References for Chapter 2

Books

Andrew S Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 4th ed. (Pearson: 2003)

A comprehensive description of how networks in general, and the Internet in particular, work. Pretty much the standard book on the subject.

Online Resources

Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1

This is the official specification of the current version of HTTP.

Domain Name System

A short and simple explanation of what the DNS does.

Country codes

The official list of country codes, as used in domain names and elsewhere.

IANA | MIME Media Types

The official listing of all the registered Internet Media Types (MIME types).

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax

The specification of URIs, including URLs.

Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One

This is a W3C document that describes how the Web works. (It isn't clear why it has the status of a Recommendation.)

Netcraft: Web Server Survey Archives

A monthly report on the software being used to serve Web pages.

Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful to Feelings

A rebuttal to the notion that Web designers shouldn't use XHTML because it gets sent with the wrong Media Type.

Against XHTML

An influential, but confused, article that puts forward the notion that Web designers shouldn't use XHTML because of the way servers and browsers treat it. This is often cited by people like WHATWG as a reason for producing a new version of HTML independent of XHTML.

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive » Understanding HTML, XML and XHTML

A browser implementor's view of the XHTML/HTML question. It seems to be the people who write browser who are most eager to avoid XHTML.