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HTTP Developer's Handbook
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.
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.
Do you work for the RIAA or something?
:)
/em walks out back to scream in terror
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.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."