Biographical note

Robin Nixon has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s (his first computer was a Tandy TRS 80 Model 1 with a massive 4KB of RAM!). During this time he has written in excess of 500 articles for many of the UK's top computer magazines. Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript is his third book. Robin started his computing career in the Cheshire homes for disabled people, where he was responsible for setting up computer rooms in a number of residential homes, and for evaluating and tailoring hardware and software so that disabled people could use the new technology--sometimes by means of only a single switch operated by mouth or finger. After writing articles for computer magazines about his work with disabled people, he eventually worked full time for one of the country's main IT magazine publishers, where he held several roles including editorial, promotions, and cover disc editing. With the dawn of the Internet in the 1990s, Robin branched out into developing websites. One of these presented the world's first radio station licensed by the music copyright holders, and was featured in several news reports on TV and radio networks in the United Kingdom. In order to enable people to continue to surf while listening, Robin also developed the first known pop-up windows. Robin lives on the southeast coast of England with his wife Julie, a trained nurse, and five children, where he also finds time to foster three disabled children, as well as working full time from home as a technical author.