Copyright 2003 glasshaus

Published by glasshaus Ltd,
Arden House,
1102 Warwick Road,
Acocks Green,
Birmingham,
B27 6BH, UK

Printed in the United States

Trademark Acknowledgments

glasshaus has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, glasshaus cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Credits

Authors
John Colby
Gareth Downes-Powell
Jeffrey Haas
Darren James Harkness
Frank Pappas
Mike Parsons
Francis Storr
Inigo Surguy
Ruud Voigt

Technical Reviewers
Jon Stephens
David Schultz
Mark Horner
Martin Honnen
Rick Stones
Drew McLellan
Tim Luoma
Jody Kerr
Shefali Kulkarni
Mid Jamie

Proof Reader
Agnes Wiggers

Commissioning Editor
Amanda Kay

Technical Editors
Matt Machell
Alessandro Ansa

Publisher
Viv Emery

Communications Manager
Bruce Lawson

Project Managers
Sophie Edwards
Helen Cuthill

Graphic Editors
Rachel Taylor
Pippa Wonson

Cover
Dawn Chellingworth

Indexer
Adrian Axinte

About the Authors

John Colby

John Colby is a lecturer in computing at the University of Central England in Birmingham. Prior to this he was in the computer industry for twenty years in consultancy and engineering roles, and prior to that ten years in heavy engineering, anything from battleships to coal mines, taking in heavy haulage and machine tools on the way.

John has been building web sites since HTML 2.0 days and has had to come to grips with a variety of technologies on the way, becoming involved with an international company's intranet, the constructions, the politics, the ideals, and making the whole thing work on a variety of hardware and software platforms. Over a number of years this involved convincing users that web technology was correct for the tasks in hand, building and maintaining web servers, and integrating documentation functions into a web-based format. Along with this there were the almost inevitable expansions, share price crashes, takeovers, upsizing, downsizing, and reorganizations to cope with.

A fan of open source technologies and methods , he managed to save the company a lot of money in license fees in translating from proprietary programs to open source technologies. In particular the knowledge base changed and alternative systems were implemented so that knowledge was retained within the company rather than being forgotten when someone departed.

Currently John is preparing and teaching courses on Internet technologies and networking, and has a special interest in web standards-compliance in aiding the uptake of adaptive technologies, displaying web-based information using a variety of devices and bringing into use good practice so that web access is enabled for everyone.

Gareth Downes-Powell

Gareth Downes-Powell has been working in the computer industry for the last twelve years, primarily building and repairing PCs, and writing custom databases. He branched out onto the Internet five years ago, and started creating web sites and custom web applications. This is now his main area of expertise, and he uses a variety of languages including ASP and PHP, with SQL Server or MySQL back-end databases.

A partner in Buzz inet, http://www.buzzinet.co.uk/ , an Internet company specializing in web design and hosting, he uses a wide range of Macromedia products, from Dreamweaver MX through to Flash and Director, for custom multimedia applications. Gareth maintains http://ultradev.buzzinet.co.uk/ as a way of providing support for the whole Macromedia UltraDev and MX Community. There, he regularly adds new tutorials and custom-written extensions to this rapidly expanding site.

Gareth enjoys keeping up with the latest developments, and has been providing support to many users to help them use UltraDev and Dreamweaver MX with ASP or PHP on both Linux and Windows servers. Rarely offline, Gareth can always be found in the Macromedia forums (news: forums.macromedia.com ), where he helps to answer many users' questions on a daily basis.

Jeffrey Haas

Jeffrey Haas is a content management specialist, Internet code warrior , and outspoken advocate of digital process. He has been working online since 1993 in content creation, technical production, management, and strategic advisor roles. As well as creating innovative digital storytelling techniques during three years at The Discovery Channel Canada, he has worked on web sites, intranets , and extranets for dozens of clients in the financial, telecommunications, and entertainment industries. His credits include managing the development and implementation of various network applications for Chart Magazine, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, HMV, ING Canada, Scotiabank, Sympatico, and several Warner Music recording artists .

Jeffrey is currently Manager of Technical Development for Spencer Francey Peters, a Toronto-based corporate branding and design agency. His responsibilities there include leading the implementation of sophisticated multi-lingual intranets and defining electronic workflow processes for global customers.

Outside of work hours, Jeffrey spends his time making music, studying martial arts, drinking coffee, writing, and developing personal digital projects.

I would like to thank my teachers for sharing their knowledge about computers, computer users, and corporate communication. Without you, I would have since succumbed: Andrew Adamson; Wayne Carrigan; Gergely Csaszar; Jeffrey Elliott; Aaron Goldstein; Veronica Holmes, for the value of process; Paul Kaliciak; Kevin Leflar; Liam Nickerson; Matthew Penzner; Kelly Peters; and Jeffrey Zeldman. I also want to thank my spiritual advisors for your friendship, support, and guidance: Darren Altbaum; Candine Blackbeard; Rachelle Burdman; Jessica Dean; Michael Dressler; Noah Egelnick; j. englishman; Gwyneth Evans; Geoff Girvitz; Susanna Haas; Shale Kazdan; Jay Lo; Howard Stellar; and, of course, Captain Q. Farf, Lord of the 4th Dimension. Finally, thank you to my parents, Paul and Sharon Haas, for the Commodore 64 in 1996 and so much more before and after that.

Darren James Harkness

Darren James Harkness is a creative engineer by day and a gypsy knife -eater by night. Darren is an old-school web developer, having developed several quality, content-driven web sites by hand since 1995. His qualifications include an instinctual understanding of W3C recommendations and graphic design, along with a solid understanding of back-end development. He feels most at home as a Jack-of-all-trades, dabbling in every aspect of the development process. You can find Darren online at http://www.staticred.net .

He'd like to thank his wonderful partner, Kirsten, for keeping him sane.

Frank Pappas

Frank Charles Pappas sang and danced his way through his early years, though innate good sense prompted him to escape the natural - and not so natural - disasters of southern California for a new and exciting life in Washington, DC.

Frank graduated with degrees in both Political Science and Spanish Language and Literature from the George Washington University in Washington, DC. When he's not busy lobbying GW's Elliot School of International Affiars to allow him to complete his Masters degree, Frank spends his free time at L'academie de Cuisine in Maryland, helping to teach fundamental cooking techniques while polishing his skills as patissier.

Now living inside the Beltway, Frank has spent the past ten years crafting an unparalleled track record in providing technology, branding, and marketing leadership to a wide array of clients, including Bush-Quayle '92, Swissair, Radisson and Regent Hotels, Brita, AOL-Time Warner, the Ford Motor Company, Viacom, and the Washington Post Company.

Mike Parsons

Mike is currently working for the advertising group McCann Erikson in the Netherlands. Although currently living in Amsterdam, he has worked for companies in New York and Sydney.

After working in radio and publishing he quickly fell in love with the Internet and has worked in this field since 1996. During that time worked for clients in the media, automotive, telecom, government, non-profit, and technology sectors.

The main theme in his career has been the balance of technology and business. As a result all of his work with technology is done with an entrepreneurial approach - achieving business goals with technology. To help achieve these goals he wrote the E-Business Integrity Methodology, a set of modules that create a framework for Internet projects and takes them from idea to execution.

Apart from being the Senior E-Business consultant at McCann Erikson he is also a feature writer for Europemedia.net and CM Focus. In his spare time he studies Managing the Digital Enterprise at North Carolina State University, USA.

Francis Storr

Francis Storr lives in South East England and is an intranet developer for a large international company. He works in XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript and currently has his nose buried in numerous books on XML. He is passionate about the promotion and implementation of Standards and Accessibility for the Web but tries not to annoy his colleagues by mentioning those subjects in every single conversation. He also firmly believes that one day he'll get around to building a site of his own.

When not working he spends time trying to evangelize the merits of The Wildhearts (the finest rock band in the world) to people who really should know better, tries to spot episodes of Matt Groening cartoons he hasn't seen before, and actively avoids doing the washing up.

Thanks to Amanda Kay, Alessandro Ansa, the reviewers, and the whole glasshaus team for getting me involved with this project. I've been told I have to say thanks to everyone at work, so "thanks to everyone at work" ( especially Stevie for shouting loudly). Thanks also to Ali, Paula, and the Longplayer guys for getting me out of a hole, and also for so much fine music. Finally, thanks to my long-suffering family for everything.

Inigo Surguy