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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book that delivers what it promises.
Review: Drag and Drop CGI? Sounds too good to be true? Well, it IS true! An excellent book that delivers what its subtitle promises. If you're looking to enhance your website with form validation, form processing, search engines, visitor counters and even an online store (amongst other goodies) then this is the book for you. The book assumes moderate computer skills on the part of the reader but is in no way overly technical. In addition, the authors provide step by step support through each script, how each script works and how you might implement each script in the 'real-world'. What makes Drag and Drop CGI particularly commendable is that it delivers on its promise: nine fully-operational, fully-tested, robust, commercial-quality scripts (including the aforementioned on-line store) that solve real-world problems and not just 'demos', 'teasers' or 'examples' masquerading as fully functional code. For this reason alone, it's worth making room on your bookshelf for this book. Other features of the book worthy of note include: numerous, accessible introductions to technical concepts; a chapter to help you clarify your site's design, purpose and target audience; and introductory guides to Perl and UNIX for those readers who wish to advance to the 'next level'. All this, written in a clear, humorous and supportive style. Not bad... Not bad at all.
Rating: 
Summary: A Real Mess
Review: I already reviewed this book and spent time on my review. You only have the author and publisher's reviews and maybe one from their mothers! Why do you not include negative reviews?? You lose a great deal of credibility by only including the author's bubbling over his work. These boys wrote this worthless drivel in a rushed afternoon and it shows! Have the guts to print less that gushing reviews!!
Rating:
Summary: a waste of paper
Review: I already reviewed this book and spent time on my review. You only have the author and publisher's reviews and maybe one from their mothers! Why do you not include negative reviews?? You lose a great deal of credibility by only including the author's bubbling over his work. These boys wrote this worthless drivel in a rushed afternoon and it shows! Have the guts to print less that gushing reviews!!
Rating: 
Summary: Examples need proofreading
Review: I bought this book for an online course. If I were trying to use it on my own, without input from other people in the course, I don't think I'd be able to use it. The examples vary from the explanations in the book; for example, in Chapter 5, Figure 5.3 tells you, when editing the $cntfile line of the configuration block of the vcount.cgi script, to "Be sure to enclose all of this in *single* quotation marks...." However, the example on the CD has everything in that line in *double* quotation marks. I'm not a programmer, and don't know whether this actually makes a difference (the script tests out fine in Telnet, but I have yet to make it work on a page), but this isn't the first discrepancy I've found in the examples, and it's very confusing. Also (and this is a minor thing), the plastic CD pocket in the back of the book was glued in backwards so I had to cut the CD out of it with a razor blade. Altogether, I'm finding this book to be more of an annoyance than it's worth.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book that delivers what it promises.
Review: Not for a newbie to the web. This book took me from static html web pages to dynamic cgi web pages with secure on line shopping. Well worth the money I spent, plus all the scripts on the CD are a big bonus. Plain, well written english, with just enough tech stuff to get me by and help me ask right questions when I needed tech support from my server. Thanks to Amazon for the great next day service!
Rating:
Summary: A Real Mess
Review: This was the third book I bought to help me get started with CGI stuff. It was not very helpful, when I started learning. I was using it in an online class. Since that early learning experience, I forced myself to figure out cgi instalation. I now have many scripts on my site. Recently I wanted a hidden counter, and I remembered there was one in this book. I went back to the book and tried to install it. And what a mess. There is no coordination between the CD and the book. The book has no set outline, for configuration. And there are errors that will make you think your an idiot. Do your self a favor and just start downloading scripts from the web and learning the difference between a path on your server and a path with a URL in the browser. Maybe another book will help, but stay away from this one, oh and I'll but this one up for auction, here at amazon, and good luck!
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