Markup Languages Books

I'm an IT professional who had an XML project coming up in 2 weeks. I needed something to learn quickly and this book did the trick. It was excellent. The topics covered about everything you need to know. The examples were wonderful and it was an easy read (flowed nicely)...which is crucial when reading computer books. I would definately recommend this book to anyone who wants to get up to speed fast. I looked at a couple of other books like this, and this is by far the best. I now ordered the XML Progamming Bible for more serious applications with XML. But without this book, reading the next would be a world of confusion. I give it 5 stars.

This book is for anyone who wants to read wikis, add material to a wiki, or install and run their own MediaWiki site. Each type of user is granted their own section in this book. Part 1 of this book is dedicated to wiki readers, explaining how to navigate a MediaWiki site effectively. Part 2 is for authors, and discusses how to write and edit wiki articles, beginning with the basics and moving to more complex tasks. Part 3 is for administrators and programmers. It covers how to install and maintain a MediaWiki site, how to configure its many settings, and how to program its own features, called MediaWiki extensions. It's a pretty easy and well-organized read in the O'Reilly tradition of technical books. However, if you plan to write extensions, you'll need to know, at minimum, the PHP programming language. This book assumes you already know it. For anything complicated, you'll also need to become familiar with MediaWiki's PHP code - particularly its classes, constants, and global variables - and its database schema. The following is the table of contents, not yet available as part of the product information:

Part 1: Getting Started
Chapter 1. A First Look
Section 1.1. What's MediaWiki?
Section 1.2. A Typical Day on a MediaWiki Site
Section 1.3. When to Use MediaWiki
Section 1.4. When Not to Use MediaWiki
Section 1.5. Additional Resources
Chapter 2. Basic Use
Section 2.1. Quick Tour of a Wiki Page
Section 2.2. Articles
Section 2.3. Editing Primer
Section 2.4. Menu Reference
Section 2.5. Getting Help
Chapter 3. Your User Identity
Section 3.1. Creating an Account
Section 3.2. Logging In and Out
Section 3.3. User Pages
Section 3.4. Signatures
Section 3.5. Watchlists
Section 3.6. Tracking Your Contributions
Section 3.7. Preferences
Section 3.8. User CSS and JavaScript
Part 2: Writing and Editing Articles
Chapter 4. Editing Articles
Section 4.1. Getting Started with Editing
Section 4.2. Creating an Article
Section 4.3. Paragraphs and Headings
Section 4.4. Typestyles and Fonts
Section 4.5. Links
Section 4.6. Images and Uploaded Files
Section 4.7. Lists
Section 4.8. Tables
Section 4.9. Mathematical Formulas
Section 4.10. Escaping Wikitext with nowiki
Section 4.11. Conflicts
Section 4.12. Beyond the Basics
Chapter 5. Links
Section 5.1. Internal Links
Section 5.2. External Links
Section 5.3. Interwiki Links
Section 5.4. Interlanguage Links
Section 5.5. Graphical Links
Section 5.6. File Links
Section 5.7. Linking Tips
Chapter 6. Organizing Articles
Section 6.1. Categories
Section 6.2. Namespaces
Section 6.3. Subpages
Section 6.4. Redirects
Section 6.5. Disambiguation Pages
Section 6.6. Renaming Articles
Section 6.7. Deleting Articles
Chapter 7. Advanced Article Construction
Section 7.1. Maintaining a Consistent Wiki
Section 7.2. Variables
Section 7.3. Templates and Transclusion
Section 7.4. Logical Parser Functions
Section 7.5. Dynamic Page List
Section 7.6. Recipes for Refactoring
Chapter 8. Special Pages
Section 8.1. Maintenance Reports
Section 8.2. List of Pages
Section 8.3. Login/Sign Up
Section 8.4. Users and Rights
Section 8.5. Recent Changes and Logs
Section 8.6. Media Reports and Uploads
Section 8.7. Wiki Data and Tools
Section 8.8. Redirects and Random Pages
Section 8.9. High-Use Pages
Section 8.10. Page Tools
Section 8.11. Other Special Pages
Section 8.12. Special Pages Grouped by Task
Part 3: Running and Administering MediaWiki
Chapter 9. Installing MediaWiki
Section 9.1. Before You Begin
Section 9.2. Installing the Prerequisites
Section 9.3. Installing MediaWiki
Section 9.4. Important Optional Features
Section 9.5. A Tour of MediaWiki's Files
Section 9.6. Maintaining the Code
Chapter 10. Practical Wiki Design
Section 10.1. Adopting MediaWiki
Section 10.2. Planning
Section 10.3. Establishing Standards
Section 10.4. Governance
Section 10.5. Integrating with Other Websites
Chapter 11. Configuring MediaWiki: An Overview
Section 11.1. Administrative Roles
Section 11.2. Advanced Page Constructs
Section 11.3. Special Pages for Sysops and Bureaucrats
Section 11.4. System Messages
Section 11.5. Cascading Stylesheets
Section 11.6. JavaScript
Section 11.7. Configuration Settings
Section 11.8. Extensions
Section 11.9. Skinning
Section 11.10. SQL Programming
Section 11.11. Maintenance Scripts
Chapter 12. Controlling Wiki Features
Section 12.1. Users
Section 12.2. User Rights and Permissions
Section 12.3. Article Content
Section 12.4. Configuring the Editing of Articles
Section 12.5. Maintaining Articles
Section 12.6. Configuring Namespaces
Section 12.7. File Uploads
Section 12.8. Search
Section 12.9. Special Page List
Section 12.10. Database Configuration
Section 12.11. Email Configuration
Section 12.12. JavaScript Configuration
Section 12.13. Logging and Debugging
Chapter 13. Changing Appearances
Section 13.1. The Basics
Section 13.2. Menus
Section 13.3. Search Box
Section 13.4. Tables of Contents
Section 13.5. External Link Appearance
Section 13.6. Page Credits
Section 13.7. Overall Look and Feel
Section 13.8. International Support
Chapter 14. Installing Extensions
Section 14.1. Obtaining Extensions
Section 14.2. Installing an Extension
Section 14.3. Recommended Extensions
Chapter 15. Creating Extensions
Section 15.1. Overview of Extension Types
Section 15.2. Creating a Variable
Section 15.3. Creating a Parser Function
Section 15.4. Creating a Tag Extension
Section 15.5. Behavior Changes
Section 15.6. Creating a Special Page
Section 15.7. Useful Tasks for Extension Writers
Section 15.8. Creating a Skin
Section 15.9. Publishing an Extension
Section 15.10. Other Extension Topics
Section 15.11. Finding a MediaWiki Programmer
Chapter 16. Wiki Administration
Section 16.1. Maintenance Scripts
Section 16.2. Backups
Section 16.3. Upgrades
Section 16.4. Read-Only Wiki
Section 16.5. Performance and Scaling
Section 16.6. Security
Section 16.7. Vandalism
Section 16.8. Common Maintenance Tasks
Section 16.9. For More Information

This book was a mammoth effort. IE 5 is a very robust web development platform, and to present all the features and particulars of this product is a tall order.

This book offers lots of information to the casual developer as well as a good object model, behavior and XML reference to the hardcore web application developer using IE5.

The examples provided (there is an accompanying CD also) are very portable and may be modified to provide a base code for your web apps.

This is a "must have" as a reference for any developer using IE5.

This book brought to the reader a great style of learning a computer language. Easy enough for a beginner, however, it was challenging enough for a previous html writier. I really enjoyed this book due to the graphic natures and the simplicity to understand the contents. Wonderful explainations followed by very understandable examples of what should have been done. The glossary in this book gives great definitions that are very comprihendable. Also, this book is not a must read the whole thing to understand kind of writing. You can go through whatever chapter you would like. Each chapter contains its original context. It specfies one objective. Overall i would rate this the best HTML learning book I have ever purchased.

From describing, exploring and the integration on Java Script, this comphrehensive book provides JavaScript programmer a better idea in designing Web site. I love this book as it is well-illustrated and emphasizing on the clarification of Web Design. The author has paid enough attention to clearly describe the crucial points that widely needed.

This is an excellent DirXML for those that wishes to implement DirXML in their environment. It is meant to be an introductory book for the product and not an (very) in-depth look at each of the drivers (there are just too many, especially given the size of the book already!). Much of the customization each site needs is really doing XML coding, which is really beyond the scope of the book (and the product, really).

I'm a Web content editor. I prepare Web pages for a corporate intranet. Netscape Navigator is the only browser in use. This book is the only reference that I use because it helps me understand how my HTML code will appear on a user's computer screen. The book is clearly written, well - indexed, and the CDROM has useful information, also

As someone who makes a living dealing with SGML, I can't recommend this book highly enough for anyone who has to get into the details of the language. The SGML Handbook is the Bible, but it's rather short on examples (ahem). On the other hand, among books for acquiring serious SGML understanding on one's own, Parseme 1st has been, for me, the most useful by a mile. I think this is because it can be read either straight through, as a textbook, or in bits and pieces, as a reference. It's extremely well-organized, and any time you want a precise explanation of CONREF or marked sections but don't want to get distracted from the business at hand, there it is.

On the minus side, the programming paradigms it presents predate some standards such as DOM and SAX that promise to dominate XML processing. But the ideas behind these are clearly present, DOM in the Python paradigm and SAX in the Perl. And don't worry that it's not an XML book: basic knowledge of XML _is_ SGML knowledge. If you read this book, even without the sections on programming, you'll be in a position to understand the strengths and limitations of XML very well.

For me, this is an indispensable book.

This is one of my personal favorite HTML books. It's style is really technical, so many people will hate it. For them, I would recommend a more visual book, such as HTML in an Instant, or Teach Yourself Visually HTML. Those two help you get started quickly, without getting bogged down in excessive details. But for those who like a more systematic approach, going through the individual properties of each tag, this book is for you. It has extensive code snippets, details about usage, and a very clear format. It is somewhat dry reading, but the information is really packed in there if you are willing to dig it out. Very nice.

Designed and written specifically to enable librarians to utilize XML to create and organize documents, fine-tune documents with special characters, using Cascading Style Sheets, and displaying information on a library website, "Using XML: a How-To-Do-It Manual and CD-ROM For Librarians by Kwong Bor NG (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, CUNY) truly lives up to its promise as a 'librarian friendly' instructional manual which deftly combines a clearly written, step-by-step presentation with an accompanying CD-ROM which reproduces every exercise so librarians can compare their work on a chapter-by-chapter basis to insure that the documents they create are displaying properly. Simply stated, "Using XML" is an essential and very strongly recommended instructional reference that is a necessity for adequately training library staff members to make the most out of XML in the areas of technical services, metadata, system libraries, and library website development.