5. CD Contents Overview

The CD included with this book contains the source pages and reference materials that have been referred to throughout the book. The goal of this approach is to allow you to cut and paste any applicable code examples so you can quickly re-use them.

The other, perhaps most exciting goal of the CD is to provide new, unique and helpful software, shareware and evalutaion software that you can use. To that end, you’ll find an array of software, including the add-ins, utilities and other software packages that we’ve been able to arrange for you.

Here’s an overview of what you can expect:

  • All of the sample code and applications from the book

  • A collection of demonstration applications, scaled-down software and shareware

  • An electronic version of this book in HTML format, which can be read using any World Wide Web browser on any platform.

  • Running a Perfect Web Site online book - The Running… book is a best seller that shows how Web sites work, how to manage them, and it covers a good deal of HTML, giving you an excellent supplemental reference for your site.

  • Special Edition, Using HTML online book - this book, also included in both HTML and Windows Help File format, is the guide to working with HTML’s latest features.

The CD contains several subdirectories located off of the root directory. The directories you’ll find on the CD will be as follows, with application, code or chapter-specific subdirectories under each of these:

Table xe.1 - Directory Structure on the CD

\EBOOKS - HTML version of the online books included on the CD
\CODE   - The source code from the book. Each chapter that contains sample files, source code, etc. will be contained in a subdirectory named for the chapter it references
\SOFTWARE - The software provided for your use and evaluation
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Note

The products on the CD are Demos and Shareware. You may have some difficulty running them on your particular machine. If you do, feel free to contact the vendor. (They’d rather have you evaluate their product than ignore it.)

5.1. Using the Electronic Book

Perl By Example is available to you as an HTML document that can be read from any World Wide Web browser that you may have currently installed on your machine (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator). If you don’t have a Web browser, we have included the Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for you. The book can also be read on-screen as a Windows Help File.

5.2. Reading the Electronic Book as an HTML Document

To read the electronic book, you will need to start your Web browser and open the document file toc.html located on the \HTMLVER subdirectory of the CD. Alternatively, you can browse the CD directory using File Manager and double-click toc.html.

Once you have opened the toc.htmL page, you can access all of the book’s contents by clicking on the highlighted chapter number or topic name. The electronic book works like any other Web page; when you click on a hot link, a new page is opened or the browser will take you to the new location in the document. As you read through the electronic book, you will notice other highlighted words or phrases. Clicking on these cross-references will also take you to a new location within the electronic book. You can always use your browser’s forward or backward buttons to return to your original location.

5.3. Installing the Internet Explorer

If you don’t have a Web browser installed on your machine, you can use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 2.0 on this CD-ROM.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer can be installed from the self-extracting file in the \EXPLORER directory. Double-click the MSIE20.exe or use the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Programs option and follow the instructions in the install routine. Please be aware you must have Windows 95 installed on your machine to use this version of Internet Explorer. Other versions of this software can be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site.

5.4. Finding Sample Code

This book contains code examples that include listing headers, for example, “see Listing 10.1”, sample documents presented for planning purposes, and items that are indicated with the On the CD icon. For example, consider the following listing reference:

Listing 10.1 (10_01.htm) – Creating the new snarfle page

This listing indicates that this particular code snippet (or example) is included electronically on the CD. To find it, browse to the \CODE subdirectory on the CD and select the file name that matches the one referenced in the listing header from the chapter indicated. In this example, you’d look in the chapter 10 subdirectory and open the 10_01.htm file.