"Wicked Cool PHP Tricks" deals with computers/software.

William Steinmetz is the author of LAN Party: Hosting the Ultimate Frag Fest (Wiley) and co-author of Paint Shop Pro for Dummies (IDG). He is the webmaster and editor of StarCityGames.com, where traffic has quadrupled as a result of the changes he designed and implemented, all using PHP.

Brian Ward has been working with Linux since 1993, when he scraped together enough pennies for a secondhand 386. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Chicago, and currently works in San Francisco as a consultant and instructor. He is author of the Linux Kernel-HOWTO, The Book of VMware and The Linux Problem Solver.

Rather than explain the basics of PHP, Wicked Cool PHP provides scripts that can be implemented immediately to make programmers’ lives easier. It includes scripts not found in any other books, including scripts for processing credit cards, getting live shipping quotes, and accepting PayPal payments online. Author William Steinmetz approaches the limitations of PHP frankly and honestly, showing readers where security holes might be created by novice programmers and suggesting workarounds for when PHP fails. Readers will learn how to create robot-blocking security images and on-the-fly graphs to embed in Web pages, transform pictures into thumbnail images, design screen scrapers to connect to other sites and download information from them, and much more.