Web Standards Programmer's Reference: HTML, CSS, JavaScript®, Perl, Python®, and PHP

Introduction

The Web has matured quickly from a textual reference to a medium suitable for publishing just about any document imaginable, conveying any idea, containing any type of information. As the Web grows, it envelopes people of all types—research professionals, companies, and even individuals. People from all walks of life and with all levels of technical ability are expected to have a Web presence.

As a consequence, most technical people have been relied upon to know more about the technologies involved in publishing on the Web. Unfortunately, despite what most non-technical people think, technical people don't automatically understand all things Web-related. The evolving standards, increasing number of platforms that are Web capable, and number of technologies that can be employed in Web publishing conspire to create a morass of technologies that must be addressed.

That's where this book comes in.

This book does its best to cover the basics of all of the technologies central to Web publishing:

• XHTML—The latest Hypertext Markup Language standard, incorporating XML constructs in the language used to describe Web content.

• CSS—Cascading Style Sheets, a structured method for defining and applying formatting to Web documents.

• JavaScript—The premier, client-side scripting language providing scripting access to document content and base-level automation to Web documents.

• CGI Scripting—Server-side, common gateway interface scripts (via the Perl and Python languages) that bring even ...