I am a professional web designer and have wanted to further my skills into the relm of web development. I found this book and started reading it immediately. It is an excellent resource for web design and development as a whole. It goes into technologies such as ASP, PHP, Java 2, Usability and Design rules, Creating Graphics, basic web design fundamentals, CGI, a little C, Coldfusion, Perl, XSL, XSLT, XHTML, SSI, CSS, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript, database design, ADO, just about everything. It gives a great introduction (40-60 pages or more)into most of the technologies used in web design and development and goes in depth on XML, XHTML and Java 2 best of all it tells how all the above technologies can work together. Not only xml and xhtml. but how ASP and perl relate. No it doesnt come with a CD but I have had no problem compiling the code and getting it to work. A CD would have been nice but the information in the book is so useful that its worth the price without the CD. It is easy to read (if your into reading computer books) and is the best resource that I have found on web development technologies and how they relate to each other. It is a great book and I recommend it highly to any college student aspiring to get into web work (as long as they know HTML) or any professional web designer or developer at any level. This book is a must have.