What Do I Need To Use This Book?

The main requirement is to have an interest in exploring how people and computers might work better together. Although some programming experience, especially in JavaScript, will certainly be useful it is by no means mandatory because there are introductory tutorials in all the required technologies.

To try out the program code for yourself you need access to a web server and the means to upload files to it (for example, via File Transfer Protocol, usually called FTP). Make sure that your web host allows you to use PHP scripts on the server, though the majority do these days.

To write and edit program code you need a suitable text editor. Windows Notepad does the job perfectly well, though some specialized programmers' editors offer additional useful facilities such as line numbering and syntax highlighting. The appendix contains details of some excellent examples that may be downloaded and used free of charge.