Markup Languages Books

If you are doing a J2EE or JSP project, XMLC is worthy of consideration as an alternative to JSP. It works with any Java app server. Unlike JSP, it perfectly cleanly separates the View of a Model/View/Controller architecture.

This book is written by the XMLC code author. It is well laid out. While, most of the information in the book can be found online, the book lays it out more succinctly and provides a desk reference.

If you are frustrated with the messiness of JSPs, if you are considering XMLC for a project, or if you are using XMLC for a project, this book is a must have.

David Young's Enhydra XMLC Application Development presents XMLC development by first outlining the advantages of XMLC and the Enhydra platform. Then Young introduces progressively more complex development scenarios using XMLC and illustrates each topic with working examples. Enhydra XMLC Application Development is comprehensive, exceptionally well organized, and an ideal instructional text and a useful, long term reference work. User Level: Intermediate-Advanced, 450 pages.

Detailed. Gave a good overview and examples of XHTML and the different versions used. I like the design tips and extra projects.

I used this book for my XHTML class and the exercises were fantastic. Conformed with HTML 4 and XHTML 1.1 standards, and showed validation for all "flavors".

I started my VBA programming from zero for my department needs by using Google search. Although the job could be done, the process was time consuming (for search) and left questions unanswered.
If you want to save yourself time then this is a good book to start with. The layout is pretty good, and explain things clearly. I browsed the book but didn't read every chapter but found it's informative.
Don't expect to receive a lot of examples, but again you can find everything you need through web search.
Advance users should look for something else, like Professional Excel Development: The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications (which I owned too).
I seldom bought computer books for long time (hey, educated by web search is free) since it's expensive and out-date too quickly. This book and above are what I'm willing to invest my money in for past few years. Beside, Amazon price is very competitive.

Still not finished, but I have been mostly very happy with the book so far. The section on automation was a key interest, and proved valuable, though I was hoping for more on the shell function, and identifying the correct string to open a wider variety of applications.

I was confused with a comment in chapter 17 concerning security popups in Outlook, that...

"When Excel attempts to send an e-mail message using Outlook, the application responds with a message to ask permission, as shown in Figure 17-12. The only way to prevent this message from coming up is by setting the macro security setting to low."

My experience to date is that digitally signing the project prevents the popups from Outlook 2003, even if the project is located in Excel. I haven't yet come to any section of the book that covers digital signatures, and the assertion that the only solution is to take the ill advised step of setting macro security to low makes me suspect that it might not be forthcoming.

Chapter 12 provided a lot of detail on interacting with Access, but some of the code seemed untested (undeclared variable and mis-spelled arguments in the two CreateTextFile subs). The chapter works as a good reference, but made for difficult reading.

Despite the above gripes, I have learned a tremendous amount from the book so far, and am anxious to come back for more. I liked the chapter on Class Modules, thought the native file handling in VBA was very well covered, learned a lot in the material on the Windows Scripting Host, and feel the text builds nicely from the basic to more involved topics. All in all one of the better VBA books I have read.

This is a great book that covers a lot of what you will need to know programming wise for web design on older browsers in HTML 3. We still largely use HTML 3 even today, and this book still has much relevence, however, some parts of this book are written for the much older mosaic browsers and are out of date. For a more up to date book, see the HTML 4 version of this book

I picked up this book as a newbie in HTML programming. After reading this book, I am able to do things I never dreamed of. These guys lay out questions people have in HTML and then go right over them, discussing exactly how to do it. I found it as a wonderful Beginner to Intermediate book. It's also a very awesome reference book, it doesn't completely rely on all of the code that's in the book. Very nice book. I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to learn HTML.

I enjoyed this book as an introduction to HTML. It is lucid, straightforward, and has reasonable examples of good and better practice. It is also light enough to lift! I'm tired of "modern" computer reference books that strain whatever parts of your wrist the mouse and keyboard have left intact. Just bought a copy for reference at work.

Creating your own web page can be as easy or as complicated as you make it. Even the simplest page can benefit from a solid understanding of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the system of marking a document so that web browsers will present it well. My preference is a bare-bones approach, with few graphics and simpleformatting. Even so, this book helped me make big improvements in theappearance of my pages. Someone putting together a fancier page willbenefit even more. If you are new to HTML, this book will introduce you to the basics and show you exactly how to create a professional-looking page. If you are already familiar with HTML, it provides good suggestions for making your page look better, and is a useful reference. If you are a maniac, never mind

If you want to make your web pages interactive, this is the book for you! Alex and Chris take you through DHTML step by step, and show you how to use the power behind DHTML. Forget all of the other new web programming languages, DHTML is the way to go, and "Instant Netscape Dynamic HTML : Nc4 Edition" is the way to go.

This book is very good for DHTML! Lots of screenshots and examples of how things work. Takes you through Layers, CSS's, the object model of the browser, moving elements of a page, changing all kinds of elements through use of DHTML, remember that this is a reference book, not meant for HTML beginners, and a knowledge of programming might help, but isn't necessary, because of the indepth examples. For DHTML it is the only book you'll ever need, paired with the internet explorer edition you'll have perfect pages with DHTML.

I had been developing software for about 10 years... and am just finishing up a grad degree in CS after going back to school... If found this book to be a LOT better than all the hand outs that my prof put together... It's a great book to give you an overview of all the problems in mobile computing... and a lot of the answers... (not all :-)). As the other reviewer says, it's priced a bit high at $85.00, but I found it to be well worth the price I paid... hopefully the prof takes my recommendation and uses it as the text book for future classes...

Please excuse English. This is a very good book for learning mobile applications in US and Europe. Also, a lot of good new things on UML and XML. But, I would have liked to see more on the Japanese Mobile development. I think this is good as a text book in class room or reference. I would like to have more introductions to UML than 1 chapter. The UML is more advanced in this book. Also lot of good location and voice informations.

What a delight to be able to actually "read" a book on VBA.
The writer is lucent and accessible and does not try to con you into the belief that VBA is a 15 hr.learning curve. Explanations are clear and the text will serve as an excellent reference source for years to come.
Watch out Mr Spreadsheet/Mr Excel here is a writer who not only knows her subject inside out but is able to impart this knowledge in a painless fashion that others simply cannot!

A very useful book for me. Her style and organization make an excellent complement to the more Microsoft-inspired style and organization of material of other experts. Her "warp" to their "woof." She's got a new one on Excel coming out in late 2005 and I'll definitely get it.

This is really a good book but it is not a primary reference for XML, nor would you want to learn from scratch here. For these functions I recommend Professional XML by Anderson et.al. (currently mis-identified by Amazon as by Boumphrey et.al). The strength of this book is that St. Laurent really knows why things are the way they are in XML and how to use it effectively. He writes clearly and gives real good advice and insights. The examples are excellent, but it would have been nice to have more of them. I read this book cover-to-cover and enjoyed it.

We used this book as the basis for a quick class on XML here at work. Of all the XML books we have reviewed for this class this book follow the XML 3W commettes standard 1.0 the closest of any of them.It is clear and consise with good examples given through out. It does a good job pointing up problems with non validating parseing tools too.

A real educational experience. Also a well defined book. Be ready to learn when you read this book.

I am new to HTML/XHTML and wanted a definitive reference book that told me about EVERY HTML tag - and exactly what were and weren't the correct ways to use them. After buying and reading about 5 other similar books, I finally got to this one and it is exactly right. All the other books cover useful snippets here and there, but they aren't exhaustive.

Note that this book isn't good for learning the basics. Rather, it is useful reference once you know the basics and need a source that tells you authoritatively that this such and such tag (e.g., 'p') does or doesn't support such and such attribute (e.g., 'padding') - fyi, it doesn't, except thru the 'style' attribute.

If that's what you need, then this is what you should buy.

AMAZON, SHAME ON YOU!!!!! You should state what edition and the date copyrighted in the book information and indicate whether there are newer editions.

Watch out. Though Amazon has it covered by the "look inside", the book entitled only HTML is the 3rd edition of a book that is in it's sixth Edition. Amazon has combined all the reviews for all the editions. This should not be done!!!!!!! I have always felt comfortable buying from Amazon, no longer. I did have a seller (ordered through Amazon)send me this edition for the full price of the 6th. He got the sixth to me, but it took my time to get it corrected. The 3rd edition is probably not even worth the $10 for the used edition, but is certainly not worth the $20 for the new. Don't be fooled! I can't believe Amazon is stooping to this sort of a con. The most serious problem is that much of what you learn in this edition is being put out to pasture in the next 5 years.


There is a World Wide Consortium that is trying to standardize language and browswers. HTML is being replace in the interim with XHTML and eventually XML. A new, more powerful, formating language, CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is replacing any formating in HTML.

Many of the reviews you see are for the 6th edition. It does have errors (it doesn't stick to the more stringent XHTML as it should, and the redundancy is annoying. Castro's is annoying in that she sectionalizes the code and it's not clear at first what she's doing. I haven't yet seen the others that are offered.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this book will teach you how to code web pages using HTML and CSS. This is a reference manual that exhaustively discusses the mechanics of coding web pages, but it doesn't walk you through the process step by step. For that, I recommend O'Reilly's "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML." The benefit of this book is that it covers every aspect of HTML and CSS, including some which the W3 consortium has approved but no browser yet supports. It's best as a reference book for those already familiar with web page coding. It's full of surprises and "I didn't know I could do that!" moments, given its comprehensiveness.

I have the 3rd edition and use it most everyday in my job. I figured it would be a bit outdated so I bought this latest version. The new version is essentially the exact same as the old version and I feel like I wasted my money. It's also missing the handy quick reference the older version had. However, if you don't have an earlier version, I would definitely recommend it. It's indispensable.