Book excerpts:

An excellent book for expert programmers, CGI Programming on the World Wide Web doesn't waste time with miscellaneous or frivolous topics, but instead focuses on the workings of the CGI specification down to the tiniest detail. Author Shishir Gundavaram begins by explaining what CGI does -- material that's probably familiar to most people reading this book. Fortunately, he promptly moves on to a complete explanation of each of the CGI methods and environment variables. The author also pays attention to every language you could conceivably want to use with CGI, especially ever-popular Perl.

But CGI is simple, and there isn't enough to it to merit an alphabetical reference of more than a chapter in length. So, CGI Programming on the World Wide Web takes on the task of explaining CGI applications -- some unusual ones as well as the usual suspects. In addition to teaching guest book and quiz applications, Gundavaram explains how to port e-mail and Usenet news to the Web with CGI and details a pretty cool Concentration game. Just for kicks, he makes the game look good in a text-only browser -- a real technical feat that's kind of fun to read about.

If you prefer a more technical reference and discussion book to a simpler tutorial, CGI Programming on the World Wide Web is the book for you.