Think of this book as a reference book. Like the dictionary or an encyclopedia (remember those?), you don’t have to read it from beginning to end. Instead, you can dip into the book to find the information you need and return to it again when you need more. That said, you won’t be disappointed if you work through the book from beginning to end, and you may find it easier to follow along with some of the examples.
In this book, I walk you through all the different technologies involved with creating dynamic web applications that can track data and present it in an orderly and pleasing manner. I cover several key topics that you’ll need to know to create a full-featured, dynamic web application:
Throughout this book you see sidebars (text in gray boxes) and material marked with the Technical Stuff icon. All of these things are skippable. If you have time and are interested, by all means read them, but if you don’t or aren’t, don’t.
Finally, within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
