Markup Languages Books

Web Design by the seat of your pants describes my "design" experience. Couldn't have done it without this book. I had no prior experience, but thanks to this book, I managed a decent site with over 6000 hits in less than a year :) Takes you thru each step by "learn as you go" method, it's understandable, explains HTML codes and makes your transition into a design program very easy. Originally borrowed a friends book, and when she needed it back, I couldn't buy my own copy fast enough.

If you take the time to implement the book's three projects, you will come away with a good understanding of HTML. Presented for the pure novice, both in HTML, the internet, and programming.( Sometimes to a fault, but they leave no one behind. ) The references provided to active web sites for various kinds of information and examples are extremely useful. The help on search engine registration is great !!

This is a great book for the newcomer to HTML. I would probably not recommend this book to an experienced programmer, since it presents the material very gradually, a bite at a time.

The author begins with a little internet history, and gives you the contextual framework that HTML fits into. He then procedes to walk you step by step through the construction of a simple website. He really holds your hand so you can't get lost. With his conversational tone and patient pace he makes you feel at ease. There is no reason to be intimidated by HTML or afraid of it, since it is not difficult, as this book proves.

Next he walks you through the development of a more advanced website. He discusses design principles along the way, so you learn a bit about what works and doesn't work on the web.

Finally, you build a third website. Each exercise builds upon the ones before. Nothing in the book is difficult, and it's virtually error free. I think I found one code error. Quite impressive. The only thing I would change about the book is that I'd include a more advanced layout using nested tables at the end of the book. Tables are extremely important.

One of the appendices in the back is a refernce of all (or most) of the HTML tags. I keep refering to it.

The CD is cool. It contains a pile of software you can try out. You'll use one of the programs to create an image map. This was the only place in the book that got me confused. His instructions didn't quite match up with what was on the CD. But just being creative and exploring I was able to figure it out. And if you don't know what an image map is just trust me, they're cool. You'll never believe how easy they are until you do one.

If you're a quick learner or an experienced computer user & would rather have a book that moves faster, I would recommend "New Perspectives on Creating Web Pages with HTML" by Patrick Carey (Jim Carey's brother). Actually, even if you buy the hands on book get the new perspectives book too. It's always a good idea to have more than one book when learning any technical skill.

I salute the author. I know it's not easy writing a computer book that's as enjoyable to read and use as this one is. It's a gem.

This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn HTML. The authour takes you at a steady pace -- from creating your own personal web site to designing a busniess web site. Although the authour does not discuss JAVA and JAVAscript in detail, what he offers in relation to HTML could be improved on. The same goes for CSS. The authour could have perhaps pointed out additional books and references dealing with CSS. But on the whole this is a great reference book. Certainly, it is a book that you must have on your bookshelf, along with all your programming books and manuals.

I found the book very helpful. The practical life like projects help you get a clear understanding of steps involved in developing a web site. The CD included was very helpful too

A real good book for a BEGINER..

All I can say about it is that it is very helpful in setting up my homepage. It helped me put everything I wanted onto my hp and then some that I didn't even know of. This is a great book.

I learned how to write HTML with the original edition of this text. The best way to learn is by doing. If you go through this text page by page you will become an excellent HTML author. I'm surprised that programmed texts are not used more often to teach various aspects of computer science. Be persistent! You'll learn well.

With this book I learned all the beginning steps to online HTML. Now 2 years and over 100 websites later I'm still going strong.

I found that this book, although I am only part way through, to be very educational. I had no knowledge of HTML prior to purchasing this book, but found that I was quickly able to begin using what I had learned. I would highly recommend this text to anyone who is interested in beginning to learn HTML, for they will quickly achieve the needed skills for writing web pages.

I started out knowing nothing of HTML and when I was finished with this book I had an excellent start on web page making. I recommend anyone wanting to learn how to create web pages, go out and get this book.

This is an excelent book. The section about MsSQL server and XML is excelent. I highly recommended

Thiru Thangarathinam is one of the few authors out there who truly know how to teach and convey the knowledge they are presenting. The manner in which he approaches and expounds a topic should be formulated and used in all books. Most books these days simply show how to do the simplest of tasks and never provide real world scenarios. But guess what, in the real world your tasks are never that simple.

Thiru does a great job in not only showing "how to" but also provides best practice tips so that you know "when to", "when not to", "when you do be sure to". These are the things I need to know in the real world. Without a doubt this was one of the best technical books I have read in a while. I will definitely buy any future books that he authors. Glad to see he's a fellow Phoenician also!

This book was very useful. It covered a wide variety of topics and explained most topics very well. I would have liked the book to get into some more subjects a little more in depth, but when you are covering so many topics that is a little difficult to do. This book did cover a lot of the new XML classes in the 2.0 framework. I would have liked some more info on the sql server 2005 xml stuff, particulary xquery. The book talked about OPENXML and even made the statement that you should use .nodes for these types of queries now. But it made no mention of how to do so. Overall, this was a very useful text.

This is an excellent book covering the XML features of ASP.NET. It is very professional but, not for any beginner. It has the first 2 chapters which pretty much cover the basics but, throughout the rest of the book you need to know what you are doing. It is very detailed but is not really "step-by-step" like 1-2-3...It will walk you through how to do something through reading; so if your not one of those people who don't like to read, I wouldnt fully recommend this book to you. It shows a many screenshots in there so it makes it fairly simple to follow along. The book has almost 500 pages that are completely dedicated to the XML features of ASP.NET. If you are willing to take out the reading glasses and read a little bit. Overall, its an outstanding book!

I would recommend this book to anyone working on ASP.NET 2.0. XML is the integral part of .NET framework and used widely on all projects.
Book explains XML classes, Data Validation, XML transformation, XML and ADO.NET, Web Services and use of XML in Web.Config and Configuration files.

Das Buch (in englischer Sprache) erklärt sehr genau die Details. Auch als Nachschlagewerk sehr gut geeignet.

While it's difficult to separate my excitement over SVG from the contents of this book, it's quite possible that the two are so directly related as to be inseperable. Within a few hours of buying this book, I was producing and printing extremely high quality images that I had found all but impossible to produce w/other technologies (JPEG codecs, etc.). If you are familiar with the basic mark-up language concepts, then you should have no trouble gleaning the essential elements of SVG.

After an excellent introductory chapter that provides a general overview, subsequent chapters cover aspects of SVG in detail, such as how to create basic shapes or generate text. One thing I particularly liked was that the author mostly uses a single example (SVG code to create a picture of a cat) to illustrate new concepts, creating a sense of cohesiveness that tied the chapters together. This book is *not* just a scattershot collection of essays that characterizes so many other technical books -- the text is clear, concise, and to the point. Finally, there is a very uselful appendix that summarizes the most frequently used attributes.

Perhaps the only drawback is that if you are coming to SVG from a non-technical background, you might find this book a little too gear-headed for your liking. For technical readers that want a thorough introduction (i.e., not a PhD thesis) to this exciting and useful technology, however, this book is a must.

The book provides a solid introduction to SVG through an increasingly complex set of examples of SVG use. It is well written and edited, it also provides a thorough description of the entirety of the standard. What it lacks is more depth in the area of recipes for commonly used image effects. It also needs more advice about how complex SVGs are organized and built for efficiency. I understand that SVG is still on the adoption curve, so perhaps we could see these improvements in a second version of the book when the standard has picked up a little more.

For the time being the book earns it's four stars by providing a nice learning curve and having high quality examples that demonstrates the concepts effectively.

This subject perfectly fits O'Reilly's "In a Nutshell" tradition, for SVG itself is just that: Web design, including text, graphics, animation, and programming, all in a nutshell -- concise, pithy, simple, and deep.

SVG, a refactoring of several generations of Web technology and a public standard approved by the World Wide Web Consortium, can be authored without any special tools and without any special background, other than the immediately productive background provided by this book.

Eisenberg swiftly, but with diverting variety, illuminates the process of drawing, assembling shapes, creating textures, transforming coordinates, structuring documents, enriching text, creating reusable components, fine tuning color, animating shapes and colors and structures, creating lighting effects, and programming user interactions. All of this is built upon the simple SVG architecture: arrange your elements in a hierarchy and set their attributes.

There is an art to conveying important points without belaboring them and Eisenberg moves from example to example with perfect pitch.

The book also contains an eight page section with full color images.

Some people have complained about the lack of reference books on SVG. The SVG reference is in fact widely available, all 500+ pages of it, on the W3C site. What is really needed, and would have been useful in this or any SVG book, is a five page guide to using that reference -- how do I, in ten seconds or so, determine whether this element can be a child of that element, or if this element supports this attribute?

While I was developing SVG Composer the only book available was Watt's "Designing SVG Web Graphics" (another fine book with a rather different pitch).. When Eisenberg's work came out I happily relearned SVG, doing every example and picking up any number of new tricks.

I do have some reservations: I didn't care for the cat drawing (hated it!) and the final two chapters on generating and serving SVG seemed aimed at the wrong audience (adepts at Java, servlets, and Perl) though the material itself is perfectly fine.

At first I had the same feeling about the appendices, which include brief samples of subjects from programming to fonts to matrix algebra, that surely Eisenberg was misjudging his audience. However he may have things just right -- SVG may well become the greatest crossover hit ever in computer languages, a lingua franca for logic and art.

Not a bad book if you want to learn just the basics; however, I think you can easily find everything in this book on the Web if you take the time to dig around. If you're looking for a book to get you started, this one will do nicely. But if you're looking for more advanced/esoteric SVG material, I'd keep looking.

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, Web Design Tools And Techniques by Peter Kentie (author of the monthly "DTP Maserclass" column in Macworld Nederland) is a comprehensive, "user friendly" guide to all aspects of effective web designs. The relevant subjects covered in accessible detail include creating a storyboard or diagram structure; designing effective navigation systems; implementing effective user testing within the limiting constraints of a budget; applying cutting edge methods without alienating visitors; minimizing user wait times (this alone is worth the entire cost of this outstanding reference); and utilizing site statistics as web design planning data. If you want your website to provide superior content, structure design, visual appeal, enhanced with invisible technology and visitor ease-of-use, then read and study Peter Kentie's Web Design Tools And Techniques!

If you you know anything about webdesign, don't even think of buying this book. It can bore you to death, with its sometimes dated terminologies, and fascinations at technologies that are now dead. I don't recommend this book if you're interested in the process of web design or if you have the slightest experience. If you allready know some webdesign skills and are interested more in the process, "Web Redesign, workflow that works"(kelly Goto & Emily Cotler) is the book for you. If You don't know web design and would like to start somewhere, Lynda weinman's "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Hands-On Training " is a great place to start.

In Web Graphics Tools And Techniques, expert webpage designer Peter Kentie provides a profusely illustrated, full- color guide to the development and utilization of HTML tags to make a web site functional and aesthetically pleasing. Additionally, Kentie offers a wealth of clearly demonstrated, practical, "user friendly" information on advanced all the current techniques that an HTML programmer must master, including formatting tables, converting copy to HTML files, understanding how to use GIF and JPEG image file formats, integrating typography into design, creating backgrounds, designing effective web page navigational devices, and more. Web Graphics Tools And Techniques is a highly recommended instruction and reference guide for intermediate and advanced HTML programmers and website designers.

Unlike other web design books that mainly seem to focus on how to spell HTML-tags, this book really discusses what web design is about. How can I use HTML-functions and graphics to spice up my site and get attention from the site's visitors ? What are the choices I have, and what do I have to consider when making these choices ? How to deal with different browser types ? All these topics and many more are extensively covered. The book is not only a good start-up for newbies, but also a guide for advanced web designers. Subjects are well organized and easy to find. I've seen many web design books so far, but none got even close to this one. And of course the glossy (but functional) appearance of the book adds to the fun of using it.

I have spent lots of times to look for a book that is written for graphic designer who wants to design the web pages, I find out that some web design books are too complicate for the beginners and of course, some are to easy for the web masters. Only Peter Kentie's book I believe that is designed for both beginner and advanced web designers.

At last! A book that addresses a key instructional and informational need in the localization (l10n) and internationalization (i18n) industries. To date, there is no single authoritative source on the subject of XML l10n and i18n, despite the fact that XML is a key driver behind the growth of the Internet, B2B, content management and large-scale data exchange and will be increasingly important in the future, and central to e-commerce and globalization in general.

Up to now, most writings on XML, that I have seen, are generally non-l10n and i18n specific, and only make reference to these areas in passing, as part of a wider technological discussion. There is development information available on the Internet about XML standards, which includes sections on i18n, but this is divorced from any business logic or discussion on practical deployments within the localization industry. The best discussions I have seen on the possible applications of XML tend to be piecemeal, such as white papers or magazine articles in publications. This book changes all that.

The structure is very good - comprehensive without being overwhelming and it is well thought out and illustrated with code samples and screen shots. Content ranges from a practical and clear education on XML technology, through to where XML i18n and l10n fits into the product development cycle, content authoring and localization processes. Central to the book's appeal is it's practicality and relevance to modern day industry developments such as XLIFF, ITS, online translation, translation memory use and even WML and Flash too! The book is aimed at doing, not at theorizing, and it fills a key gap in the market.

Potential for this book’s influence is huge given the trends in business models and product/service deployment globally over the Internet. I think this book could become more important than Nadine Kano’s "Developing International Software for Windows 95 and NT". It should be on the bookshelf of every serious content development house NOW, nestling up to "The Lexus and The Olive Tree" (Thomas Friedman) and "Translating Into Success" (Robert C. Sprung, Eds.) as a well-thumbed, coffee-stained source of reference for anyone seriously interested in developing and maintaining a globalization presence.

I would certainly recommend the book to all content developers, and translation tools development teams. I would envisage the book could be useful for content authors and developers of all types - DB architects, content managers, documentation writers, ML website developers, etc. Anyone who needs to develop, manage and maintain global content, which has to be localized and deployed in multiple languages.

Yves Savourel has a firm grasp of the technical aspects of XML development - completed by a wealt of experience in the product globalization arena. The writing style in XML internationalizaion and Localization is clear and unambiguous - easily understood by the novice and guru alike, and using terms that are familiar to anyone working in the internationalization and localization industries. The book's content is comprehensive with useful and practical examples, directly applicable to the real world. Thorough, interesting examination of one of critical development formats for entrprise, database and internet computing, the book is much needed! I hope there is more to come.

This is a great book for the 'doers' in the product globalization technology fields. Well worth the money. Extremely credible combination of industry guru Yves Savourel's content with some additional flavoring of content from globalization expert Ultan O'Broin of Oracle Corporation provide a wide-ranging discourse on how to design, develop and build XML content that is multilingual and fully globalized and easily translated. For the first time we see the words "pseudo-translation" mentioned in a book at this level (please take note Nancy Kano et al) as well as the treatment of the localization process as a business activity (and not some kind of warm armpit partnership between developers and translators). Brilliant. I hope the book heralds a new departure in content creation and also attitudes in the internationalization and localization industry - it's badly needed. My only quibble is the lack of CD-ROM with example XML files that we might have used to evaluate our own XML tools and processes with to compare with the books findings.

This book was truly a pleasure to read. A good writing style, a lot of information, and a tight editing job that really makes both the messenger and the message look better. What more could a person ask for?

XML is definitely out there, and it seems to be a lot more than just a buzzword. Finally there is a book that makes it seem more accessible to international markets.

Well, not everything was perfect. But it was so much better than some of the other books out there, that it definitely deserves 4/5 stars.

Yves Savourel's book on XML Internationalization and Localization is an excellent resource and definitely worth reading for anyone working with XML in an international environment.

I found the first part of the book especially helpful, the second part is very focussed on translation processes, assuming that web content internationalization and localization occurs in a similar fashion to software product development, which is not necessarily the case. "XML Tools for Internationalization and Localization" might have been a more appropriate title.

The comparison of translation tools is very long and difficult to read, with unnecessary screenshots showing all samples. A tabular overview on standards compliance and supported features, together with one set of testcases, would be sufficient. The XML database chapter, on the other hand, could be expanded with more information on native XML databases.

Typographical conventions leave room for improvement, including the choice of fonts, indentation in structured example and the overuse of line continuation characters in places where line breaks are not significant.

I'm always hungry for new knowledge as a web designer, looking for that one trick to make my site either faster, easier to understand, accessible, and better. Sure, you could scour the web for weeks, looking for all the little tips and tricks that makes a good website great, or you can get this book and discover it all easily. All from a person who has, for many years, made the web a better place.

Molly's attention to detail, her teaching methods, and approach to giving these secrets and tips makes is utterly easy to digest and remember. By all means, this book is a treasure trove of knowledge that belongs in every web designer's personal collection.

Great book!
Very complete overview and many snippets of experience.
I only called it "in the Rough" because of the paper & binding... it isn't shiney, and no color prints, but the info is the Diamond, and worth much more. As they say, "Don't judge a book by its cover"!
Molly's books are always worth keeping. She delivers. =)

Cal

This is one of the few web books that has great breadth and gives sufficient depth to help not only the novice, but a seasoned web developer. This book has been quite helpful for the web team I am on to understand what current best practices are and how we get to this level.

There are so many poorly developed sites on the web it is great to have a book at hand to point to when needing to explain how to do it right. Molly's book is one of the quickest ways to start building web sites right

To be certain there are some invaluable hints in this book. But since the items covered are just spots of information from here and there around the landscape of web and design standards you need to check this book out in person to make sure you are getting your moneys worth. In particular I liked the material on CSS layout, but I was disappointed with coverage of basic topics like web safe colors, which requires a more in-depth discussion than the few paragraphs presented. Worth the look, but be sure to look before you buy.

If you have already used HTML to make some web pages, then this book might be of value. That is, if you plan on adding more pages or perhaps you want to maintain the website hosting these pages? The book talks about how to handle this next level of complexity. The author does not bog you down in the fine details of HTML syntax. Instead, she gives many suggestions ["secrets"] on making a logical arrangement of content. Like giving simple, intuitive names to the directory hierarchy and files. So that users can traverse your website easily.

Typically, most of the suggestions are of this style. The payoff is often easier long term maintenance. Like her ideas on effectively using CSS and XHTML. Again, like with HTML itself, you need some minimal prior acquaintance with these packages, to take advantage of this book.

This is the best HTML book I have ever read. It is the best of the best. Get it!

Teach Yourself HTML is a simple guide, almost too simple. Though most of the basic rules and tags are explained, which is good for the beginner, it's bias in Netscape's favor, which, down the road, can lead to IE conflicts. The chapters parts are listed in logical order, however, the chapters themselves don't seem to follow a logical path. Nothing is mentioned about web page design, pros or cons, and many of the illustrations don't give a good sense of good web design. All in all, the book is good for beginners who don't mind making a few mistakes down the road. It can get the student a head start toward more advanced HTML.

This book is execllent. Shows the commands to use and what it will look like on the web page. It's in plain english so even HTML dummies (like myself) will have no problems. AND...it's cheap.

This book teaches html in a manner that is both easy and fun. After reading this book, you'll understand the basics of how to create a web page without having to wade through tedious details of what each and every tag does. As you learn to create bigger and better pages you will find yourself refering frequently to this book for reference. Since you must learn to walk before you can run, this is the best book with which to take your first steps.

In this day and age, you can easily spend $50.00 on a book designed to introduce you to some small part of the computer experience; a book that might well sit on your shelf. This book, HTML Publishing on The World Wide Web, is clear, concise, well written, easy to read, an excellent introduction to HTML, and CHEAP!

The Code works the examples are easy to follow and the title of the book says IE5 Dynamic HTML which means that it has to work with vbscript. this is another excellent Wrox book

Although web browsers have evolved beyond IE5, this is still a great book. It is well organized and easily referenced. I keep it handy for the quick look up need without having to go into the MSDN library. There is a heavy emphasis on VBScript. It is worth the investment.

I knew some (D)HTML before buying this book, but I was looking for a book I could use when I needed to make something besides "normal" DHTML (use on many sites). AND THIS IS IT!

The books first half is about Dynamic HTML (methods, events ect.), and the second half is a really great reference!

This gave me the opportunity to make better pages than on so many other sites, so if you're looking for a book where you don't have to read many pages of useless stuff before getting to the point, then this is defiantly what I would advise you to buy! (A great combination with this book could be "Professional VB6 Web Programming" - Wrox)

This book is very readable, gets right to the point, and will not put you to sleep. Several others (such as Inside DHTML) are so anhydrous they'll suck up all the rain in Seattle. This book however is a great intro to DHTML. You don't have to be an expert in HTML to get a lot out of this book. Has good appendices on HTML, DHTML, JScript, and VBScript.

Although the subject matter is well covered, all the code examples that I saw are written in VBScript. That renders the book effectively useless if you code your client side script in javascript (which is the industry standard).
If you are a javascript coder then get Danny Goodman's Dynamic HTML, published by O'Reilly.

Clear, concise, and packed with practical knowledge. I work with XML, XSLT, and C# for a living, and this book had me using XSLT to whip up WordprocessingML documents in no time. I especially appreciated learning how to turn off the default "Word" display of ML documents in Internet Explorer. I'm also using Evan's great XSLT that mimics Word's "data-only" output format-- as part of a process to validate foreign tag sets in WordML documents. Thank you!

This book answers a very specific need - you are working with the new Office xml formats. If you are directly reading or writing WordML, SpeeadsheetML, or the other xml formats - stop what you are doing, buy this book, and read it. It will put you miles ahead.

Clear, concise, and about as complete as it can be with Microsoft's incomplete documentation to work from. I had it open on my desk next to me the whole time I was working with these file formats.

It has some stuff for InfoPath and Office WebServices. I didn't read those part but the rest is so well written I would bet that part is indespensible too.

This book provides a good overview of Microsoft's Office XML formats. In addition to covering these formats, it also provides some useful material related to Microsoft Office smart documents, an extension mechanism for Microsoft Office applications.

Note: Microsoft Office XML is completely distinct from the Open Office.org XML format (OASIS OpenDocument) which is not covered in this book.

I've read the Addison Wesley book on Microsoft's new Office XML standards and this book is much much better. The book covers four applications; Word, Excel, Access and Infopath. It covers both the storage XML format for Word and Excel, as well as the use of XML within Word and Excel itself from the end-user side. The coverage of the storage format is excellent, and that, being a developer, is something I can appreciate.

For end-users of Word and Excel who are just looking to consume XML in your document or spreadsheet, or to mine XML using Infopath, this is a well written book that is worth your money and you can ignore the technical segments. For engineers looking to work with the new Microsoft XML storage formats you will find a lot to like here, and you may just find some cool things to do with XML to do on the forward facing end-user side of the house.

Hurrah! Microsoft has said for several years that it strongly supports XML. Well MS Office 2003 is one of the first major products that conforms to this. As you probably know, earlier versions read and wrote to Microsoft's own doc format. A binary format. Third party developers then had to write code to read and write files in this format. Doable, but certainly an aggravation to some, given the complexity of the format.

Which is why MS Office 2003 was eagerly awaited. Now, XML is a fully supported data format. It also lets you see in an easy and direct way the complexity of deciphering the doc format, if you had never tried to do that firsthand.

Here, the book walks you through the various XML outputs and their associated schemas. There is the usual XML verbosity. (No surprises here.) But you can now read, in plaintext, how the suite structures its code in an OO fashion. So much nicer!

Not that the book is trivial. Many examples show how a lot of XML's capabilities are used. Like namespaces, XSLT, XSL and XPath. A reassuring point is that your needs might not have to extend to all these usages. The book also has many very simple XML examples that could be germane.