HTTP Developer's Handbook

honestpuck writes "To say that understanding HTTP is crucial for web development might seem like saying water is wet, yet many people don't take the time to fully understand the protocol. This book could be a good help. HTTP Developer's Handbook from SAMS gives you a great deal of information about the protocol in a clearly understood fashion." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. HTTP Developer's Handbook author Chris Shiflett pages 280 publisher Developer's Library/SAMS rating 6 - Serious flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0672324547 summary Mixed volume with fair look at HTTP protocol

One of the strangest feelings I've ever had reading a book is that I have a better opinion of it than does the author. Shiflett spends most of the introduction convincing the reader that this is a useful book and it seems that the start of most chapters is another few sentences telling me why the chapter is incredibly useful for me to read. I felt like yelling "I'm convinced, I'm convinced."

The book is broken up into 6 parts: 'Introducing HTTP,' 'HTTP Definition,' 'Maintaining State,' 'Performance,' 'Security,' and 'Evolution of HTTP.'

The first section and a large part of the introduction are the sort of information that is covered elsewhere in just as good a detail: it basically covers the obvious. The second section covers the HTTP protocol itself, with a good discussion of requests and responses, including all the nitty gritty details of the headers in some detail. This is the really useful heart of the book and it covers 80 of the 280 pages. The third, fourth and fifth sections give a too-concise look at their subject matter, I felt the book could have given much more detail here. The last section is a waste of space; in this volume I don't really need to have a small amount of information about SOAP and XML-RPC.

This book is well-written; I believe its two fatal flaws are that Shiflett seems unsure of his own book and that the book itself tries to offer everything for a developer while explaining it all for the newcomer. I think that had Shiflett given up on the newcomer and given the developer greater depth (with a lot more examples) he would have delivered a much better book. For a developer, the volume is much too light on example code, the book is not really 'practical,' more 'informative.'

This might be a good volume for a library, either a corporate or school library. It provides the salient information in one spot in a concise and readable manner. I think that an individual might find it a less than totally useful book for the money -- you're likely to have already have a volume or two that covers most of the information, and with most languages in web development having libraries that take care of most of the low-level stuff for you, it becomes less and less necessary to really understand the bottom level. Personally, I'll keep it for the 80 page section on the HTTP definition so I have it all in one spot.

You can purchase HTTP Developer's Handbook from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

I barely understand the acronym...

[phamlen]

Understand the protocol? Heck, I've been doing web development for 10 years and I can't even remember what the acronym means....

What does that second T stand for?

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[Tennguin]

HyperTextTransferProtocol

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[DrEldarion]

Transfer.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[AbdullahHaydar]

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.... ...in other words you transfer hypertext files via this protocol...

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[The_ForeignEye]

Tedious

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[alta]

I think you don't understand what this book is about (or I don't.) Sounds to me like this book is for people who write webservers and the apps that tie into them. It's not for the site developer. In this case, you would be the end-user.

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[da3dAlus]

I'm assuming this is a joke, but I don't see where anyone caught the obvious. If you count Hyper and Text as 1 word (as several people seem to do), and you don't count them as a hyphenated word, then you get Hypertext Transfer Protocol...now what about that 2nd "T"? :)

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[phamlen]

At least someone got it! Perhaps it's not as funny as I originally thought.

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it meant

Hypertext Transport Protocol

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[Grant Root]

You missed the point of the book. It *is* intended for web site developers. The deeper you get into writing and debugging complex sites and web apps, the more you need to understand about how the browser interacts with the server. And that's the direction the author takes with this information.

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[xeo_at_thermopylae]

HyperTextTransferProtocol

While not the original interpretation, I prefer to think of the WWW as a giant state engine with all possible pages (including possible dynamically-generated content) as already created and available. Then as you navigate from one page to another, i.e., are transferred from page to page, you are changing from one state to another.

This way of envisioning the WWW is called Representational State Transfer(REST) and is documented by Roy Fielding, one of the WWW's architects, in his doctoral dissertation.

This is not the original interpretation, however, and in both HTTP 1.0 - RFC 1945 and HTTP /1.1 - RFC 2068 the term "transfer" is used in the original sense of transferring data.

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[NaDrew]

(Score:2, Funny)

Erm... I don't think that was supposed to be funny. The link really is to Fielding's thesis.

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[MaskedMarvel]

It ain't really an acronym, ya know, cuz it's not pronounced as a word.

Re:I barely understand the acronym...

[ajw1976]

You're unemployed, aren't you.

w3c

[stonebeat.org]

why would i wanna "buy" a book, that has info that is already available on http://www.w3c.org?
You can also join the W3c mailing lists to get in-depth info on any of the technology stacks.

Re:w3c

[Serapth]

I was thinking the exact same thing... what the hell would a book about HTTP teach you, that you cant already get for free at w3c?

That said... who really expected the book to be anything other then bad? Hell, its is SAMS we are talking about! Home of the Teach Yourself your an Idiot, in 24 Hours! series of books.

I long ago swore I would never again buy a book from SAMS press... and, unlike the time long ago when I swore I would never have another cigarette... Ive actually never bought another one of their crappy ass books! And I sleep better at night because of it.

So, in summary... if SAMS published it... it probrably sucks ass.
Cheers.

Re:w3c

[Xerithane]

Teach Yourself your an Idiot, in 24 Hours!

If that was intentional, that was pure genius.

Otherwise, "Oh, The Irony."

Re:w3c

[bmj]

why would i wanna "buy" a book, that has info that is already available on http://www.w3c.org?

Because (and get ready for this, it's a bit shocking) some people actually prefer reading a book to staring a computer screen (and not everyone has access to a printer to make hardcopies of the w3c specs).

GASP!

Re:w3c

[B3ryllium]

Even more ironic is the messed-up bold tag.

Re:w3c

[Frymaster]

what the hell would a book about HTTP teach you, that you cant already get for free at w3c?

do you work for the riaa or something?

people buy books (and cd's) even though they can be garnered free over the 'net because:

1. they are easy to read
2. they are more portable
3. they look good on yr shelf
4. they are immutable. a book doesn't 404 you suddenly

Re:w3c

[bfandreas]

Info on W3C may be extensive, but it's not very accessible. If you only have a good guess how things work, W3C specs won't be your thing. Wading through tons of BNF simply doesn't cut it if you need an "at a glance" hint how to cook your requests.

Re:w3c

[andy@petdance.com]

So, in summary... if SAMS published it... it probrably sucks ass.

Then take a look again. Their mod_perl Developer's Cookbook is great (on my list of Ten Great Non-O'Reilly Books), and I really enjoyed The Ruby Way. (Full disclosure: I've done tech editing work for SAMS.)

No publisher is consistently brilliant, nor consistently awful. It may be an indicator, but ignoring a publisher because of a product line you don't like is self-defeating.

Re:w3c

[Delirium Tremens]

If it is the last book he bought from SAMS, it was actually a pretty good one.

Re:w3c

[mwood]

"they are immutable. a book doesn't 404 you suddenly"

Nor do they mysteriously change, sometimes radically, every time the author has a new idea and hacks his text again.

And don't forget:

5. It's easy to lay out a book on my desk, alongside the six other books I'm referring to concurrently, and see them all at the same time. <hubris>If one book can tell you everything you need to know about your project, what you are doing is too small to be called a "project".</hubris>

Re:w3c

[4of12]

some people actually prefer reading a book to staring a computer screen

I couldn't agree with you more completely.

I've found the phosphors on my vt100 were getting painful to look at, so I just printed out all 4000 of the published RFCs on my dot matrix printer.

No need to spend money on those needless books when I can learn everything from the source.

I do have a question, though.

I've read up on this HTTP and have been using telnet on port 80 to answer all those GET commands that have been coming into my website.

The problem seems to be that the users are getting tired waiting for me to type in the results and are going away. I've even tried cutting and pasting the answers into my telnet window, but it's still taking a long time.

If you ask me, this whole HTTP and HTML thing is highly overrated.

Re:w3c

[DavittJPotter]

Do you work for the RIAA or something?

Uh, I must be missing the reference. Wouldn't the RIAA *want* you to pay for something that you can get for free? Backwards I think you have it, young padawan. :)

Also: In your whole post, you omitted two (2) characters. "they look good on yr shelf"

Why, why, why, why do people do this? I hate it with a passion. Yeah, I know it's a stupid cell phone/IM thing. Call the person. Or, if you're going to say it, please take the time to say it right. I'm actually geniunely curious about why you use the little abbreviations. I use as many TLA's as the next person, when they're actually acronyms for real words. Recursive acronyms just confuse people.

The use of these little slang bits makes me automatically (and it's a prejudice, I admit) of discounting the apparent intelligence of the poster.

Especially when you took the time to use a great word like 'immutable'!

Fuck, I've become my Senior English teacher. /em walks out back to scream in terror

Re:w3c

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that sounds like a huge market: internet protocol developers who can't get access to a printer.

Seriously. Although it's possible, the review does nothing to convince me that having the book would do me any good at all. (Yes, I've already read the RFCs.)

Re:w3c

[secolactico]

1. 
   5. No-one looks at you funny when they see you heading for the bathroom with a book.
   6. If you fall asleep in bed reading a book and it falls of the bed, you probably won't think about it twice.
   7. Many books on a shelf/desktop can make you look intellectual even if you never touch them. Keep one open and with a bookmark for added effect.
   

Re:w3c

[GoldenBear]

one reason to buy a book on something when the information is available (on w3c.org or elsewhere) would be that it's possible to present the same information in different formats. some formats may be easier to understand than others. sometimes different people even have different reactions to different writers. so while i'm sure the specs out on the w3c.org website are great. they may not be presented in the way that everyone can most easily learn from...

this is in addition to other reasons like...
lighter and more portable than a computer
doesn't need to be attached to a computer.
easier on some people's eyes.

Re:w3c

[Anonymous Coward]

The use of these little slang bits makes me automatically (and it's a prejudice, I admit) of discounting the apparent intelligence of the poster.

That's funny; the use of poor grammar makes me "automatically of discounting the apparent intelligence of the poster."

Re:w3c

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point is that the post imlied that people won't buy something if they can get a similar product for free online. This seems to be the RIAA's stance. Yes, the RIAA wants you to buy CDs, but they try to convince everyone that having music online makes the thought of actually buying CDs ridiculous.

Not surprising the author didn't know his niche...

[Ratface]

If you think about it there are very few people who actually *need* to get down and dirty with the HTTP protocol itself. OK - most of those who do are probably reading this and I'll be shouted down, but in reality there aren't that many people who'll be jumping up and down saying "Wow! All I ever wanted to know about HTTP!!".

HTTP knowledge required?

[nepheles]

I'm not convinced that web-developers need a knowledge of HTTP. Even sessions can be handled very transparently with newer web-dev languages/dialects like PHP and JSP. Sure, it is a benefit to have an understanding, but the average developer is better off putting his work into understanding Dreamweaver or Photoshop.

Web-development does not require a knowledge of HTTP, and this is the way it should be. You shouldn't need to understand ASCII, etc., to use a word-processor.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Hayzeus]

Ha! The average web developer is would be even better off with a basic grasp of graphic design principles.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

or UI design principles...

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

There it is, one of the huge misconceptions. Web developers write code (most of them anyway, some of us do both)... it's the web designers who would be better off with a basic grasp of graphic design. That's like telling an electrical engineer that he should take some sculpting classes.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[sdibb]

The problem with using Dreamweaver is you DON'T learn anything about HTTP. You learn Dreamweaver.

In my mind, it's safe to say that people who know how to use Dreamweaver, Frontpage or whatever, don't really *know* the languages the languages that programs use (PHP, JSP, etc). They can just wave their gui and get it done, but not know how it works.

And your analogy is flawed -- Of course you don't need to know ASCII to use a word processor, but we're talking about development, not usage. It's safe to say at the same time you don't need to know HTTP to browse the web.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[GigsVT]

Web-development does not require a knowledge of HTTP

Ever sent a file to a browser that is dynamically generated, and isn't an inline image or a html/txt page?

Or maybe you wanted to handle file uploads, while the languages have built in functions for handling them, those functions are usually pretty bad at handling anything special, or providing feedback to the user on the progress of the upload.

It helps to know HTTP. It's not one of those things you need to know, but without knowing it, you won't be able to do anything that the language developers didn't have planned for you.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[JimDabell]

I'm not convinced that web-developers need a knowledge of HTTP.

For hobby sites, no. For proper sites, definitely. Far too many people build a site without any understanding of how the browser talks to the server. Common mistakes include:

• Thinking web statistics are reliable.
• Wasting bandwidth by massive amounts
• Slowing down sites by not being able to take advantage of HTTP pipelining, more efficient caching, etc.
• Thinking the Referer and User-Agent headers are reliable.
• Trusting request variables.
• Serving different content to different clients without providing a Vary header (in other words, letting caches screw things up).

It's not a trivial topic that can be glossed over. You could literally waste gigabytes of bandwidth a month on a high profile site (or single slashdotting) if you don't pay attention to the interaction between server and client. While it's certainly possible to build a site without knowing the first thing about HTTP, it shouldn't be encouraged.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Khomar]

I respectfully disagree. Afterall, the argument could be made that an understanding of HTML really isn't that important; rather the web developer should spend their time getting to know Dreamweaver or Frontpage. There are several problems with ignoring the basics. For one thing, when you find yourself in a situation where either the tool is unavailable or the tool cannot accomplish the desired effect, you have no idea how to proceed since there is no understanding of the framework (ie. A Frontpage designer trying to fix their HTML). Also, as fewer people understand the basics, there is less innovation and more inefficiencies. For example, knowing how memory allocation and character string structures work helps make string generation faster in code. If you didn't know any better, you might concatenate a string one character at a time not realizing the incredible inefficiency you have just caused. Libraries and tools are great for making our jobs easier, but having a knowledge of the basic building blocks is essential to know how to use those tools wisely.

Lastly, by understanding the basic framework of things, it also allows you to develop and design new improvements or innovations on the older ideas to increase capability or efficiency. If we forget the building blocks, we severely limit our potential down the road by locking ourselves into the inadaquacies of the past.

Education is never a bad thing. Ignorance is.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[websensei]

I couldn't disagree more.
How about a fundamental understanding of cookies?
From the text:

Although cookies are most often described in conversation as if they are entities (for example, "a Web server sends you a cookie"), they are much easier to understand at a functional level if you consider them an extension of the HTTP protocol, which is actually more correct."

(Shiflett goes on to describe the Set-Cookie and Cookie headers.)

Relying on a given scripting language's manipulation of HTTP requests/responses without understanding what's actually going over the wire is a mistake.

By the same reasoning, it's also a mistake for a web developer to use WYSIWYG HTML editor like Dreamweaver, without understanding the markup that's being generated...

For your average web developer, reading this book (which should take just a couple sittings over one weekend) would be a worthwhile investment.

/$0.02

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[SquadBoy]

If you saw some of the sniffs from stuff built by devs who don't know HTTP and then hear them wonder why their stuff is slow you would change your mind. If devs had a basic understanding of HTTP then maybe just maybe they would build stuff that did not use insane amounts or bandwidth.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[floop]

I believe it should be required that you know HTTP to browse the web just like you should know how to change your own oil to be allowed to drive a car. You should also know how IP and DNS work. Unfortunately, the majority of people barely know how to read.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...let me offer an example of how I think at least basic knowledge of HTTP is beneficial for web developers to understand.

A while back, one of our developers was coding a page (jhtml...the atg version of jsp...ugly!) that needed to conditionally redirect the user after checking certain session parameters. He couldn't figure out why the redirect wasn't happening. When he asked me to take a look, I noticed that there was an extra newline character at the top of the jhtml file. If I hadn't understood HTTP, I wouldn't have realized that that newline character was forcing the response object to output the HTTP header which would make redirecting the user impossible.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, totally. And you should be required to know how to farm before you're allowed to eat.
Have fun starving, ass.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[el-spectre]

I'm quite proud to say that I don't know how to use dreamweaver, and I'm a web developer. I learned with notepad and pico, and I still code by hand (although now with Homesite).

I've been on interviews where I had to convince the interviewer that I was a competent developer, despite not knowing FP or dreamweaver.

Off the topic, can anyone recommend a good HTML editor for linux? Something like Homesite in terms of features (coloring, validation) would be nice.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[tedgyz]

I disagree. There are times when a web developer DOES need to get down and dirty with HTTP. I can think of two intances (off the top of my head) that I ran across:

1. IE's disasterous handling of mime types and Content-Disposition
2. Bug in IE client that was dropping packets. I had to view HTTP packets in ethereal to figure that one out

I found O'Reilly's HTTP: The Definitive Guide, 2002 invaluable for solving the first problem.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[ceije]

I'm not convinced that web-developers need a knowledge of HTTP.

For hobby sites, no. For proper sites, definitely. Far too many people build a site without any understanding of how the browser talks to the server.

I think that for a programmer or admin working on a web site of any size, it's good to have a basic understanding of HTTP. It's doubly important for those working on a large site. I work at a pretty heavily-trafficked web site and when we were looking for performance improvements, the first thing we did was look through Apache release notes. We found that an HTTP issue in the version of Apache we were running at the time caused graphics that were distributed across mutliple servers to be treated by web clients as different files, hence not cached.

By removing the inode portion of the entity tag (ETag) response in HTTP headers we were able to get a 40% reduction in files served because of client-side caching, which reduced the last byte page load times for most users, and allowed us to repurpose several web boxes to serve dynamic pages.

It was a really trivial fix that made a big difference to user experience.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur but I also think serious web-developers need a good knowledge of TCP/IP as well. Far too many do not have a clue about how features like congestion control/slow start will impact their designs.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Junks Jerzey]

For hobby sites, no. For proper sites, definitely. Far too many people build a site without any understanding of how the browser talks to the server.

But these kind of things are mostly dwarfed by making a site overly graphic-heavy. That's the number one problem. Make a site that's lean, and you're 90% of the way there.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[B3ryllium]

Uhm ... you're forgetting something, I think.

HTTP has nothing to do with HTML, really. Dreamweaver obscures HTML; it has absolutely nothing to do with HTTP.

HTTP is the protocol by which files are transfered over the world wide web, it can be anything from images to music to HTML files.

Knowing in-depth the protocol information, as this book seems to try to teach, one can use languages such as PHP to specify additional headers for various effects. Have you ever seen pages that seem to be dynamic (php or cgi), and yet they send an image file? What about the ones that are used for cgi-based site counter images? Or, for that matter, link-tracking of file downloads (I think PHPNuke does this) - All of these types of scripts require at least a rudimentary knowledge of HTTP protocol headers.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[introverted]

I'm not convinced that web-developers need a knowledge of HTTP.

My experience on that is mixed. If your site consists solely of nothing but static pages, then no, it's unlikely the intricacies of HTTP will ever come into play.

OTOH, if your site involves any sort of application with multiple trips between the server and the browser and you need to support multiple browsers, or you're running across a web farm (with or without load balancing), or your clients are using proxy servers,.... (Or any of a dozen other ORs I've overlooked).

If any of those conditions is true, then yes, sooner or later, you will need to deal with HTTP directly. Maybe something as simple as just viewing form data in a protocol sniffer, maybe something as complex as dealing with multiple vendors using slightly different interpretations of the protocol's minutae. Not every developer on the project will need to understand the protocol, but you'll be glad to have at least one person who does.

As they say, just my two cents worth.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[B3ryllium]

Was Mozilla invaluable in fixing the second one? :)

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

[HTML editors for Linux]
"bluefish" and "screem" seem pretty good although I primarily use vim.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[ReelOddeeo]

Web-development does not require a knowledge of HTTP, and this is the way it should be.

Just as modern application development, apparently, requires no knowledge of programming or computer science.

People who have a deep mental model of the layers below the layer they work in tend to be much better developers. Why is it that these prople are always the problem solvers that everyone else goes to in any shop?

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[xunil56]

emacs !!! easy to use and multiple things to do !!!

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[geoffspear]

Or you can just read the PHP manual entries dealing with gd and really know nothing about HTTP except how to copy the command to send the header.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[mi]

Off the topic, can anyone recommend a good HTML editor for linux? Something like Homesite in terms of features (coloring, validation) would be nice.

KDE's Quanta promises a lot... It comes with the modern KDE, or you can get the souped up Quanta Gold from theKompany.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DivideX0]

I've found the Live HTTP Headers plugin for Mozilla from http://www.mozdev.org/ to be great for anyone truely interested in HTTP communication. This should be in any serious web developer's toolbox.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DNS-and-BIND]

notepad? PICO???

HAHAHAHA

And he thinks he's a bad-ass hardcore HTML ninja...

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[el-spectre]

Actually, I am... not that it's an incredibly hard technology to learn. I rather doubt that _which_ text editor I used changes that, though.

[flamemebaby]
Incidently, what's wrong with PICO for a very basic text editor? I suppose I could use vi, but I refuse to, just like I no longer use copycon for DOS!
[/flamemebaby]

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[calethix]

my vote would be with vim :)

it color codes/auto-indents most everything for me whether it's html or php

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Art_XIV]

I'm inclined to mostly disagree. While its nice that many developers can code for the web w/o understanding the intracacies of HTTP and TCP/IP, a grounding in such knowledge can only help, and a lack of this knowledge can lead to one looking like a bozo and/or code-monkey.

I am reminded of a situation from a few years ago when I was interviewing for a corporation that wanted to put together an ASP/COM/MTS-based intranet site. The interviewer was/is the project manager for this project, and he very clearly knew his VB/ASP stuff (for what that's worth). He grilled me extensively w/technical questions, and I thought that I was answering very well.

He then announced that we would proceed to the 'logic test' portion of the interview, in which he wanted me to give him an overview of how I would go about building a multi-lingual corporate FAQ site. I started giving him a very canonical response, which he seemed very happy with right up to the point where he asked me what I would do to handle the internationalization aspects of this fictional site, and how I would let a user determine what language they wanted to view the site in.

I thought about it for moment, and responded with something like I don't think that I'd have them choose - at least not by default - I'd just check the HTTP_LANGUAGE in the header.

At this point, the dude looked at me like I was smoking crack or had shouted an obscenity at him. What?!

"Yeah, I'd just check the header and have it default according to the language!"

At this point, we began a very heated debate over whether or not there was such a thing as a header in an HTTP response. I couldn't believe that this guy didn't know about stinkin' HTTP headers, and I started to get angry that he was reacting as though I was just making this up!

I left the interview feeling very perplexed and disgusted over how this guy could do ASP w/o knowing jack about HTTP. Using the power of sour-grapes rationalizing techniques, I concluded that the programmers at this corporation were all a bunch of Microsoft dinks, anyway.

Needless to say, I didn't get the position. The recruiter who had set up the interview told me that the interviewer told him that I did great on the technical part, but that there was something wrong with my logic.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[mwood]

While I'm all for education, and knowing what your tools do, it is arguable that we don't really need a million monkeys writing web pages on the bare metal. Let them have Dreamweaver. As long as the few who can really make HTML/HTTP dance and sing can find the information they need, we'll still have useful innovations and a cadre of experts who can handle the tough questions.

See Asimov's story "Olympiad" for an interesting take on this notion. It's all economics, man.

(Yes, I am trying to make some of the "million monkeys" mad enough to learn something new. :-)

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[ruineraz]

I haven't used it much, but Bluefish is(was?) really close to being like homesite under linux.

http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[tedgyz]

Sorry - no. I don't remember all the details - it was a couple years ago. I do know that we were using PHP3 for the app and the client was IE5.0. It was the worst kind of problem - intermittent.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[jrumney]

The dreamweaver monkeys are web designers, not web developers. Sure, designers don't need to know much about HTTP, but developers who start messing about with response headers should. Sadly, far too many just copy and paste without trying to understand.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[el-spectre]

Thank you! I'm trying those both out right now.

The only reasons I'm still using winders on a regular basis now is the homesite/topstyle pro combo... if I can find substitutes, I'm golden.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Grant Root]

Well, I've been doing web development for a little while in PHP, and I'm starting to run into situations where my lack of knowledge of the protocol confuses me -- proxy and client-side cache issues, for example. This book is clearing things up, amd I feel it will be a big help in my development work.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DNS-and-BIND]

It wraps lines? It lacks features? Why not tell me what's RIGHT about pico instead? The telltale sign of a cluebie..."what's wrong with pico"? I bet you don't even use pine. What's copycon? I get "Bad command or file name" if I type that into my copy of DOS 5.0.

C'mon kiddo, it's past your bedtime. Put away the web-ninja costume and put on your spiderman pajamas.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[MikeFM]

The average web developer would be better off with a basic grasp of bandwidth issues. Maybe then we wouldn't have to wait 30 seconds or more to access such a large majority of pages.

I'd especially like to whack developers who put large Java or Flash intro pages.. especially those with no way to skip them. Okay like it's cool that you can write your company name in a fancy font and make it zoom around but really who gives a damn? If you want to make movies then make movies. If you want to make a website then make a damn website. Websites don't need neato special effects. :)

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[MikeFM]

Then when shit breaks (which always happens eventually) you have no idea what the hell is wrong or how to fix it. If you're employed to keep things running then at this point your in hot water and are probably telling your boss things like "It's the newest Outlook virus doing it." so that you don't get fired.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I'm just now killing some time before hunting down the reason (or MSWorkaound[TM]) for IE puking on my ContentDisposition headers. Just because PHP, et al. can make programming easier with a bunch of libraries there's nothing like having some decent insight into what's *really* going on when you're faced with a bug (or MSFeature[TM]).

Though, fwiw, i'm actually pretty handy with the design side of things, as well.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[el-spectre]

Uh huh. And being an ass to whomever disagrees with you is telltale of what? Those balls sure feel a lot bigger hiding behind a monitor, don't they? Let's grow up a tad.

No, I don't use pine anymore, unless I can't get my hands on a decent gui app. It's a fine program, but I've moved on.

And it was 'copy con' as I recall. as in 'copy to console', something even the vi guys would look at and go 'eww...'

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[symbolic]

it's the web designers who would be better off with a basic grasp of graphic design.

IMHO, it's web designers who would be better off with a basic grasp of USABILITY.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Let's grow up a tad? Which one of us called himself an "HTML ninja"?

I didn't see a refutation of any of my points...what's right about pico? oh, no, I'm on your 'enemies' list now as well...dreadful. You've done it to me now.

You know, of course, that pico is pine's message composition editor? By all rights it shouldn't be used outside of pine.

Copy con wasn't a text editor, any more than cat > file is a text editor. Look at your post, you said 'copycon'. Perhaps you were thinking of EDLIN.EXE and confused the two?

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[el-spectre]

You called me, I just confirmed that, yes, I am very good at it.

I don't need to justify anything, it's a simple program that does what I need. That's sufficient.

Yeah, you're on my foes list, so I can filter your stupidity out. If I'm so stupid and you're so great, why do you care?

I know what copycon was. It was useful as a last ditch tool, when all else (even edlin) was hosed from the system.

I don't understand this penchant people have for being nasty. Kinda stupid to badmouth a stranger, I think.

We're done here dude, step away from the PC and learn a social skill or something.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not "copycon". It's "copy con". It's not a tool at all, it's a system function. cat > file is not a tool. vi is a tool. Not knowing the difference between a tool and a system function is a clear indication of a fuckwit cluebie. "Copycon" as you put it, was useful for far more than a last-ditch "tool". I can see how you wouldn't realize this, though.

Being skilful at HTML is like being skilful at solitaire. It's a skill that anyone can master easily if they choose to waste time on it, and bragging about it is rather peculiar.

I'm not stupid. I'm more intelligent than you. I simply enjoy pointing it out from time to time, and I really don't care if you take offense or not. I especially enjoy putting fuckwit cluebies in their place. HTML ninja...my ass.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[oobar]

I see your "graphic design principles" and raise you "a grammar and style reference."

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[oobar]

But I think that was his point. If you're using Perl you should be using CGI.pm, if you're using PHP you just use $_FILES, $_GET, and $_PUT. All of these abstract away most of the nitty gritty. You don't need to know whether the response used Chunked transfer-encoding or whether the browser enabled keep-alives. With abstractions, you just know the $_FILES["foo"] represents the uploaded file and that $_POST["bar"] corresponds to the "bar" element in your form.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[eatdave13]

Good idea. It would be great if everyone, before becoming a bona-fide adult, had to survive a year on their own subsistence farming project. Impractical I know, but hey, it's not hard, it just takes a lot of work... one of the real requirements for being an adult.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[eatdave13]

Meh... don't forget about the 50K of javascript you'll find on a lot of sites so they can accomplish ridiculous little things like rollovers that change the text colors, mouse down events that replicate buttons (poorly) by changing the border color and shifting text down and to the right, font size changes, glow effects, and generating the page. Most of it can be done with CSS (as long as the browser supports it [WHY DON'T THEY?]) or PHP/Ruby/Perl/Whatever.

And then there's the ridiculous drop down menus... DROP DOWN MENUS ARE NOT FOR NAVIGATION! They should be used to perform special functions, and don't belong on web pages. Blech.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you 99%.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[GigsVT]

What I'm saying is that if you use those, you must bow to the assumptions of the lanugage writer.

It's like saying a programmer shouldn't need to know how a linked list works, or how a sort algorithm works, he should just use the interface provided to him and be happy, even if it doesn't suit his needs.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[oobar]

I agree with the fact that you will be better off knowing the standards, and that this will help you when designing solutions, etc. However, when it comes down to actually writing the code, all those abstractions are there to help you. Everyone SHOULD depend on them, because they are very likely to have COMPLETE support for every requirement of the standards and for special cases. If you sit down and write CGI programs "gonzo style" from scratch without using the abstractions provided you are very likely to at best write code that is buggy under odd circumstances and at worst contains gaping security holes.

You see this all the time, where someone that knows perl relatively well sites down to write a CGI program and rather than using the very robust and complete CGI.pm they decide "Aww, I know how HTTP works, I don't need any of that junk." So they write scripts that do everything with "print" statements (<cough> matt's-script-archive) and it turns out that these scripts are often broken under certain odd circumstances, or they have all sorts of security issues. If the person had just said "I don't know the nitty gritty of HTTP and I don't care, I'll let CGI.pm handle that" then they would have had a must lower chance of running into those issues.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[GigsVT]

I think were mostly in agreement. It comes down to: Don't reinvent the wheel, but it's good to know how to build a wheel if you need to. :)

In-depth books are few & far between?

[192939495969798999]

It seems that more and more books that are coming out are geared for the novice... or perhaps, we're all just getting that much better? It's important to ask yourself how good you really are. I have found that there are practically no good resources for programming information above a certain level, i'd say Junior Programmer, other than the Knuth books or perhaps a few others. Anyone else know of any advanced topic books that are really good?

Re:In-depth books are few & far between?

[dukerobillard]

All the W. Richard Stevens books. Those are the ones on my desk all the time.

Re:In-depth books are few & far between?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had pretty good luck with the big red wrox books.
(stay away from the ones with "beginning" printed on the spine)

Re:In-depth books are few & far between?

[ReelOddeeo]

Advanced topic books really are hard to find in a sea of "me too" books aimed at novices. One book I remember well was titled Garbage Collection. (Don't have it handy, and don't remember author.) It is a big, expensive hard cover. Very through treatment of the subject. Another excellent book I remember was Peter Norvig's book on AI and Lisp in about '91 or thereabouts (sorry, don't remember exact title).

I wonder how many people will see this book on HTTP and get excited thinking it is another book that will allow them to create web pages without having to understand anything technical?

Re:In-depth books are few & far between?

[MikeFM]

I hardly buy any computer books anymore. Most of the topics I need to know about aren't covered well in books yet when I need to know them. It's often difficult or impossible to find in-depth books much less up-to-date in-depth books about cutting-edge topics.

A couple times I've thought of writing an in depth book about a topic I'd finally fully explored.. to save others the trouble.. but then when I think about it who is likely to publich such a book? How many people would buy it? I could just post the text on my website but it'd be just as much effort and no return that way. Besides, I really need an editor to fix my use of the English language. So I just drop the idea as not being worth my time. I'd imagine that's why there aren't more in-depth books.

As always, "a good reference"

[goldspider]

Not to troll here, but why does every book review here conclude with the reviewer's assertion that the book they reviewed is a good reference?

After reading the mostly-negative review, how am I supposed to believe that it is in fact "a good volume"? The reviewer even says that most people would find it to be a waste of money!

What does it take for a reviewer to come out and declare "THIS BOOK ISN'T WORTH THE PAPER IT IS PRINTED ON"??

Re:As always, "a good reference"

[yamcha666]

What does it take for a reviewer to come out and declare "THIS BOOK ISN'T WORTH THE PAPER IT IS PRINTED ON"??

Ummm ... no check from the publisher?

Re:As always, "a good reference"

[fermion]

A less cynical answer would be that result driven people, which I assume are many if not most of the people who actually have money to buy books like this, are interested in knowing which books will help them achieve results. Therefore, the reviews that get published are of those books that might be helpful.

/. is, after all, not a literary site where we analyze literature to within an inch of it's life. Of course, we have those that think by knowing how to spell and conjugate verbs make them literate, but that not necessarily the case.

Re:As always, "a good reference"

[kfg]

"Of course, we have those that think by knowing how to spell and conjugate verbs make them literate, but that not necessarily the case."

Boy, you can that again. It so true.

But the meanest thing that he ever did Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."-J Cash

Shel Silverstein, actually.

KFG

Re:As always, "a good reference"

[mwood]

"Of course, we have those that think by knowing how to spell and conjugate verbs make them literate, but that not necessarily the case."

Try:

Of course, we have those who think that knowing how to spell, and to conjugate verbs, makes them literate, but that is not necessarily the case.

An understanding of usage, and of the principles underlying the construction of a proper sentence, are important too. :-}

Re:As always, "a good reference"

[wdr1]

What does it take for a reviewer to come out and declare "THIS BOOK ISN'T WORTH THE PAPER IT IS PRINTED ON"??

I thought that was why Slashdot was only offered online?

-Bill

Re:As always, "a good reference"

[donert]

Reviewers are reviewing books they actaully have bought and want to read. They have weeded out the high probability garbage, by the time they have made a purchase decision.

Things would be different if we saw reviews from /. readers of random samples of books. But that would likely be less useful.

The specifics of HTTP are not vital knowledge

[heironymouscoward]

Every developer should be forced to write a simple HTTP server just so that they understand the basic mechanisms of the protocol. But the full details go way, way beyond what I'd expect someone on my team to know (or spend time learning) unless they were writing a server, a HTTP client, or low-level HTTP interface functions.

An efficient developer is one who is protected from the details of the technical world, and who can spend his energy and time on the functional aspects of his problem.

That's my conclusion after 20 years of (mainly successful) software projects.

Re:The specifics of HTTP are not vital knowledge

[MikeFM]

You have had 20 years of successful software projects? I thought 'successful software project' was an oxymoron. If you keep making up these fairy tales we'll have to grow suspicious of you. ;)

Re:The specifics of HTTP are not vital knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

> Every developer should be forced to write a simple HTTP server just so...

Good, I want a steady paying job writing throw away tiny testapplications for each of the new technoligies which roll down the pipe.

At two or three new technologies/languages a year, I'll never ever have to work on a production system ever again.

Hey, that's what I did in Computer Science in college.

Re:The specifics of HTTP are not vital knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you work for Microsoft ?

Finally, no spoilers!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was prepared to have the reviewer reveal whether it was a get or a post in the first paragraph.

On another point, is six thumbs up the lowest ever in a Slashdot review?

My Book Report, by honestpuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellow Slashdotters, prepare to be dazzled! Well, as Timothy already mentioned, the name of the book that I read was HTTP Developer's Handbook. It's about these ... protocols. HTTPD ... with requests ... and ... responses ... and XML-RPC ... Did I mention this book was written by a guy named Chris Shiflett? And published by the good people at Developer's Library/SAMS. So, in conclusion, on the Slashdot scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, one being the lowest, and five being average, I give this book ... a six. Any questions? Nope? Then I'll just sit down.

Good Review

[Khomar]

Shiflett spends most of the introduction convincing the reader that this is a useful book and it seems that the start of most chapters is another few sentences telling me why the chapter is incredibly useful for me to read. I felt like yelling "I'm convinced, I'm convinced."

This may have been the first sign of trouble. I always hate it when salespeople or authors waste my time telling me what I already have grasped and understood. After a while, I start to question whether I really should be interested it in anymore if they are so concerned that I won't be.

I think I will try to check this out at the library for a quick refresher course, but it doesn't sound like one to add to my own library. It is good to see an honest review that doesn't immediately gush with adoration and praise while glossing over the flaws. While another poster questioned the frequency of reviews from honestpuck, the quality of this review leads me to ask him to keep up the good work.

Re:Good Review

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of amateur public speakers who talk for 10-15 minutes about a subject, but keep throwing in "I will be talking about... >" type phrases throughout. They don't seem to realize that the are ALREADY talking about the subject, NOT introducing it.

Re:Good Review

[honestpuck]

Thank you, Khomar.

One comment like this makes up for many posts implying I am paid to do this (I'm not) or receive a benefit from the B&N link at the bottom of the review (I don't - OSDN gets that money) or even employed by one of the publishers (I'm actually unemployed at the moment).

I hope you continue to read and appreciate my reviews. I enjoy writing them.

You'll be glad to know that I'm writing two more reviews at the moment and have another couple of books on the stack.

Tony Williams

*shudder*

[inkedmn]

shouldn't there be a time frame given for how long it will take you to learn? how the hell am i supposed to give my client an accurate lead time if i can't tell him (10 Minutes | 24 Hours | 21 Days)!?!?

what a crock... :)

Re:*shudder*

[ls-lta]

How about "I haven't actually done this before"?

it was worth the $

[websensei]

this was a great book as an overview, and as a quick reference for details on http headers.

it's eminently readable, and while I agree w the reviewer that it's light on examples, the writing is clear enough that in most cases, examples would be redundant.

very little filler and very readable, easy to read in 1 or 2 sittings and come away with a much better handle on the underpinnings and details of the request/response model. the web is not as well understood by page authors / web developers as it should be, and this is an excellent book to help remedy the situation.

I give it a solid 7/10 and am glad I read it.
it's within easy reach on my shelf....

Re:it was worth the $

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't actually read the book, did you?

This post just reeks of a slightly more creative version of the ever-popular "book review template" troll.

Mods bought it though, so good show!

Re:it was worth the $

[Anonymous Coward]

I shouldn't bother to reply to your troll, but:

(1) yes I did read it, about 2 months ago right after it came out. I found it useful, and figured I'd share my opinion w the /. crowd

(2) I did not get modded up, I just didn't block my karma +1 bonus.

(3) might want to use your time to contribute something positive, eh?

Re:it was worth the $

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot.

You DID get modded up, retard.

Re:it was worth the $

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, I am a redundantly retarded idiot.
have a nice day =)

like saying what?

[Anonymous Coward]

To say that understanding HTTP is crucial for web development might seem like saying water is wet

no, it's like saying "To be able to drink water you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine"

Re:like saying what?

[idontgno]

no, it's like saying "To be able to drink water you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine"

Sage words in this dangerous day. Imaging Drinking 101:

See these two hydrogens and one oxygen? Drink that.
See these two hydrogens and two oxygens? DON'T DRINK THAT!
Now, throw in some carbon:
Two carbons, six hydrogens, one oxygen: Drink that (carefully, preferably well hopped and poured slow).
One carbon, four hydrogens, one oxygen: Don't drink that (thin paint with it though).

Re:like saying what?

[cmburns69]

Not quite. Saying "To be able to drink water you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine" is like saying "To browse the internet you need a complete understanding of HTTP".

A closer analogy would be "To be able to mix Kool-ade, you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine"

Re:like saying what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. Saying "To be able to drink water you must first understand the various ways in which hydrogen and oxygen can combine" is like saying "To browse the internet you need a complete understanding of HTTP".

maybe so, but using HTTP in an analogy to describe an analogy already using HTTP is like saying water is wet.

Re:like saying what?

[arkane1234]

Web DEVELOPMENT, not Web Design...
Get the two straight.

Re:like saying what?

[Grant Root]

How about "If I'm going to drink a lot of this water, I might want to know a bit about where it comes from and what's in it."

Just write your own web server

[joshv]

Just write your own web server, in whatever language. You will become intimately familiar with the HTTP protocol. That is if you implement form processing, cookies, and multi-part encodings and such.

-josh

Re:Just write your own web server

[Anonymous Coward]

Cookies are nowt todo with servers, nobhead.

Re:Just write your own web server

[UserGoogol]

Nowt todo?

At any rate, the Cookie header exists. A server could have to deal with that. (Or you can ignore it and spend time on more important matters, like sending out lots and lots of X-Bender headers.)

Re:Just write your own web server

[bigdavex]

Just write your own web server, in whatever language. You will become intimately familiar with the HTTP protocol. That is if you implement form processing, cookies, and multi-part encodings and such.

And how would you approach that?

• Coding at random until all user agents worked with it.
• First, reading something about the protocols.

Re:Just write your own web server

[joshv]

And how would you approach that?
Coding at random until all user agents worked with it.
First, reading something about the protocols.

Read the book AND write a web server. The two in combination will result in a much deeper understanding of the protocol.

Myself I just rooted around in specs and RFCs from the early 90s - took a little longer, but it got the job done.

-josh

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[Ark42]

Same link minus the ccats-20 crap. Why bother to even post anonymously?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324547/

Far too many web developers....

[wowbagger]

Far too many web developers forget what the FIRST T stands for....

Is understanding syntax trees crucial...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in source code development.

understanding HTTP is crucial for web development

You can buy the book at Amazon!

[31415926535897]

I know an Amazon Associate who is willing to sell you that book, just be sure to add "inertishomepa-20" to the end of any url string to get the "special deal." I hear his current specials are on SAMS Teach Yourself books right now.

Re:You can buy the book at Amazon!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad you have such respectable connections. Of course, the book is available only through the associate and he also has to be willing to sell it that day. No way a poor mortal could have purchased this rare piece of parchment by simply typing in amazon.com. Keep up the good work, and to support it, I will be adding inertishomepa-20 to every Web site I visit, not just Amazon.

No it's not

[Ryouga3]

HTTP may be critical to the web, but it is not critical to web development. All you need to know is HTML and you can develop pages like the pros.

Re:No it's not

[twoslice]

All you need to know is HTML and you can develop pages like the pros.

Not neccesarily - the pages may look alright but to produce dynamic content and process user input you need to know a bit of programming.

Re:No it's not

[Jenolen]

Yeah... I mean, I've been making sites for years. Hell, I AM a pro at it. And I never bothered to learn the protocol. But I will say that you need to know a whole lot more than just HTML to make "pages like the pros". Open this one for example... I didn't know anything about the HTTP &$#%^#^%# -CARRIER TERMINATED-

Re:No it's not

[WebMasterJoe]

All you need to know is HTML and you can develop pages like the pros.

I really hope that was meant to be sarcastic. To be a good web developer, one should know HTML as well as XHTML, CSS, Javascript, some server-side programming, SQL, and be well-versed in browser compatibility, accessibility, interface guidelines, and information architecture. Photoshop or Fireworks is a plus too. And of course, it's always a strong point to know Apache fairly well.

A good working knowledge of HTTP is useful, too, but I agree that it's not necessary to know much about it. If you know GET, POST, and HEAD, you should be able to get by fine.

Re:honestly, i've had enough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, according to his personal Web site, this Tuesday, September 16th, he started with 'Learning Perl Objects References & Modules', and this Wednesday, September 17th, he already started Practical mod_perl.

inertia?

[Anonymous Coward]

i have a feeling this amazon dummy is inertia@yahoo.com some observation will help confirm the facts.

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much he actually makes doing that. I bet it's a significant amount.

HTML may be playing a bigger role ..

[igorko]

Sure, some developers won't grasp HTTP is a stateless protocol. Others remain ignorant of the fact it's trivial to spoof and continue to rely on the the refferer as means of session tracking. But that's not where the big problems are. They lie in misuse of HTML.

1. most people use it to "design pages", not represent data. H1, H2 .. tags are miserably neglected (in favour of, say, FONT). Flash, on the other hand, is used where it shouldn't be.

2. small fonts (guess what: verdana is NOT cool), sans-serif for main text, low-contrast hard-to-read colors, and so on.

3. propriatery HTML (say IE 6.0+ only), fixed-resolution design

and many other bugs of the sort. Reading W3C's HTML 4.01 & CSS2 specifications and some usability guides (www.useit.com) should be more insightful than following up on HTTP headers. What works for me is knowing it's stateless, what this means, cookies and url rewriting, and SSL/TSL. The only time I used cleancut HTTP was when testing certain servers via telnet 80.

Verisign and networksolutions are an additional problem, but that's another story altogether.

For a webdesigner, the protocol details are of little use. There are more important things to study.
-i

Re:HTML may be playing a bigger role ..

[ukpyr]

This book is for a different type of person that one who is overly concerned with HTML and usability issues. Web developers are people who do the server side stuff, and if they are good, let people with taste and skills that you mention handle the presentation layer.
Even people who do mixed logic/presentation development with technologies like JSP, ASP and Cold Fusion are less an audience for this book than people who develop using serious backend technologies like SOAP, web services, building in features to flexible servers like apache using mod_perl and similar technologies.
Don't mix web designers with web developers they are very different types of people (or should be).

Re:HTML may be playing a bigger role ..

[Phil John]

2. small fonts (guess what: verdana is NOT cool), sans-serif for main text, low-contrast hard-to-read colors, and so on.

Hate to bust your balls here and I know it's a little offtopic, but heh, Verdana is actually a damn good font, designed by a top notch font guru and specifically hinted so that it will look good even on very low resolution devices (i.e. a computer monitor) without requiring anti-aliasing or the like.

Plus, I much prefer to read sans-serif than serif text, I find it cleaner and a lot easier on the eye. But, like most things to do with aesthetics, it's all horses for courses, some people like one thing, some people like another - that's just the way it is.

Re:HTML may be playing a bigger role ..

[KoolyM]

There's a simple designers rule that goes: for paper, use sans-serif for titles, serif for main text, for the web it's the other way around. If you do some basic experimenting, you'll find this is true. Verdana is a pretty good font, btw, because, like serif fonts, it helps guide your eyes along the text (it's very wide), yet it avoids the problems associated with reading serif fonts off a screen (clutter).

Re:HTML may be playing a bigger role ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I was using Lucida Console, size 5, for IRC chatting. Verdana is MUCH better. Thanks for the info.

Slashdot won't let them.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they did then no one would click the Barnes and Noble link with the Slashdot referral code in it.

Online docs

[Anonymous Coward]

why would you buy a book on HTTP?????

Re:Online docs

[Jenolen]

In Soviet Russia, HTTP manipulates YOU!

Timewarp....

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTP Developer's Handbook

Huh? I thought the HTTP protocol was already developed.

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[Anonymous Coward]

I reported ccats-20 to Amazon spam police, saying his link overwhelmed the message boards. So the money amount he made is probably declining heavily right now towards $0.00.

Troll alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you whoever modified this cretin down between my reading his post and this reply. To the original poster: to learn French, write a novel in that language. You will become intimately familiar with the French language. That is if you use vocubalary, grammar, and idiom and such.

RFCs?

[Codijack]

Tony says that the only useful part is the 80 pages HTTP definition? Why not just download the relevant RFCs -- everything you need is in there! (And you can grep through the text...)

regards.

REST?

[Chris Croome]

Not just using POST for changing state server side and GET for other stuff is a mistake that is often made...

The REST stuff is good on this...

Also the W3C document on URIs, Addressability, and the use of HTTP GET and POST, a document being debated on the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) list is debating at the moment [ thread 1 | thread 2 ] also well worth reading...

I wonder if REST is covered in this book?

Honest Criticism

[shiflett]

I appreciate the honest feedback, and I'd like to address a few concerns/criticisms/whatever that I have seen mentioned.

Convincing the reader of the importance of HTTP - The first few pages do focus a lot on explaining why HTTP is important to a Web developer. Just look at all of the comments that mention how knowing HTTP is useless, and you can hopefully see why I think this is important. I see questions on various mailing lists all the time that reflect a general lack of knowledge in this area; developers don't really understand cookies, when SSL is needed (or what it does), how to secure their sessions (or applications in general), how to keep up with data from one page to the next, and all sorts of things.

The book caters to beginners - I want the book to cater to both the beginner and the experienced developer. HTTP isn't rocket science, and it can provide a great foundation for Web developers to build from. For those who are already experienced, the book can provide a good reference to the protocol (if you're experienced, you should also know that RFC 2616 isn't a substitute for this) and can help people gain a deeper understanding of things they already know a little about. I don't think a book has to confuse the reader to be considered advanced, and I wasn't writing to impress anyone. My approach was to try and help as many people as I could.

Learn Dreamweaver, not HTTP - Well, people with this opinion might be a lost cause, but what happens when your next place of employment thinks FrontPage is the only way to write Web applications? In general, I think it is better to teach people fundamental things and let them apply those things in any way that they want.

I also have a companion Web site for the book at http://shiflett.org/books/http-developers-handbook .

Re:Honest Criticism

[ukpyr]

It seems to me, most of the confusion comes from people who use the term "web developer" to mean someone who uses HTML to make static web pages.

Maybe it's regional or something but to me and people I know, "web developers" are programmers who use server-side technologies like mod_[perl/php/whatever], ASP, JSP etc etc etc who would actually care about what is happening in the HTTP request process because they (can) directly influence it.

I call people who use things like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or notepad to write HTML docuements "web designers". These same people also use graphic design software to make graphics for websites with photoshop, illustrator, or whatever.

two very different skillsets, two very different types of training/knowledge

Re:Honest Criticism

[pooh666]

When taken as Developer = programmer, then HTTP is REQUIRED. If a guy doesn't know that a cookie is a header, then he sure as hell should not get a job as a "Web Developer"

Eric

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[jbottero]

So, basically, you lied?

Re:SPOILER!!!

[Linker3000]

And is fine after a reboot

funny

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny....this guy is complaining about a slashvertisement amazon link and he's linking to his software company in his slashvertisement sig

Re:funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn sigs off.

Re:funny

[The Clockwork Troll]

Launch every "sig"

Http security, ids evasion, and HTTP rfc's

[Anonymous Coward]

www.cgisecurity.com/rfc>

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but for a noble cause.

The Difference

[phlyingpenguin]

You just discovered the difference between making pages like the pros, and being a pro.

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[madprof]

As I see it, it is a handy reference. Not telling anyone anything new or exciting, or even giving information that can't be printed out from the Web. But it's a handy condensing of things that an HTTP-interfacing developer might need to know.
I think you're right that few people will need to know all of it.

There is a reason for the reviewer to feel awkward

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called editing. Some publishing houses have them, others don't. And those which have them may call them "Development Editors" or whatever the name they affix to them. Unfortunately, many don't have people qualfied to adequately provide technical feedback to an author. They have technical editors who can tell the editor whether the material is technically correct or not, but by the time the TE has seen the material, the development of the book is poured in concrete.

The hope is these people can guide the authors to provide a book of reasonable quality, starting with beginning: Who is This Book For? the outline, etc. etc. As you can tell from reading online, 98% of the people who write, even informally, cannot do so to save their life. That percentage doesn't drop much [even] when they use a spell-checker. You can claim this is not a big deal but would you buy a book written as sloppy and flawed as the material you see here?

The publishers don't help much. They want to see books day-and-date with the software, technology, etc. i.e., ASAP, and if it's with a new release of software, the book should be available on the shelf the same day the software is available. With all of the pressure, it's tough.

Avoiding the stuff for newbies

[mwood]

"...had Shiflett given up on the newcomer and given the developer greater depth...."

Talk to the editors. They seem to think everything should be For Dummies nowadays. "Lauguage X for People who Already Know How to Program" books are rare gems indeed.

OTOH I think that a lot of those fat books on the store shelves spend *too much* space on sample code. Many of them seen to be primarily code libraries on an eccentric distribution medium, and I often find myself wondering why they didn't just publish the code as files on a CDROM with the little threads of text tucked into the top of each directory. I do understand that it's hard to lead the reader through a program of useful size in book format, but it still bothers me.

Re:Avoiding the stuff for newbies

[Dysan2k]

Addison-Wesley produce a number of excellent beyond-beginner books such as Large Scale C++ programming, Effective C (and one for C++), Effective STL, etc. which have all been both good reads for information AND reference. (I mean, if a book doesn't make a good reference, is it really a good book?) Also, look at O'Reilly's Perl Cookbook series.

Granted, I would REALLY love to see more advanced books out there, but you tend to get to a point where you're looking for a book on an entire subject in a particular language (ie. Database design in C or Driver Design for Linux) in which case, some exist and some don't. Depends on how "cutting-edge" you are or how original your ideas might be. At that point, I highly suggest the web since that's kinda what it was for initially.

HTTP Pocket Reference

[EkiM in De]

I found the HTTP Pocket Reference to be an incredibly useful book in those times when you just have to know what that status code or header means. There is enough explanation in this book that it can be used as a guide to HTTP.

the book is not really 'practical,'. . .

[kfg]

. . .more 'informative.'

And so we descend, bit by pleasant little bit, into hell, where "information" isn't "practical," where knowledge of reality isn't "necessary" and where, it turns out, the enviroment is a cube farm populated by clueless code monkeys happy to be there.

Sorry for wading into this thread after yelling "Flame On!", but reading most of the responses is just plain depressing.

The older I get the more I understand why Fabian Pascal tends to come across as a bit bitchy. He's earned the right.

Helloooooo, are there any geeks left in the house?

My mom has a degree in fine arts. Not a very geeky field, right? She took chemistry for years so she could understand her materials, particularly glazes. Is this necessary to throw a pot? No. Is it necessary to be a good ceramicist? Yes.

A real artist always knows her materials, right down to the last atom.

Otherwise you're just a semiskilled mechanic working on an assembly line.

Of course, it that was your goal when you set out . . .

KFG

KFG

Re:the book is not really 'practical,'. . .

[jc42]

A real artist always knows her materials, right down to the last atom.

Indeed. It's sometimes surprising how often lower-level details that you "shouldn't have to be aware of" stand up and bite you if you don't understand them.

Right now, I'm looking at a bizarre bug that has been plagueing me for a year or so, in which little chunks 3 or 4 extra bytes appear scattered through out downloaded web pages. I finally tracked it down to the HTTP level. How many web developers could tell you what "chunked" data is? I know now, even though I really "shouldn't have to be aware of" that, because the magic HTTP modules should all hide it from me.

Right. I'll submit bug reports eventually, when I have a bit more evidence. And then it'll take a while to get the library modules patched, and a lot longer before I can rely on them being installed at all customer sites.

So for the near future (a couple years), I'll have to have my code intercept the low-level HTTP stuff, read the headers, and figure out when chunked data is coming in. And I have the fun of handling whatever mishandled decoding of this has been passed up to my code.

What I think I may do is just dispense with the library HTTP modules, and do the low-level TCP connection and HTTP protocol myself. How hard can it be? ;-)

(Actually, I know how hard it can be. This won't be the first time I've dropped HTTP modules and written my own routines to do what the library didn't do correctly. And I've saved that code ...)

Here's one good reason...

[cliveholloway]

Please don't confuse "designer" with "developer".

I'm engrossed in HTTP at the moment writing a proxy server with HTTP::Proxy in Perl that appends authentication headers to requests from specific IPs that have specific cookies set so that I can log into all sites I visit that use basic authentication without having to remember my damn logins and passwords all the time.

Next step will be to combine with WWW::Mechanize module (probably) to automate logins to other sites that use standard forms for login.

Understanding HTTP is crucial if you're trying to do shit like that.

.02

cLive ;-)

Gives new definition to the term 'hack'

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine 'cooked' dinner by mixing two different types of cereal and adding milk.

If you want to do a good job, you need to understand what is going on. Sure, you can 'hack' a page w/ frontpage, but setting the dimension of a 800x600 pixel image to 80x60 may work for a single page, but its still a 'hack'.

Other industries have standards to comply with to make sure things work as they should. Building codes ensure that the building isn't going to collapse on its occupants.

Do you need to understand how the technology works in order to do the job, well, maybe not, but you do if you want to do a good job.

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone wanted to call this guy and tell him spammers suck, here are his details.

(How I found this out:

search google for ccats.

Comes up with http://ccats.com/

View source of page - magic phrase amazon.com ccats-20! Voila here's our spammer.

(That whole page is a mess of nasty spammy links and affiliates).

Here's the spammers' details

Registrant Contact:
CCATS
Abdullah Haydar (abdullah@abdullah.net)
5867644119
FAX: 5094635868
42252 Barchester Rd
Canton, MI 48187
US

Administrative Contact:
CCATS
Abdullah Haydar (abdullah@abdullah.net)
5867644119
FAX: 5094635868
42252 Barchester Rd
Canton, MI 48187
US

Billing Contact:
CCATS
Abdullah Haydar (abdullah@abdullah.net)
5867644119
FAX: 5094635868
42252 Barchester Rd
Canton, MI 48187
US

Technical Contact:
CCATS
Abdullah Haydar (abdullah@abdullah.net)
5867644119
FAX: 5094635868
42252 Barchester Rd
Canton, MI 48187
US

Support the Author

[shiflett]

You can use this one to support the author (me):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324547/ ref%3Dnosim/chrisshiflett-20

Or, here is the plain link (it's not cheaper; you just give Amazon more money):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324547/

You can buy the book OR

[$exyNerdie]

This book could be a good help. HTTP Developer's Handbook from SAMS gives you a great deal of information about the protocol

You can buy the book

OR

You can read the documentation of RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 and save some money.

You can also read: HTTP/1.1 Specifications

Easy to understand and best of all FREE!!

Re:You can buy the book OR

[Wesley Felter]

Sorry, those documents are NOT easy to understand. They're a great reference if you're writing a Web server or proxy, but they're really not aimed at Web app developers.

Oh boy...

[FatSean]

You must be the guy who designed the new tvguide.com site then!

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot, I'm not a spammer. I simply check that Amazon has a better deal and let people know by posting a referral link, which is identified as a referral link. I've never sent any spam (which is email) and I wouldn't call a referral link once in a while "flooding message boards." The links on the ccats pages are for my friends to click when they are buying from certain merchants where I give them a kickback from the commission, i.e. an additional discount on money they would spending anyway. Unless you visit my page, you'd never see the ads.

W3.org has PDF

[pigwin32]

The RFC 2616 - IETF Draft Standard (June 1999) is available in a number of formats at W3C, including pdf.

It's a useful reference and I keep a copy on my desk. If you think you're a web developer and you aren't familiar with http you're sadly deluded.

Dave

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[jrumney]

The people who really need to know already have what they need in the RFCs. But there are a surprising number of web developers who don't know the first thing about the protocol. Like you, they think they don't need to know the details, and end up making big mistakes as a result. A book like this deserves a place on every web developer's bookshelf.

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[Grant Root]

Actually, everyone who designs and debugs moderately complex web sites / apps needs to know more about the protocol than you get in a "how to build a web site" type book. Sure, you can dig stuff out of the RFCs, but that's hardly a pleasant way to learn. (Great for reference, though.) I'm reading this book right now, and finding lots of good stuff in it that I can use for web development.

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[MikeFM]

Worse, most web developers arn't geeky enough to know what an RFC is or how to look one up. A lot of them don't know anything about http at all other than it's the four letters at the start of most URLs. That's fine. The great thing about the web is that it's easy enough that you can be a developer without knowing how things work. You'll be a better developer though if you do know how it works. Knowing http is especially useful if you do any actual programming. If you want to know how to do some of the fancier tricks of web development you'll need to learn at least the basics of http.

Does it say how to close connections?

[shanen]

Posing this as a sample question, but it's something I've been looking into recently, and the HTTP protocol documents themselves have not been very enlightening so far. The docs say that either side can close the HTTP connection, and some references seem to say that the client has primary responsibility to do so. However, I've discovered that many servers like opening "sticky" 9000 second connections, apparently so they can stuff more advertising at you at their convenience. (Amazon and Yahoo seem to be especially big abusers.) My router usually has about 5-600 open connections because of this, which is part of a longer story...

Re:Does it say how to close connections?

[RonBurk]

I used to be all up in that there particular topic. Lessee, if I can remember even the gist nowadays.

• The real must-read is the Apache document about why they do lingering closes the way they do (continue reading until no more input from client, and only then shut connection). You need to understand that for sure.
• Under some (fairly popular) conditions, the server closing the connection will be the only way the client knows there ain't more data coming (because the server elected to not include a Content-Length header).
• The sticky second connections you refer to are likely persistent connections, a hack on top of HTTP 1.0, and an integral part of HTTP 1.1. If you control the web servers using your router, you might be able to ask them to limit the amount of time they will tolerate such connections being open (the server is free to close them).
• Although Amazon and Yahoo may abuse many things, the server, of course does not get to open a connection to your clients, "sticky" or otherwise. If the server page has a lot of graphic crud linked off it, the client browser is perhaps more likely to sit there with a persistent connection to pipeline requests for all of them. Don't recall seeing any IE setting that lets you control how much it abuses persistent connections.

Time time time

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this book translate into making yourself more marketable for your next job or even more valuable for your current job?

With the last churn in technology in the last 7 years due to the internet, does learning another transient standard really matter?

exactly 80 pages?

[LuxFX]

Hmmm, a section defining HTTP: 80 pages

Pure coincidence? I think not.
.

Re:$12 CHEAPER and FREE SHIPPING!

[isorox]

Hi Abfullah, I mostly agree with you (although it is possible to spam message boards and newsgroups, happens a lot), however people on slashdot prefer amazon to get the referal money instead of joe bloggs, which is a bit strange IMHO.

Of course, buy not buying through the link in the story, you dont support slashdot.

Re:honestly, i've had enough!

[honestpuck]

I'd take those dates with a large grain of salt.

While testing some software I'm working on I killed the dates on a few posts on my weblog.

'Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules' I actually started a few months ago - my review's been on /. since early August. I'm not sure what the date on the 'Practical mod_perl' post should be but I know I've had it for a while. (Good book BTW - writing the review at the moment).

Tony Williams

HTTP is crucial for web development???

[Mind Socket]

Hogwash.

That's like saying a technical understanding of the telecommunications network is crucial for making a phone call.

Re:HTTP is crucial for web development???

[Bombcar]

Ah, but a technical understanding of telecom equipment would be nice if you're building a phone.

Web development is more akin to building a phone than to a phone call, which is more like a simple HTTP GET request.

Re:HTTP is crucial for web development???

[Mind Socket]

Well, I guess now we come down to semantics and your definition of web development, which _can_ cover specifics of HTTP, but it isn't crucial.

I'll rephrase my analogy a little, it's more akin to plugging a phone in. Only some people build their own.

buy.com $26.59

[RonBurk]

Once again, bn.com has about the worst price on the web ($39.99). buy.com has it for $26.59:

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[critter_hunter]

Really? Please explain. What do I need to know, besides Content-type, Location and cookies, which are the only headers a web developper is ever likely to have to work with - and, as the review mentions, most languages used for web development already have librairies to handle anyway.

Perhaps the part about HTTPS could be of some interest - I'm quite curious about the whole certificate thing - but the review didn't say anything about it.

Coming to think of it, the review is a complete piece of crap and doesn't say anything of interest about either the protocol or the book. So, could you please enlighten me on the use of knowing HTTP, since the reviewer forgot to do so?

Off topic question: can you elaborate?

[eugene ts wong]

...knowing how memory allocation and character string structures work helps make string generation faster in code. If you didn't know any better, you might concatenate a string one character at a time not realizing the incredible inefficiency you have just caused.

Hi.

I understand what you were saying in the main point of your comment, & I agree with you. This blockquote caught my attention, however. Would you explain to me [a layman] why it is so inefficient, please? I've some basic-intermediate programming skills in C.

Re:Off topic question: can you elaborate?

[Khomar]

Maybe that wasn't the best example, but the basic idea was in regard to dynamic memory allocation. If you are building a dynamic string one character at a time (or a dynamic array one record at a time), for each addition a new memory chunk needs to be allocated that is large enough to hold the original string plus the new character(expensive), the contents copied, the new data appended, and the old memory released. If, however, you either preallocate the memory to a larger value (say 50 characters) or you append the characters in larger groups (10 characters at a time), you will reduce the number of new memory allocations and therefore improve performance dramatically.

I hope this make sense.

Re:Off topic question: can you elaborate?

[eugene ts wong]

[snip: good explanation for allocating memory]

I hope this make sense.

Actually, yes, it does. I appreciate your explanation. I understand you to be saying that the amount of memory involved won't slow the computer down & that it's the actual work [in this case, allocating & copying, etc.], that slows it down.

I'll certainly try to use these principles, if I do any C [or other low level] programming.

I must ask, though, is there ever a situation where we would really need to do it the slow way? I honestly can't think of any off-hand. I figure that even with an XT, where you'll only have 640KB @ the most, & barely any swap, you still wouldn't want to slow the computer down.

Re:Off topic question: can you elaborate?

[Khomar]

Yes, the most expensive part of the operation is the allocating of new memory. There are times when you do need to build a string one segment at a time. For example, if you are building a query string:

SELECT name, address, city, state, zip FROM employees WHERE sys_user_id = 25 AND hire_date > '01/01/03'

You might very well have all of the columns in an array, so you would build the query string by adding each element to the array one at a time. You could also build the WHERE clause in a similar fashion. The way to get around the memory allocation is to declare the query string variable to hopefully be large enough to handle most queries (say 256 characters) and then adjust it on the off chance of going over that limit. Of course, in a low memory situation, you would have to be a lot more careful, but most programmers do not find themselves in that situation these days. If limited memory is an issue, then memory allocation size becomes more important than execution speed. Programming is the art of tradeoffs.

This can also have a huge impact on dynamic arrays of data. If your array has to reallocate for every new record, it can be very slow. The best dynamic array libraries offer you some control over how large the initial database is and how much it will grow by when the database is too small. If you consider adding 1000 records to a array that grows by 100 records (100 records, then resized to 200, then 300, etc) compared to a array that grows 1 record at a time, it will take 10 allocations in the first array while the second array will require 1000 allocations! It is that understanding of the basics that allows you to avoid these costly mistakes.

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[MikeFM]

Just because your language has an easy way to do things doesn't mean it's not helpful to know how it does them. Otherwise, if something breaks you'll have no idea what's wrong.

One reason is that sometimes it's a lot easier or more effecient to write your own little webserver to fill some niche than it is to write a module or CGI for an existing webserver. That can be especially useful if you have something that is going to be taking a lot of hits but is very simple in nature. Cut out all the overhead of something like Apache and you can let the machine breath a lot easier.

Or if you understand how http handles caching you can often much improve the caching of your website. Especially with dynamic content this is important because usually such content doesn't cache well at all. Good caching will please both your clients (who get a more responsive site) and your boss (who gets lower bandwidth charges).

There are lots of things you can do if you know how. Maybe the book that was reviewed mentions some.. no idea since I didn't read it. :)

Re:Not surprising the author didn't know his niche

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find out about SSL without buying the book. That is one of the free chapters:

http://shiflett.org/books/http-developers-handbook /chapters/18

That's cool info. Thanks again! [!TextBelow]

[eugene ts wong]

m