Review "Just get this book... [it] will work like a miracle for you." - Abdul Khan --Amazon Canada "Excellent! Easy to read, straightforward guide. Already learned several very useful things." - Holly --Good Reads "Finally a comprehensive resource for HTML users who want to move to the next level, and implement data-driven access to their websites." - Michael L. Kleper --The Kleper Report "After the first chapter of introducing terms; I knew that I had to purchase this book." - Graysen --Greysen Oh's Blog "This is a superb start for learning the ins and outs of PHP, MySQL and JavaScript." - Jonny IT Guy --Amazon UK From the Author Having developed for the Internet since the mid 1990s I have used a number of programming languages, beginning with Perl, which was the first tool I mastered. However I soon found that great though Perl was for developing with, at the time it didn't have the power I needed for ultra busy websites, and so the load averages of the servers I used was going through the roof. So I rewrote all the processor-intensive code in C and was able to substantially slow down our server acquisition rate. But while C is powerful, it takes a lot of coding to replicate even basic Perl functions. So when PHP came along I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that even though it is interpreted (that is, re-compiled each time it is run), it placed far less of a strain on the servers than Perl, and also took up far less development time. Since then I have used PHP in combination with MySQL for all my server side development. And with JavaScript gaining the XMLHttpRequest object, and hence the beginnings of Ajax, the three technologies are now my mainstays for web development. So when O'Reilly asked me to write this book I jumped at the opportunity. In it I have tried to take you from first steps, without assuming any prior knowledge other than basic HTML and maybe some CSS, through each of the technologies in turn, and along the way point out the shortcuts and pitfalls I have discovered, to give you the headstart I didn't have. I maintain an active discussion forum on the book's topics, which is linked to via the companion website at lpmj.net, and am always happy to answer any questions you may have.