HTML Books

As a writer who develops instructional materials, I am always interested in well-written training guides. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.

Siegel's informal style is appreciated, but his terminology is sometimes obscure, confusing and even erroneous. He uses acronyms that aren't defined for his students. For example, in one case he refers to an MRU list without first telling you that he's describing the 'Most recently used file list' in the General tab of the Options dialog box. In another case, he discusses the Project pane and making the view wider or narrower. In one view, the buttons also contain labels and in the narrower view, they turn into icons. In both cases, he refers to them as buttons, which I think is misleading.

I recommend this guide with reservations: There aren't many training guides out there on this subject. If you can't afford training in RoboHelp HTML and need to come up to speed on this application, then you should probably pick this up. Otherwise, go for the in-class training and avoid this book.

I just finished going through this book and must say that I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I learned and how quickly I learned it.

The value of the lessons taught in this book were evident a few days after I completed the last exercise when I created my own project. Went without a hitch.

Top Notch!

I went out of my way to enter this review, because as I used this book to learn RoboHTML 2000, I often shook my head and thought: this is so well done that I've got to get back to say: Good job! The information is very well organized and laid out. All the steps were well thought out (some typos, but they didn't get in the way). A lot of books, like those 24-hour ones, advertise themselves as teaching you an application, but this book really, truly taught me the application. I'm a tech writer with 12 years experience, and I've got to say that a truly effective book is a wonderful and not common thing. This book exposed me to all the parts of RoboHTML 2000, and made me go through some steps to learn just enough of the various parts so that I'll be able to go back and put the skills to use. NOTE: This book was obviously not written quickly, but is the product of users really learning how to do the tasks. You can tell because the instructions "think of everything." Really, I wasn't left hanging in confusion once. Good job!

There are no other books on this topic out there. This one is pretty good. I was able to follow all of the steps. As a veteran Web Master I was surprised at the level of HTML coding covered in the book. The exercises made quick work of difficult topics.

I was able to follow everything. Since this is the only HTML Help book out there, I have to give it a thumbs up. My assessment of various items in the book: +frames [very good example] +forms [ok, but no info about server side] +HTML Help basics [solid] -sounds and graphics [annoying] -cover [very flimsy paper] -final exercise [none] -fonts [very poor and hard to read/follow] -bookmarks [none] -scripting [none]

Within 2 hours I had a solid start on writing a help system. With a very short deadline to meet, I needed something that would get me up to speed in a very short time. I literally had the entire help system written in a few days. The book was easy to follow. I had never used RoboHelp HTML before, and I can now use it with confidence because of this book. Our FTP product was released on time. Excellent book!

This cards really are quite beautifully printed, on good thick stock paper and have tons of great material. The color information is not quite as relevant now that using web-safe colors isn't a big deal, but this book has so much other great information, particularly if you do coding work and need the Javascript, DOM and RegEx guides. The CSS guide is also my favorite quick-reference sheet for doing style work. The only thing I don't particularly care for is how the JS and RegEx guides have "assert()" around most of the statements. While I understand from a programming standpoint this is more correct in terms of it being a "test" statement, it reduces the readability of what is really just a guide, not an actual programming construct. But that's a fairly minor nit, overall this is highly-recommended, go find yourself a copy!

Lots of information packed into this spiral bound set of 5 laminated 8.5 x 11 inch cards. You won't need as many reference books, as most of the frequently used items can be found in this set. The color chart is a must have. Printed in a very small but crisp font. Not as well made a previous sets from this publisher, but still good if you're seriously into web development.

Anyone who regularly finds themselves looking up syntax for an HTML tag, CSS Style, and/or Javascript statement in a book (e.g. check index and then flip to page) will like this VisiBone booklet because it will save you time. In fact, I hardly look in my books any more for this type of info -- a quick lookup in this booklet is all I need. There is also other helpful info in the book besides just syntax, for example, if an HTML tag has an equivalent Style, it will tell you that next to the HTML tag. There is a lot of detail here in just a few pages and the color format is very readable; it's like a portable reference library for client developers -- great for coding on the road because of its portability.

The Web Design CD Bookshelf CD-ROM by O'Reilly, Associates has received a "BEST BOOK for 2002" award by readers of the Design & Publishing Center, the Editors of DT&G Magazine and the Design-Bookshelf.com.

Need we say more.

The "6 Bestselling Books on a CD-ROM" on the cover looks impressive, but dig into the info contained on the CD and it begins to look a lot less so.

Some of these titles are definitely looking a bit long-in-the-tooth ("Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" was published back in early 1998, and the "Cascading Style Sheets" title is looking a lot less "definitive" in the two years since it first came out). In fact, with the sole exception of the book included with this CD pack, all of the books are at least a year old, limiting their usefulness. Can you say "retread"?

The ActionScript title is good but I would have preferred a more generally-applicable book instead, like, say O'Reilly's recent book on JavaScript...

Still, having all of this info at your fingertips in a CD-ROM format is genuinely useful -- the search feature is fast and accurate -- more so than you're likely to get when looking up the same keyword on a major search engine. So far I've found the XHTML title and the Web Design in a Nutshell (which is the "book" included in this package) the most-referenced titles, the latter in particular an excellent (and relatively recent) publication.

The Web Design CD Bookshelf: Version 1.0 contains six different, complete guides that, taken together, cover everything anyone needs to know about the art of web design. Novice web designers and experienced professionals alike will appreciate being able to quickly look up answers to the most harrowing difficulties at a few clicks of the mouse. The CD-ROM includes the complete text of Web Design in a Nutshell 2nd Edition; HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide 4th Edition; Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide; ActionScript: The Definitive Guide; Information Architecture for the World Wide Web; and Designing Web Audio: RealAudio, MP3, Flash, and Beatnik. Truly the definitive compendium about web design, and the perfect reference for anyone seeking create or improve their own website. The system requirements for The Web Design CD Bookshelf: Version 1.0 are a browser software such as Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer supporting HTML, and to support the search engine, a Java-enabled browser supporting Java version 1.1.2 or later.

This book is great. It covers all the basics of HTML. It's a must have.

This is a basic get-started manual for the uninitiated, wannabe web designer. The author leads you through basic information in the text and supports it with online material as well. The activities are sequenced to build on previous ones. There are some overestimations by the author of readers' prior knowledge, but basically a recommended text for those who want to create web sites.

Web Writing/Web Designing is a basic and straight to the point introduction to Web page design. It is written for a beginner approaching content development for the first time. The book is organized in a how-to handbook style that could supplement a classroom or could be a used as a self-teaching guide. The book offers practical explanations of HTML tags, Web design features, and other important needed information for creating Web pages. Batschelet manages to cover all the technical details in easy to follow language and provides step by step examples, which can be view in a supplemental Web site. When the book moves to more advanced topics such as tables and frames, the book remains simplistic and easy to follow. The explanations remain clear and the details are not compromised

Strengths: Each chapter builds upon the other and the book allows a reader, early on, the ability to begin writing HTML code. Although each chapter address a different Web creating topic, all focus on a how-to of HTML coding and all conclude with a writing assignment that utilizes the topic of instruction within each chapter. The end of each chapter also provides a thorough table of HTML tags used in the lessons and a list of outside Web sites that offers other reference material. The assigned projects of each chapter can be combined into one large project that ultimately can become the purpose of the book, a self-designed Web site.

Weaknesses: All of the weaknesses of Web Writing/Web Design are directly related to the date that the book was written. It was published in 2000 and the book is simply outdated. Also, due to the age of the book, many of the links that Batschelet provides the reader to use as further reference sites are no longer available.

If I could give it more stars, I would!

If you want a reference book for XHTML and CSS, this is it! If you also want a tutorial for XHTML and CSS, this is it!

The first 370 pages are an alphabetical reference to XHTML. Each tag is listed with ALL of its possible attributes as well as guides to browser compatability (even WebTV). The next 130 pages gives the same treatment to Cascading Style Sheet syntax. The next 190 pages is a tutorial for using XHTML and CSS. The tutorials are very well done; using pictures only when needed and presenting lots of information. The Appendixes don't just rehash the info from the book. They present things like the complete Unicode character set (40pgs), a glossary and a 50 page cross referenced index.

I can't recommend this book highly enough!

The reference section for both XHTML and CSS are the best I have seen so far. I keep the book just for that on my desk. For this section I would give it 5 stars (and even more).

However the tutorial section is bad as bad can be and full of mistakes. F.ex in chapter two there is a listing of an XHTML strict document but has the bgcolor attribute in the body tag. And so it goes on throughout the whole tutorial.

If you need an excellent reference book shoot for this one, if you need a tutorial you better look for other books.

This book is a must have for any serious tag jockey. When I first picked it up. I looked at it and thought to myself "what the heck kind of book is this". Then I figured it out. Actually it's two books for the price of one.

The first half is a very clear concise detail of every tag and attribute in XHTML and a reference of CSS. If all you need is to refresh your memory about a particular tag this is where you'll find your answers. Your not going to find a better reference anywhere.

The second half of the book consists of tutorials for XHTML and CSS in very clear easy to understand form.

At first I thought "They put this thing together backwards! The refence should be in the back"; but as I use the book as a reference I love having the reference in the front so I don't have to go clear through the book to find what I want. Very well done!

I would have gladly paid what this book cost for either of these two pieces; the fact that I got both in one book for such a meager sum is to me simply amazing.

An excellent resource for anyone who knows HTML and wants to learn XHTML; a critical component for future Business to Consumer commerce systems.

This book had many positive qualities and a few negative ones. It was a well-written book, with comprehensive coverage of the topic. However, it was longer than necessary and contained to much filler.

The concept behind the xhtml 1.0 spec is relatively simple. You must perform the following: close all your tags, include the xhtml dtd, use all lower case letters, use CSS instead of the deprecated formatting tags, and put script in cdata sections. The book required 304 pages to make these points, as it showed how each would impact 12 different browsers. On the positive side, this book was very concise and well written. At one sitting, I completed over 200 pages. It was truly enjoyable to read and the topics retained my interest.

Overall, I give this book four-stars. The only negative being the large quantity of filler content. The book was perfect otherwise.

this book is full of good information, particularly if you don't know much about xml but know a lot about html. the first 10 chapters are great, particularly the sections on the document type definition (dtd) -- you can see where the W3C defines html and how much of that definition is missing or added to by the different browsers. unfortunately, the book is not laid out very well. there are a lot of references to later chapters that leave you wondering what they are talking about until you get there. this book is written by two different people, and it seems obvious who wrote what chapters. i give 4 stars, not 3, because there is enough useful information in this book to make it worth reading and having for the html expert looking to make the move towards xml.

In my efforts to learn and understand XML the past year and a half I have come upon a decided lack of interest for the subject among my technical writing colleagues. Single-sourcing with XML has simply been too difficult to set up. You need a DTD or schema (or EDD in FrameMaker) before your can start writing, and style sheets to present it. It seems that XML has mostly been used in web services like on-line shopping.

If tech writers are using XML, it is probably because they were already using FrameMaker with SGML earlier and have just converted their documents to the XML version. Furthermore, if you are not using FrameMaker 7.0 as an authoring tool, you had to find some other new tool, like XMLSpy, Authentic or Veredus, which have many capabilities, but seem "geeky" to a tech writer.

INTRODUCING XML IN OFFICE 2003
You can't imagine how delighted I was to see this book recommended in a newsletter, because that was the first I'd heard about the XML facilities in Office 2003. When my husband updated to Office 2003, I bought the book to see how it works. To my dismay, I discovered that the XML facilities are only in the Professional edition, so I ordered a 30-day trial version of Office 2003 from Microsoft and started reading.

One of the authors, Charles Goldfarb, has been in on XML since its conception (and birth, way back in 1998!) so he is one of the big XML gurus. Now gurus are not necessarily, by definition, good writers of introductory books. However, Goldfarb has his own series of excellent books, motivating and educating developers and users in the wonders of XML.

This introduction is well structured and well thought out. All the steps are well described and easy to follow. There are even separate XML tutorials to bring beginners up to speed without boring more advanced users. The only difficulty I found is that the book is so richly illustrated that some steps refer to a screen capture on a following page.

USING THE BOOK
Part 1, Introducing Desktop XML, aims to motivate you with "The reason why" it's worth your while to get the 30-day trial version and keep on reading.

Part 2, Working with XML in Office, has you creating XML documents in Word, using external XML data in spreadsheets, exporting and importing XML in Access and creating XML websites in FrontPage. You will also discover how easy it is to import XML data, like zip codes and stock market data, from the Internet. You can download all the code for the examples from www.XMLinOffice.com.

INFOPATH
An exciting new feature is a new Microsoft product, InfoPath, which you can use to create "smart" forms. The book includes a CD with a free 60-day trial version. InfoPath can become your front end to XML-enabled databases, or any other data-based XML application. (Note: you have to open the sample InfoPath documents in Design mode, and then publish them to your own computer to be able to see them in action.)

XML TUTORIALS
If you have never seen XML before, there is no need to shy away. Goldfarb provides you with all you need to know in Part 3, XML Tutorials, in the back of the book. Each chapter in Part 2 lists the skills you need to understand and perform its activities, with a reference to which tutorial to read prior to the chapter. So, while more experienced readers can start right off, beginners do a tutorial or two in the back of the book before starting each new chapter.

USING XML IN OFFICE 2003
I found working with XML in Office 2003 easy and intuitive. All the information you need is in the Task Pane on the right side of the screen. Just drag tags from the pane to your document. If you want to produce XML quickly, you can even use the built-in Word Markup Language (which catches every bit of Word's complicated style markup). Nevertheless, it is much better to learn what little you need to know to author pure XML in Word, which it does beautifully. XML is an open format that you can import into any other XML document in, say, FrameMaker, InDesign or Quark, so it is worth keeping it pure.

BEYOND THE TUTORIALS
Of course the hard part is making the first decision to actually create a working document in XML. Other than in tutorials and class exercises, I have not gotten there yet. I figure it won't be long before I update my 30-day trial to the real version of Office 2003. It really isn't difficult to get started, because Office 2003 provides you with a number of templates with all the necessary schemas and style sheets, which you can modify for your own use. Now you have to figure out how to convince your employer that this is exactly what you need to make your documentation work more efficient and user friendly.

Mr. Goldfarb is on a tear with yet another book about XML and XML technologies. In this case it's about the integration of XML into Microsoft's Office Suite for 2003. This is an impressive peice of work and it shows through in the book, which is far superior to his XML handbook, though it does suffer from similar problems. Once again the book has aggressively short chapters and has an uneven level of detail. In addition some of the chapters feel like a lift from the handbook, which is not necessarily a bad thing give that they are from the same author. And the book also has a strange organization, for instance leaving the explanation of XML standards and syntax to the last few chapters of the book.

That being said the book is still far better than the XML Handbook. And I think in large part that has to do with the fascinating topic which is Microsoft's excellent work in integrating XML into their products. This is a worthy read, especially if you are a developer looking to leverage the XML capabilities of the Office suite.

With the XML advantages in the Office 2003 suite of applications not being glaringly obvious (at least not to me), I gave this book a whirl. I'm glad I did.

It's consistent in its organization - presenting the capabilities of Word, Excel, Access, FrontPage, and Office forms to use, manage and manipulate XML-based data - first from within the applications themselves, and then from more robust subsystems using Office's embedded Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It shows how easy it is to manage data by building great apps with simple scripts. (Notably missing was a discussion on the applications of XML within PowerPoint, although I'm admittedly unsure if that's even an issue.)

The book's voice is very friendly and non-intimidating, using chapter around 15-30 pages at most, making for a pleasant, quick reading experience. On this note, I found the Excel chapters and those on WordML especially valuable. As far as the examples themselves, all were practical and easy to replicate locally, whether by menu or through code. There's a healthy lean towards the use of SOAP by making Web services calls for importation of data that's a great addition.

The book also has something I found that many modern programming texts don't - an easy-to-understand explanation of schemas and how to construct them. All books discussing XML obviously make mention of the use of schema, but the vast majority don't explain it well. The authors do a great job of not only explaining schema's role in an app, but also how to build it, which is something newbies will appreciate.

Still, in this day of modern distributed applications and datashaping, I also would have liked to see the VBA-based examples complemented/contrasted with .NET programming concepts and code, working against the APIs for each Office app. Also, one thing I found somewhat annoying was that the code, while complete and hearty, always referenced "in Line 25...and then in Line 30", without marking the lines of code, forcing the reader to manually count-and-mark the lines. This was a minor nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless.

But the good in this book far outweighs the bad, and the content and examples can be picked up by any level of staffer in the workplace who's familiar with Office apps. It's a great read.

The above book is full of information with regards to XML Security and it's implementations. However, I found it to be VERY application oriented towards RSA's own Bsafe product Cert-J.

If you are interested in utilizing a C or C++ parser you should look for a different book. But, if you will be developing and/or utilizing XML via a Java-based program; this is definitly the book for you.

Given the fact that XML is a key component of web services, and extensively used in e-commerce and enterprise applications integration, this book addresses a genuinely important topic. For one reason, XML is text-based and can expose proprietary information, which is a vulnerability for competitive intelligence specialists and corporate spying.

Before going into what the book contains it's important to know that much of the material is based on RSA's view of the security. This isn't a criticism, but an up-front statement of fact because if you're looking for a book that is 100% vendor neutral you are going to have to wait until one is written - this is the only book I know of that is solely about XML security.

The book starts with primers on security and XML to set the context. It then covers, in succession, digital signatures (chapters 4, 5 and 6), and XML encryption. These chapters are consistent with work and specifications produced by XML Signature WG (joint the Working Group IETF and W3C for digital signatures) and the W3C working group for XML Encryption.

Chapter 8 is specific to RSA products. It shows how to implement XML encryption using RSA BSAFE© Cert-J, which can be downloaded in a trial version from RSA's website. Chapter 9 covers XML key management specification, which are consistent with the W3C working group's specifications, and how XML security relates to web services.

Despite the slight bias towards RSA this book is an invaluable reference. It provides an in-depth discussion of major security issues, as well as how they are being addressed by the W3C. It goes without saying that anyone who is responsible for system architecture, design and/or security should carefully read this book.

When you read the XML specification, you will notice that it contains no notion of security. Critical security functionalities such as encryption, digital signatures, and authentication are simply not part of the XML standard. XML is similar to many other protocols, languages, and operating systems in that it was originally developed without any thought to security and privacy. It is only after serious security vulnerabilities are discovered and publicized that they are patched. But this find, patch, fix mentality of information security is dangerous in that security problems can exist for months or years before they are found.

Similarly within XML, much of the security functionality has been added post- facto, namely in Canonical XML, XML Signature, and XML Encryption Syntax and Processing. By adding security to the core feature set of XML, the W3C has ensured that,
to a degree, the find, patch, fix method won't be the manner in which XML security is developed. A good reference book can help you navigate this XML security landscape.

XML Security is a reader friendly title and focuses more on the implementation of XML. For readers looking for ways to use XML and less coding examples, XML Security is more useful book. The author, Blake Dournaee, is an employee of RSA Security, and the book is an RSA Press imprint. Furthermore, Chapter 8, the book's longest chapter, is about XML Signatures implementing the RSA BSAFE(c) Cert-J toolkit. Even with the RSA vendor bias, XML Security provides a good reference to the XML security functionality.

This book spends more time introducing the reader to security concepts, and Chapters 2 and 3 (Security Primer and XML Primer) provide the reader with a good overview about all of the significant concepts involved. Chapter 6 provides a plethora of XML signature examples. As XML signatures are rich in their features and syntax, combined with the vast number of elements and permutations of those elements, it can be quite difficult for someone to understand how to properly use XML signatures. Chapter 6 provides 14 different scenarios and their proposed solutions. These scenarios range from adding a single signature to a basic XML document, to adding multiple types of signatures to various documents. For readers who need good hands-on examples, Chapter 6 is worth the price of the book alone.

This book represents an amazing feat of distilling all you really need
to know about XSL into 170 pocket-sized pages. What's more amazing
is that an experienced developer with little prior XML/XSL experience
can actually learn enough from this little gem to write competent XSL.

A reference manual AND quality tutorial in 1/20th the space (and dead
trees) of most tech books these days. I've recommended this to several
of my colleagues who had to get up to speed on XSL for a new project,
and the reaction from them is the same as mine.... This was EXACTLY
what I needed.

XSLT is one of those technologies that takes awhile to get the hang of. Once you've learned the basics, you'll end up needing to refer back to reference material often. One way to make that process a bit quicker would be to have a copy of Even Lenz's XSLT 1.0 Pocket Reference on hand...

Contents: Data Model; The XPath Language; How XSLT Works; Elements; Functions; Extending XSLT; XPath 1.0 Grammar; XSLT Pattern Grammar; Index

Looking at the back cover, the impression is such that you could use this book to get "up to speed quickly" on XSLT. Perhaps you could, but if this was your first and only exposure to XSLT and it works out that way, you're a far better IT professional than I am. The information is concise and correct, to be sure. But it's not going to walk you through the subject in a tutorial fashion. Conversely, if you understand the basics and need a quick visual reference on how to use a feature, say like , this book shines. You don't have to wade through a dozen pages of conversation to find out the format and syntax. Two pages total in this book, and you have all the details. And that's what an O'Reilly's Pocket Reference title is for...

If you're working with XSLT already and need that "cheat sheet" material, I'd recommend this book. You'll get a lot of value from it. If you're looking to learn XSLT, you'll probably want to start with something more tutorial in nature first. Once you've got that down, head over here for ongoing reference...

This is a handy little pocket book that covers the essentials of XSLT. It's far better than the stuff you will find on the W3C site, and it won't break your back like Michael Kay's excellent, but hefty, work. I have to ding it a little for lack of a complete reference on XPath. There is certainly information about the functions, but I would have like to have seen more depth on it. And the XPath appendix wasn't helpful. A language definition is definitely not what I was looking for there. Some common examples of XPath usage would be great.