cool functions in CGI.pm.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for learning; dismal for reference; rotten visually
Review: The first half of the book is a great tutorial on using the CGI.pm module. There are all sorts of tricks, and Lincoln's explanations are very good. If you want a tutorial, this is it. However, the reference section is a mess. It's not clear how the various functions are grouped, and there are no guides in page headings to tell you where you are as you thumb through. If you're looking for a desktop reference, you're probably better off using the CGI section of "Perl In A Nutshell". Finally, the book looks like it was thrown together in Word, with no real thought about how it would look. Chapter titles are in grey: Why?
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