Markup Languages Books

Overall, this book is great. I found it well written and easy to understand and follow. The only complaint that I have, was locating all of the files for each lesson. I find this very confusing from a beginner's stand point. The beginning of the book gives a website to download the source files. But it is for an older edition. The CD that accompanies the book does not contain everything do each lesson. ALot of guessing to fiqure what files they are using for each lesson.

This book wins kudos for honesty of title: I really believe you could work through it at a chapter a day, and teach yourself pretty much everything you needed to know about HTML and web site design. I started with some programming background, but absolutely no HTML, and using this book was able to design and implement two different web sites, granted both fairly simple, but not trivial, either, and entirely hand-coded.

The book covers the basics of just about every aspect of web design, with pointers to how to obtain more in-depth information on advanced topics (graphics, scripting...), if you need it. Probably most people will skip some chapters (I skipped Java and Java Script, for example), but they're there to go back to, if you need them later.

Best of all, the book is well written. The presentation is well organized, and the writing is clear and direct.

This is quite a thick book which covers a lot, and it's a good introduction to a lot of subjects, such as HTML, Javascript, style-sheets, forms, dynamic HTML, and more. You won't get full coverage on all these topics, though. If you're creating your own site, you will probably want a bigger reference that covers everything. But as an introduction to these topics, this book is excellent.
I had no trouble finding the code to match this book (2nd edition). But it appears that it's not contained in the 2mb zip download that's offered, which is for a different edition. You just have to download the examples for each individual chapter.
I do have some criticisms, which have nothing to do with the author(s), but the editing. Maybe I imagined it, but the section on DHTML contained so many typographical errors that I wondered whether the editor was taking a long nap instead of correcting all the mistakes. Again - maybe I imagined the errors. I'm not nitpicking, since it makes some of the examples difficult to understand. Badly worded sentences should be avoided at all costs in books like these. You don't want the reader thinking, "Did he/she mean this, OR this?"
If you could combine the book with a few decent web references (this book has some great sites you can visit if you're after more information), then you could get pretty far with HTML. You really need to know all this stuff if you want to start with more advanced subjects in web development any way.

I found this book to be extremely helpful. I'm a rookie at web development and after being only half way through this book I feel like an expert(well almost). If you are looking for a good book that teaches you from scratch with step by step examples, stop searching. This is the book you want. The reason I gave it four stars instead of five is because some of the graphics used in the book, I can't find them on the CD. However there are a lot of other ones on the CD.

Laura Lemay has become one of the premier writers of web development texts, and this book is a good example. Many entry level texts get you started using code that has been depricated by the W3C, knowing full well that future browsers may not support the coding methods they are teaching. Laura does an excellent job of introducing newcomers to the "art" of web development while at the same time, prepares them for impending changes in the coding standards. The basics are well covered with easy to understand examples. Advanced techniques are introduced in such a way as not to confuse the novice. While the book does not come with a CD rom with sample code, most books this size are considerably more expensive. In my opinion, the trade off was well worth it. This book is an absolute must have for the novice who is serious about learning HTML.

Jessica Gallo 7th grade

PS/IS 87Q

Black Beauty
By: Anna Sewell

My book review of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is happy and sad. It's happy because the horse named Black Beauty made friends and made his master smile.

It's sad because there's a fire and two other horses die. In the book Beauty is the horse that was chosen to ride by the people in the story.

I like this book because it's about horses. Also because it shows me what a horse's life is about. I really liked the book because of Beauty. Beauty is smart. When it was raining the bridge was broke and no one saw it but Beauty. Beauty stopped at the bridge until someone told them that the bridge was broken.

I didn't like it because horses died in the story and Beauty loses freinds.

I recommend this book to teens and adults. The books characters speak different because the setting takes place in Great Britain.

Jessica Gallo 7th grade

PS/IS 87Q

Black Beauty
By: Anna Sewell

My book review of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is happy and sad. It's happy because the horse named Black Beauty made friends and made his master smile.

It's sad because there's a fire and two other horses die. In the book Beauty is the horse that was chosen to ride by the people in the story.

I like this book because it's about horses. Also because it shows me what a horse's life is about. I really liked the book because of Beauty. Beauty is smart. When it was raining the bridge was broke and no one saw it but Beauty. Beauty stopped at the bridge until someone told them that the bridge was broken.

I didn't like it because horses died in the story and Beauty loses freinds.

I recommend this book to teens and adults. The books characters speak different because the setting takes place in Great Britain.

Alex Johnson 802

P.S./I.S. 87Q. Summer homework





Hulk
By Peter Davids




This book was about a scientist named Professor Banner. One day, Professor Banner did an experiment on himself. The goal of the experiments was to enhance the body's immune system. That way, people would not get sick as much and it would help fight off diseases faster. Later on in the book, the professor had a child named Bruce, who inherited the chemicals from the experiments that were in Professor Banner's body. Professor Banner's wife had no idea that her baby boy had the chemicals inside him. She didn't know that her husband was doing experiments like that either. No one knew.

Every time Bruce became angry, his body started to deform and his skin would start bubbling. One day, Bruce's mother saw this happen, but Bruce calmed down when he saw his mother. His mother thought she was seeing things.

When Bruce was around the age of twenty, he became a scientist. Bruce and a few fellow scientists were conducting an experiment went horribly wrong. The chemicals in the experiment exploded and Bruce was affected by it. Now, whenever Bruce became angry, he turned green and grew to be twelve feet tall. He had incredible strength and agility. He could jump across the Grand Canyon without a problem. He became known as the Incredible Hulk.

The only issue now was that the government wanted to run tests on Bruce, which he didn't want. This made Bruce even angrier and he was unable to control his changes. However, every time he saw this woman that he loved, he calmed down and turned back to his normal human self.

I enjoyed this book very much. I like reading the Incredible Hulk comics and I also liked the movie. The book was better than the movie though. It had a lot more details and it really pulled me into it. I would recommend this book to people who like novels filled with action. If they like superheroes, then this is a great book for them to read.

One thing that I didn't like about this book was that it confused me a bit when the author went from present day to flashbacks of Bruce's childhood. All in all, I really liked this book and would definitely read it again.

Alex Johnson 802

P.S./I.S. 87Q. Summer homework





Hulk
By Peter Davids




This book was about a scientist named Professor Banner. One day, Professor Banner did an experiment on himself. The goal of the experiments was to enhance the body's immune system. That way, people would not get sick as much and it would help fight off diseases faster. Later on in the book, the professor had a child named Bruce, who inherited the chemicals from the experiments that were in Professor Banner's body. Professor Banner's wife had no idea that her baby boy had the chemicals inside him. She didn't know that her husband was doing experiments like that either. No one knew.

Every time Bruce became angry, his body started to deform and his skin would start bubbling. One day, Bruce's mother saw this happen, but Bruce calmed down when he saw his mother. His mother thought she was seeing things.

When Bruce was around the age of twenty, he became a scientist. Bruce and a few fellow scientists were conducting an experiment went horribly wrong. The chemicals in the experiment exploded and Bruce was affected by it. Now, whenever Bruce became angry, he turned green and grew to be twelve feet tall. He had incredible strength and agility. He could jump across the Grand Canyon without a problem. He became known as the Incredible Hulk.

The only issue now was that the government wanted to run tests on Bruce, which he didn't want. This made Bruce even angrier and he was unable to control his changes. However, every time he saw this woman that he loved, he calmed down and turned back to his normal human self.

I enjoyed this book very much. I like reading the Incredible Hulk comics and I also liked the movie. The book was better than the movie though. It had a lot more details and it really pulled me into it. I would recommend this book to people who like novels filled with action. If they like superheroes, then this is a great book for them to read.

One thing that I didn't like about this book was that it confused me a bit when the author went from present day to flashbacks of Bruce's childhood. All in all, I really liked this book and would definitely read it again.

This movie won't break records, but this movie turned out to be quite good. These movies are a comedy and a drama, scenes fiction and fantasy all squeezed into one. It has been rated PG-13 by the M.P.A.A (Motion Picture Association of America), for sexual scenes, drug references, and language. The movie Empire Records is about a music store that is about to become a Music Town store. It is all up to the stores wacky employees to save it. All they have to do is earn enough money to purchase the store. There is one problem the store had loaned Lucas all of it total earnings. So from here on out they have to start from scratch. This movie is funny and also has a good story line, with also a happy ending. The only thing the viewers didn't like the most was the fact of its sexual scenes, and its drug issues. Story traces a single tumultuous day in the lives of several young slackers who work at a bustling store named Empire Records. Anything can happen and everything does--relationships are tested and dilemmas are solved... all just this side of the law. In conclusion this movie turned out quite well according to the motion picture raters Ebert and Ropert. To reach this conclusion people need to think about what they have seen. This movie becomes good once the viewer realizes how much the employees really care for each other. By the end of the movie the employees begin to kick themselves into gear and the one that is the least expected to saves the store ultimately. Finally the workers throw a huge party and raise enough money to save their beloved store. In conclusion this movie turns out to be really good. The part that is most loved is how they buy the store back.

This was my first "for Dummies" book purchase and it will be the last (unfortunately, I also purchased "Web Sites for Dummies" at the same time. A How-To book this not....you get no step-by-step instructions, what you do get is a lot of information that is generally available on the internet with a dose of new-age you can do anything you want if you try.........well, at least the title is right..........only a DUMMY would buy this book.

Thanks for the quick responce in the product, received what I needed for less

This is a great book for the person just getting started in thinking about putting up a web site.

The basic concept here is to use a fairly minimal amount of HTML, which he teaches you, and then one of the hosting services such as GeoCities, Google or AOL to get your site up and running. All in all, he presents an excellent description of what you need to think about, what technologies you need to understand, and the various tools that are available to assist in the construction of the site.

The intent of this book is to enable to get a site up and running, fairly quickly (He says in a day, I think he is a bit optimistic, plan on a weekend, maybe even a three day weekend.) but only after having thought a lot about the various aspects.

Then in chapter 18 he talks just aenough about things like JavaScript, database connectivity, cascading style sheets and more to let you know that you've barely scratched the surface.

An excellent place to get started.

I was hoping for something that would help me get started on building my own site. This book is for someone who just wants any site, and is looking for someone else to do for them.

This is a great starter book, but once you get your web site designed, then what? I wanted to know more about hosting services and costs, etc. Then found another title on here called "The Complete Web Hosting Kit Pro." This is a complete kit that lets you host your web site on your own PC for free. Comes with everything you need... instructions and software to host your site on your PC at home or at work. I recommend both this book and the web hosting kit.

This book is ESSENTIAL for any WPF engineer. There are so many topics covered in this book that will allow you to take your WPF applications to the next level. Charles' style of writing is fantastic and easy to understand. I wouldn't neccessarily recommend this to be the book to learn WPF fro but consider it an essential source for advanced topics.

Each chapter is well thought out and develops like a good narrative. Chapters are typically 20, 25 pages and thoroughly explain a central concept. They often end with a nice lead-in to the next chapter, like "this works, but what if you wanted to ...?"

When first published, no one knew what WPF things like StackPanels looked like, so people wanted screenshots everywhere. The book uses a series of concise console applications to demonstrate WPF concepts. I'm glad it does. With a screenshot on every page, the book would be 50% thicker or have less detailed info.

The console apps are self-contained little apps that generally demonstrate one aspect of a WPF feature. After a few chapters, I realized I needn't read every line of code carefully, since the author gives an intro on what to look for in the sample and often an explanation after the example about any non-obvious lines of code.

Other books have their place. I have several others because I sometimes want to examine some topic from several authors' POV. But for taking a programming concept and building a full explanation in clear, logical steps, no one does it better than Mr. Petzold.

Whether you are going to build next-gen Windows apps or develop Silverlight 2 applications, learning WPF and XAML is essential (just as web designers must sometimes work directly with html).

Visual Studio and Expression Blend make assumptions when you drag elements onto the design surface. It's easier to work directly in XAML rather than delete extraneous properties these tools add to your code.

Some criticize it takes half the book before delving into XAML. Anything in XAML can be done in C# (or VB), so starting with the code is a logical foundation for understanding. For things that are easier to wire up in XAML, the author points forward to those chapters. By the time you get to chapters on XAML, if you know anything at all about it, you'll fly thru the pages, filling in gaps about how code and markup work seamlessly together.

I cannot imagine thoroughly understanding WPF without having this book's comprehensive explanations available to me. I think it's a terrific book that will stand the test of time.

I think that Petzold was reading my mind when he wrote this book. I don't like XML, and I don't like "cheating" with XAML when you can write good clean C#. The first half of this book is entirely C# programming in WPF. I am using this book to help me write an abstraction layer above WPF. That simply would not be possible with XAML, which in my opinion places the design of the application at too low of a level. Petzold leaves no stone unturned, and whenever something seems weird, he doesn't ask us to trust him that it makes sense; he explores it in depth for us. I can't imagine that many other authors go through that kind of trouble when they're writing on tight deadlines. Petzold tells it how it is, and he includes the "why." Therefore, I recommend this book to anyone who strives to become a bit of an expert in WPF, not just a get-the-job-done programmer. I would consider this an advanced book at times because I find myself reading and re-reading sections to understand it. The explanation is there, but it's not trivial, and with so many pages in the book already, there is no room to be wordy.

This book seems to have had several negative reviews.
The gist of most people's complaints seem to be:

(a) "There's no XAML until Chapter 19" and/or

(b) "There aren't any pictures".

The Complaints - are they justified?

a. No XAML

People making this complaint have in my opinion totally missed the point for several reasons.

Firstly, this is not Charles Petzold's "How to Write XAML" book. It's a book whose title explicitly tells you that it will approach WPF from both the code (C#) and markup (XAML) perspectives. Unusually (actually I think it is uniquely) he doesn't mix and chop up the two approaches, but deals with each of them in isolation.

Secondly, WPF is not XAML. You can use XAML, sure. You'd be silly not to in many situations. But XAML is only one part of the big picture. As this book clearly shows, you can successfully create an awful lot of WPF output with code alone.

b. No Pictures

Normally I would have some sympathy with Complaint (b) because it's always nice to see what the code samples should produce. But if you use this book as the author intended and actually run the samples yourself you will gain far more than any quick glance at a screenshot would give you. You will gain insight and experience in how to master this new technology.

The Book

This is a book that very carefully works its way through the requirements needed for the reader to achieve a thorough understanding of the major concepts. One of the reasons why I recommend reading it - and using it - from cover to cover is that, even in the early basic chapters little gems of code and explanation are slipped into the narrative or the examples. Often these begin to deal with more complex topics that you will come on to in more detail later.

It is crammed full of detail. Mostly it's the kind of detail that you really need once you've got past the "let's play with WPF and see what you can knock out in a couple of hours" stage. The detail you need when you move on to the point where you want to do something that isn't necessarily easy out of the box, but is achievable if your understanding is built on stone, not sand.

If I have a complaint, it's a minor one: occasionally he lets the Math geek get out and play a bit more than strictly necessary, but even that is fairly rare.

The code samples are in C# only. However, Young Joo on the VB Team at Microsoft has organised for some chapters to be translated to VB.NET and there are more to come. You can access them from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2008/01/07/petzold-wpf-book-sample-conversion-new-chapters-young-joo.aspx .

Summary

If you are committed to fully understanding WPF then this book is one you really should buy. By all means get others too. I already have several; they all serve their purpose, are very useful and I refer to them regularly. But when it comes right down to the "roll your sleeves up, go sit in a quiet place with book and PC to learn, really learn, WPF" then I think Charles Petzold has produced a (not so little) gem that will be truly helpful to you in your learning endeavours.

I've been a Windows developer for around 10 years or so and have read dozens of developer books. This is only the second one I can remember returning.

I had previously read Programming Windows Presentation Foundation (Programming) (which I recommend) but was looking for more. At 900+ pages, and with the good reviews and experience of the author, this book looked like a good choice. Unfortunately, after the first 450 pages, I decided that my time would be much better spent simply rereading the the Chris Sells book instead.

The main problem is the style in which the book is written. It could easily be edited down to half its size. How many times do I need to read "Button btn = New Button()" in a code example? I know some people prefer fully functional examples over code snippets but after a while it really got ridiculous. The code examples eventually became almost useless to read because it became so much work to sort out the irrelevant and insignificant details. On top of which 90% of the code samples are examples of THE WRONG WAY to do a UI in WPF (i.e. in C# instead of XAML). I understand the second half of the book is all XAML, but spending 450+ pages on techniques you would NEVER ACTUALLY USE is a waste of my time.

A lot of bloat also came from a lack of focus on who the book is written for: experienced .NET/C# developers. I don't need to have "using" statements explained to me, I know how .NET dialogs work, etc... From the "Printing" chapter: "The Print dialog also includes a Number of Copies field. Enter a number greater than 1 in this field and the PrintVisual method prints multiple copies." Really. I never would have figured that out on my own.

There is a lot of good information here but it is simply not worth the time it takes to extract it from "Button btn = new Button()" statements. Maybe this book is a demonstration that you're never to old for an editor. I'm going back to O'Reilly books.

I am not without being in an arm's length distance to this book. It is a reference book for me that I use constantly. I appreciate the author's expertise and conciseness in explanation as well as the visual layout of this book. The series that this author produces has never let me down. If you want to start somewhere start with this one.

I am a full time professional web developer (both visual and web programming) and as far as the visual side goes, this book is a bible. I have never seen a book of such quality in any subject. It explains all the web stuff you need to know, and even some nerdy stuff, like how GIF and JPG compression works so you can make images that compress very tightly. I suggest you guy the newest version of this book, v3 since it will have updated info like flash probably.

I bought the book on a recommendation. I was poking around, looking at different things, when I happened upon the explanation of hexidecimal [sic] numbers used in html color. She explains that hexadecimal is a base-9 numbering system, when in fact it is a base-16 system. In addition, the chart next to this explanation goes from 0 to E, when in fact, it should go to F. It just proves that she knows nothing about this minor facet of the book, and makes me wonder if the rest of the information in the book is just as off base.

I find that all of Lyndas books are excellent. I have been able to create some wonderful pages on my own by using her examples and following her easy to understand guide lines. There are a lot of Web Design books on the market, and most of them say the same things over and over again. With Lynda's books I know she's telling it like it is in the most easies format possible. Everyone wants to be a star on the internet, and Lynda tells you how to get there the simplest and yet the best creative way possible...Thanks Lynda for be a great source of help and inspiration....

I own several of Weinman's books and I find them all very helpful. The most useful part for me is the non-dithering colors by hue charts (she also maintains these online). Even if the colors in the book don't exactly match what comes up on the Web, I can get a close enough match with the hex codes she provides. Overall I think she produces a very good series. I have to keep my copies under lock and key at work because they tend to "walk" otherwise. I mention Weinman's books in both of the books I wrote. That should be good testimony!

Next Time before I purchase the book I would like to know if the CD in company with the book will be included in the mail or not.

This is the best XML/Java book I've seen to date. Why? It's well written. For example, unlike most books written by more than one or two authors, this book does *not* repeat a lot of material that an author previously addressed. The code contained in the book and on CD is well formatted and doesn't contain a lot of needless fat surrounding the meat; it get's right to the concept they're trying to relate.
I especially liked the chapters written by the lead author (Maruyama) and especially his XML Security chapters. Worth the money - just for the code.
Additionally, the code is well written - example, the import statements list each class; they don't use ".*;"

[This is a review of the second edition.]
It was with some trepidation that I opened this book. It has 9 authors. Sometimes this many can mean that the style varies widely between chapters, and that there may be little logical continuity. Glad am I to say that this book appears seamless. Thanks probably in part to good editorial management by the publisher.

This is an advanced treatment of XML. It presupposes that you are already familiar with java and XML. The emphasis is on developing higher level applications that use XML as message medium.

As a consequence of 8 of the authors being Japanese, they stress that for internationalisation, XML is a good choice for the medium. It was designed from the ground up to handle Unicode. This is needed to describe Chinese and Japanese, which, out of the major languages, are the hardest to deal with, because of the large number of symbols. You should design your applications to maximise outreach to as large a user base as possible. Native English speakers tend to live in a happy technological cocoon, because leading edge stuff mostly appears first in English speaking countries. It is easy when programming to inadvertantly build into your code restrictions to ascii or extended ascii. Then it becomes much harder larger to remove those. Whereas if you choose XML (andjava), you get internationalisation right out of the box.

The discussion of DOM (Document Object Model) and SAX parsers is very nice. Especially in showing how to add SAX filters, and in quantitative estimates of runtime and memory usage of the two approaches. They make the point that XML processors are the result of intensive intellectual work, and that hence you should use these, instead of writing your own. More reliable, and you can concentrate on higher level issues.

For more advanced XML uses, XML Schemas are described, largely supplanting DTDs, since they allow the easy handling of datatypes (like String and integer) and namespaces.

They give succinct examples of how to connect XML messages to databases via Enterprise Java Beans. In doing so, Java Server Pages and servlets are explained. Very logical progression. Then the Web Services Description Language is introduced, along with showing how to use it with UDDI. Security via XML Digital Signatures and Certificate Authorities is then implemented.

The logic flow is very clear. Plus the accompanying CD with the full example code is a great convenience for learning.

I found this book very useful, covers a lot of unique topics
in advanced XML processing, practical and to the point.
Especially enjoyed coverage of advantages and disadvantages
of different techniques.

Would be nice to cover these topics a bit deeper,
little more on architecture.
How about making 3rd edition 1000 pages,
maybe without CD-ROM, put code online
(any XML/Java developer has Internet access now).
And Websphere and DB2 getting outdated very quickly.

Even if 9 different authors wrote this book, the logical flow remains intact and the writing style is consistent, clear and concise, without any redundancy. The authors provide plenty of well written, relevant code examples, almost to a level of a cookbook. I was very pleased to see some pretty advanced topics covered in details and, while the focus is on Xerces, JAXP get a good coverage too. In my opinion one of the best Java/XML books on the market

This is the only XML book I have - I skimmed through several and this one was far and away the best. You will have to know what you are trying to do and sort of figure out which parts of the book to pay attention to as there is so much there. I spent some time with DTDs only to realize they were unnecessary for what I was doing. But the book allowed me to build an application from scratch.

The authors managed to compress an amazing amount of information in a very small amount of space, without affecting readability. Including coverage of XML, DTD, Namespaces, XSL, Xpath, Xlinks, DOM and much more, including Schemas (missing from previous edition). As a bonus we get reference for XML, Schemas, Xpath, XSLT, DOM and SAX. Much more than good value for money, it's a real bargain. Just not recommended to absolute newbies

This is a well-written reference on XML 1.1. Slightly over half the book is tutorial in nature, while the remainder of the book is reference material (on XML, Schemas, XPath, XSLT, DOM, SAX, and character sets). The explanations were clear and the reference portion quite complete. I recommend this book as a good reference on XML.

I have read part of the book and tried to use it as a reference, but always confused with the bad organization, not to mention some typo errors.
personally, I don't recommend it.

This books starts out with a quick explanation and walkthrough or XML 1.0 specification that is pretty good. It is lacking a XML Schema (XSD) section as well covers very briefly the XSLT (XML Stylesheets) anyone wishing to anything with sytlesheets after reading this book will be disappointed. XPath coverage is pretty good as well as SAX, & DTD. XLink, XPointer, are talking about but nothing in depth. All example code is in JAVA. Anyone wanting specialized knowledge of ASP.NET / .NET / MS SQL usage of XML should look elsewhere (this is somewhat understandable due to the publish date.)

This book is small and travels well. It does not have an index, which seems odd for a reference text, but it does have a table of contents. I find Essential XML Quick Reference (ISBN 0-201-74095-8) to be well worth the additional investment.

This book provides a useful overview into the basics of XML while doubling up as a quick reference to the XML specification. Handy for those that want to dabble in XML without buying a more detailed book, but then XML has so many related technologies anyone serious about XML will need more.

The O'Reilly pocket references are so concise that they are not really meant for someone who is totally new to the subject. They can however be the ideal way to provide an overview to anyone who wants to know the basics of the topic.

I guess it's my fault for not checking closely enough, but this book is somewhat dated now (more than two years old as of this writing). It was somewhat of an impulse buy at the book store when it looked useful after a quick scan. It had a little "2nd Edition" banner across the front cover corner and I just assumed it included coverage of schemas. The coverage of XSLT and XML in a small format is quite useful. I'll probably buy the 3rd edition when it comes out--I would have given the book 4 or 5 stars two years ago when it was first published.

I can't possibly imagine that this book will be of any value to someone working with XML on a daily basis. It should be renamed to "a terse introduction to xml", as it is in no way a reference. This is based on the fact that I bought it to learn XML from, and it was quite good at teaching someone with no experience in XML whatsoever the basic concepts.

If you are looking for a reference, look elsewhere. If you are just like me, and don't want to wade through hundreds of pages to get an idea of what it is all about, then you can perhaps consider it. Since it is so wrongly named, I give it three stars. But as an introduction it really deserves five.

This book is ok, the first half part is pretty good.
It covers XML basic and DTD very well, but it does not
cover schema; it covers XSLT/XSLFO also, although there are something inaccurate inside; its part for XLink and XPointer is
useless and wrong; and there is nothing for XML database or
XSP. This book may be helpful, but you need another book as <> or <> to really learn XML basic.

Daniel, IBM certified developer for XML and related technologies.

I used this book in 2001 to learn XML and it was great then.

In the last week I have been looking at transforming xml on the client. A lot of designs transform on the server, but I really wanted to investigate a full xml approach. This shows you how to take an xml feed and use a client generated file ( XSLT or HTML ) to transform that data into a dynamic web page. Unfortunately this only works on IE, but the book explains how to do this easily.

I had never used XML for anything, but I knew it had become very important in today's world. I was a little hesitant at first, since some MS Press books I'd read in the past were very dry and technical. To the contrary, however, this book is very well written with easy-to-understand examples. It provided me, someone who knew nothing of XML, with a very gentle introduction to the subject matter. It's very readable and you'll walk away from it with a very strong foundational knowledge of XML.

If you don't know anything about XML (like me two years ago), this is the first book that you should read. This book contains clear explanations backed by good samples and "step-by-step" exercises. You don't have to read the whole book to be efficient when using XML in your project. I only read the first few charters and I already began to code XML. If I can do it, so can you.

I purchased this book in hopes it would clear some things up as I took XML as a college crash class. This is an excellent starting point for those wanting to learn XML or anyone needing more explanation. The terms and procedures are explained so that you understand how and what with out going into a lot of theory. The examples are wonderful,and unlike some books, so far all the code works. It is easy to understand and it makes sense and doesn't leaving you wondering what was just said.
I give this book a thumbs up!

This book is a great start to the language of XML! The author makes a lot of HTML references, but a beginner could probably grasp it. He begins with the basics and history to give the reader an great understanding of what they are about to get in to. In the first few chapters, you have mastered the basics of XML!! I highly reccomend this book! It goes slow enough for those who may get confused, but keep up the pace for those who get it quickly!

I never received order. I emailed and never received a response and will not ever order from Amazon again

This is an excellent book for the person who wants to learn HTML but has no prior experience in Web Publishing. I read the majority of the book in one weekend and created my first website! The book gives you the basics to create a usable and stylish website. If the user wants more interactivity on their webpage, they will have to go somewhere else, but this is a good start. The book does teach frames and tables which is important for layout. I recommend this book to the novice Web Publisher.

This is an excellent book for the person who wants to learn HTML but has no prior experience in Web Publishing. I read the majority of the book in one weekend and created my first website! The book gives you the basics to create a usable and stylish website. If the user wants more interactivity on their webpage, they will have to go somewhere else, but this is a good start. The book does teach frames and tables which is important for layout. I recommend this book to the novice Web Publisher.

This book is fantastic for the individual who wants to learn HTML quickly. Although it does not delve into the advanced topics too far, it is a good starting point. Lemay's style is straight forward and will have you writing web pages in no time. With this book and CGI 101/102 you could be designing and programming for the web in a basic capacity in a week, but by no means stop there!

It's very helpful. Easy to read and understand. All beginners should buy this book.