A Peek into My Toolbox
By Lincoln D. Stein
I am asked from time to time which Web authoring and administration tools I use in my own work. Usually I hem and haw and deflect the question onto other subjects ("Oh, and that reminds me, what do you think of this week's rumors that Netscape is about to be bought up by Smith Kline Beecham?"). But this month I've decided to come clean. Here is a list of tools, major and minor, that I routinely use in my Web-development work.
Bear in mind that I'm a devout UNIX user. Drop me in front of a Windows NT console and I'll jerk around, spasmodically clicking on random icons until I find the command window. Put me in front of a Macintosh and I'll probably pass out!
Web Server
I use the freeware Apache Web server exclusively. This server, which passed its second anniversary in December 1997, is what every Web server should aspire to be. It is swift, silent, and effective. It is simple to set up, yet more feature-rich than any commercial server I've used. One reason Apache has so many features is its modular API architecture, which makes it easy to extend the server in new and creative ways. Here are a few of the many optional modules available for Apache, just to give you an idea of their range and breadth:
- a spelling module that catches and corrects spelling and capitalization errors in URLs automatically;
- modules for authenticating users against text files, UNIX DBM files, and relational databases;
- a module that rewrites URLs according to arbitrary regular expression rules, letting you set up a logical document tree that has nothing to do with the physical arrangement of files on the server, or even map the URL tree to something that isn't a file system at all, such as a set of database records;
- a tracking module that uses cookies to track a user's click trail through the system;
- a module that turns the server into a caching proxy;
- an interface to the Open Software Group's DCE authentication system;
- support for secure sockets layer (SSL) using Eric Young's SSLeay;
- a module that supports Java servlets.<>
