Linux Journal February 2012 Jill Franklin Editor

A quick overview of what’s in this Web Development issue:Create Web Apps with Catalyst and PerlIntro to the Sinatra Micro-FrameworkHTML5 for Audio ApplicationsBasic Web Design with Drupal 7*Interview with Stephen WolframDetailed Overview: More Than Dark Rooms and Red LightsDeveloping photographs used to be a mysterious process that took place inrooms lit like horror films, using pans of dangerous chemicals. From thosecreepy rooms eventually emerged beautiful photographs of literallyeverything under the sun. Web development is surprisingly similar. If youreplace the dangerous chemicals with a clacking keyboard and the redlights with the blue glow of an LCD screen, they’re just about the same.This month, we delve into the mystical world of Web development, which turnsordinary tags and scripts into the beautiful Web sites we visit every day. Reuven M. Lerner is right at home with our focus this month and shows usSinatra. No, he doesn’t teach us to be crooners; instead, he demonstratesthe micro-framework that makes small Web apps a breeze to create. If youneed to do something small, and Ruby seems like overkill, give Sinatra a try. Dave Taylor explains how to make a small program this month as well,but his script is a little more nefarious. If you want to be a lying,cheating dog when you play Scrabble against your friends, Dave can help youout. He shows how to make a shell script that finds words based on theletters you have. As a purely educational endeavor, it’s a great article, butas of now, I will no longer play Words With Friendswith any Linux Journal readers!Kyle Rankin continues his series on GPU-powered password cracking. Even ifyou’re not interested in learning to brute-force attack passwords, Irecommend reading his article. It will convince you to use a strongpassword quicker than any warning I might give you. Don’t tell Kyle I toldyou, but I watched him enter his password once at a conference. It’s just abunch of asterisks! I got into the Web-themed spirit this month too. This month we’re launching abrand-new column, written by yours truly. The Open-Source Classroom isan education-focused column, and this month, I break down the venerableMoodle software package. Moodle has matured so much since we last coveredit, I felt it deserved some attention.Ruby on Rails is a very popular Web framework, but Henry Van Styn knowsthat it’s not the only show in town. He describes how to develop Webapplications with Catalyst and Perl. Regardless of the framework you use todevelop, an application is only as good as the server hosting it. MartinKalin shows us the nitty-gritty of Web servers and explainsmultiprocessing, multithreading and evented I/O. The Internet demands alot from our Web servers, and Martin helps us understand exactly how thosedemands are met.Possibly bigger than even the Web 2.0 buzz of a few years ago is thetransition to HTML5. Although to most folks it’s just a bunch of geek jargon,for Web programmers it means user interaction like never before. PaulFreitas shows how to take advantage of HTML5 to serve up audio. No, wedon’t mean those annoying MIDI files playing when the page loads, butrather using plain-old HTML tags to play audio on your Web site. If itsounds too simple to be true, you’ll want to read Paul’s article.What if you want to develop a Web site, but you’re not a programmer? That’swhere content management systems like Drupal come into play. Kenneth P. J.Dyer walks through designing a Web site with Drupal 7. The learning curvefor using Drupal traditionally has been pretty steep, but with version 7,that’s starting to change. Kenneth teaches how things work in Drupaland gets us started on our way to developing a powerful and flexibleWeb site.We never alienate our non-developer readers in issues like this, and thismonth is no different. We have tons of UpFront articles,product announcements and even some handy tips to make your Linux life alittle easier. In fact, this month James Gray had an opportunity tointerview Stephen Wolfram. Yes, that Stephen Wolfram. Whether you’re amath nut who loves Mathematica or are fascinated by the Wolfram|Alphacomputational knowledge engine, this is an interview you won’t want tomiss.So until next month, keep clacking those keyboards. If turning on a red lightwill help you develop Web sites, by all means, feel free to do so. Theonly dangerous chemical we recommend, however, is caffeine. If you want todrink your coffee out of developing trays, well, I guess that’s up to you.Either way, we hope you enjoy this issue! ––Shawn Powers