Markup Languages Books

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.

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.

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.

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.

Note that there are at least 3 editions of this book. Check for the latest edition if you want the latest.

This book is not an explanation or tutorial of how to make beautiful pages with CSS. I think the people who give it below 3 stars may have been looking for that, and instead they should try CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. This book IS, however, a complete reference to all CSS properties and values, and also contains some valuable tips on browser behavior and bugs. If I'm coding along and forget what all the possible values are for list-style-type, this is the book I reach for.

This is the 'go-to' reference for me. The truly ultimate guide to CSS from one of the construct's primary innovators and authors. Mr. Meyer is the most knowledgeable person in the field of CSS, browser compatibility and all around HTML design.

I had done some work with style sheets, but was confused bythe terms and had no idea what they can do. This book completely changed what I can do when I design web sites. It'sa real eye-opener and a great reference.

Probably a bit out of date at this point. For me, this book wasn't that useful, since I generally refer to the W3C site for information about CSS. But it's a nice desk reference, and a standard tool for almost all CSS developers. There's probably a new version out by now to address all the developments that have happened in the past couple of years, I would look for that (or wait until one comes out, it won't be long).

I haven' read the book, only browsed its TOC. It doesn't cover the Document Object Model (DOM) and the Simple API for XML (SAX). It also discusses CSS in too much detail. These days, web development professionals will probably have a knowledge of both HTML and CSS before starting with XML.

Consider "Beginning XML" or "Professional XML" instead, both published by Wrow.

Review for XML 1.1 Bible (3rd Edition):

Elliotte Rusty Harold is that rare technical author who can write about anything and make it interesting. In this case, he has written 1,000 pages on XML providing us with an excellent guide book to this technology. Whether you are a beginner or advanced user of XML, there will be something in this book for you.

The book is divided into five parts. The first part discusses the basics of XML giving us an introduction to what XML is, what it is used for, and explaining the basics of creating a well-formed XML document. Part two discusses DTDs and explains how namespaces are used. Part three looks at various style languages including CSS and XSL. The section on CSS will be useful to anyone wishing to use CSS to format their HTML documents. Part four gives us a tour of some supplemental XML technologies including XLinks, XPointers, XInclude, and Schemas. The chapter that most interested me was on Schemas and the explanations were clear and complete, leaving no mystery about how to use this technology. The final part looks at a few XML applications including XHTML, RDDL, and SVG. The book does not cover writing programs to process XML documents using SAX or DOM, for example. The author has another book on that topic if that is of interest to you.

Each part of the book does an exceptional job of explaining the topic. The author gives us plenty of examples to make the text crystal clear. The author writes as a colleague helping out fellow programmers and not as an instructor droning away at a blackboard. You really get the idea that the author enjoys XML and enjoys explaining it. If you are interested in working with XML this book is truly an indispensable guide.

When I first saw this book I thought that someone must be kidding. There's no question that XML is clearly the language to use when you want to transfer data using the standard web communications protocols. But a book that's more than a thousand pages, get serious.

They I opened it, low and behold, links, style sheets, specialized forms of XML for specialized purposes that have been agreed upon by multiple competing companies. It turns out that there's a lot more to XML than I thought.

Then in conjunction with XML other languages have been developed, some have proved not so useful and have faded away, others have evolved and changed to be more useful.

All in all, this is a very useful book, well written and has given me some ideas about how to solve some problems. That's all you can ask out of a book.

I bought Harold's book to help me move from XHTML to XML and to handle data with PHP which does not fit well in a relational database / SQL. This book bogs down quickly in very long explanations & examples which could have been a fraction of the size. I think it has good coverage, but Harold uses too many words every time he approaches a subject. To paraphrase someone else, Harold could write 10,000 words on the color red.

The problem with Wiley's Bible series (I have several of them) is that the goal seems to be to make them as big and heavy as a boat anchor. This results in verbose books, which may be ok for use as a reference but way to hard to read cover to cover for initial learning. The time needed to read these books cover to cover exceeds the value of the book itself. If you buy books by the pound (or kilo), this is a good buy. But if you value your time more than you value impressive size, there are better alternatives.

On a positive note: I have not found a bunch of typo or editing errors and Harold seems to know the subject. I'm just frustrated by the slow pace, although I will continue trying to read it at least a little longer.

Warning: [Some opinions given here appear to be by paid reviewers. ie: Feb 3, 2005, and others. How many others are also raw attempts to sell books without honor? Can you trust anyone who writes hundreds or thousands of 5 star opinions?? Heck no! Hint: Check out the person writing the review before actually reading it. Look for how many opinions he/she writes and how many stars. Distrust all high opinions in the first few months after publication, all high opinions by people who have only written a couple of opinions, and all high opinions from people who only write high opinions. Thanks for the lack of honesty Elliotte &/or Wiley &/or big A. (my opinion, 2 cma).]

I have purchased many books from Amazon, but this one is printed on the lowest-quality paper I've ever experienced. Though it's relatively new, the yellowed pages look like a 1960's pulp novel. There is literally a 2mm yellow border surrounding each page. Come on "Hungry Minds" publishers, you can do better than this.

All the Peachpit Press Visual QuickStart books are organized well and progress in an appropriate logical manner. The index for this book helps to quickly find the information you need. I build website's regularly and this book extended my knowledge. A good buy.

I am about half way through the book and like it so far. I wasn't quite sure what to expect though I have purchased Visual QuickStart books before and have been happy with them. All in all I feel like it was a good purchase that I can use.

This book is for people who already understand programming languages and who have hand-crafted HTML before.

If you are such a person, this book will be very helpful in learning how to create dynamic web pages: CSS plus Javascript plus DOM equals Dynamic HTML.

The skills you will learn in this book will take you to the next level. It does not insult your intelligence with overviews of basic stuff but it does step you through the new material.

I liked it, it helped me and I recommend it.

After reading Elizabeth Castro's HTML book I thought this would be a good next step. However, this book does not stack up anywhere as readable as Castro's book. The CSS part is OK, but the javascript part is poor with hard-to-follow examples using Alice in Wonderland images.

I don't know how all the mistakes in this book got past the editors. It is more than just careless typos. There are numerous inconsitancies between the CSS examples given and the web page results. Only as far as the second chapter, I've lost count of the inconsistancies--enough to make me give up on the book. I've checked out the companion web site, and the corrections are not to be found. The poor quality of the book also shakes my faith in Peachpit Press's Visual Quickstart series, which up until now I have enjoyed using.

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.

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.

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 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.

Over the last decade I've been reading books by Charles Petzold; until this one I enjoyed them all. I consider Petzold to be one of the best Windows development authors out there. He's been writing about it since Windows was became Windows. Most of his titles offer well thought out and presented material. This book did not.

Twice I attempted to read this book as my introduction to the Windows Presentation Foundation. Both times I failed to advance my mark more than a few hundred pages. There are absolutely no illustrations, screenshots or pictures of any kind. This fact forces the reader to type up his numerous code samples to see their output. While I enjoy having many samples in a book about programming, I don't always need to type up the program myself to understand its meaning. Call it teaching to all the senses, but I like more visuals.

My other complaint with the book is that while reading it I constantly feel I'm not moving anywhere. Most other programming books I've read I felt like I could go out and use the tool, even if it was only a fraction of its functionality. With this book I constantly felt like I had to wait until the 2nd half, the XAML discussion, to really use WPF. Yes, I could write a GUI by programmatically instantiating all the elements, but that isn't the way the technology was meant to be used. I would have enjoyed a brief introduction to XAML and its use throughout; only waiting until the end for diving into its deepest intricacies.
In the end, I couldn't finish this book and purchased a different title.

Every book I had read so far on WPF sidestepped the basic premise behind WPF -- that it was a brand new platform and a new programming paradigm, which will eventually replace WinForms. How did they do that? By glorifying XAML and everything that it could do for you, turning Windows programming into that trash called HTML, which most Windows programmers stay away from. When I read Nathan Adams' highly touted book, I couldn't get past that 3rd chapter. Chris Sells? About the same. The problem was always the same -- each of the aforesaid authors unnecessarily burden you with XAML when you are already trying to get your head around the WPF, thereby glossing over some very, very important concepts!

Charlie Petzold is that seasoned veteran that started doing Windows ever since Windows came into existence. He takes a truly novel approach in teaching you about WPF. He starts off by first telling you about WPF in the language you are most familiar with -- C#. He explains all the concepts, all the ideas, all the tenets. All in C#. And then, when you get familiar with all of that, bam! He hits you with XAML. He then starts showing you how you can do all of the things that he showed you in C# -- in XAML. But by this time, you are no longer struggling with the concepts of WPF. You already know what DependencyProperties and RoutedEvents are. You are already aware of virtual trees and logical trees. So now, when you see them represented in XAML, it makes so much more sense. And it's all easier to comprehend.

The simplest analogy I can give is this: remember the time when you started learning calculus in high school? That was a new enough concept, right? Now imagine if you had to learn that in German (or your non-native tongue)! But once you learn all the concepts in English, you could very well proceed in a language you weren't quite as familiar with.

To me this is the only way I could have learned WPF. And XAML. I was pushing off WPF all these days only because XAML was getting in the way of my learning. While a lot of Web-programmers will be happy for XAML, the fact is, declarative programming is not something Windows programmers are used to. To them, the only way to approach the subject is to first teach them WPF and then show them how XAML comes in the picture.

Having said that, there are a two extremely irritating aspects to the book that start rearing their annoying heads by the time you get to the second chapter:
1. There are no graphics showing outputs from the code. Granted you are expected to run the code samples (which can be downloaded from the MS Press support site), but I shouldn't have to run every single code sample. Moreover, there are times when I'm reading the book on a crowded train, when I can't really run the program on my laptop -- there's barely room to open the book as it is.
2. Every program is a Console app. So after you hit the F5 key, the annoying console window gets in the way of viewing the main Window. You have to minimize the window, or move it in order to see the Window (Form). According to Petzold, it's convenient for him to hit Ctrl-C on the Console window to terminate the program. Note to Petzold: Chuck, have you tried hitting Shift-F5 on your IDE? I find this so debilitating that I had a utility converting every single csproj file in the folder tree from a console to a Windows application.

Aside from that, the code samples run perfectly. I'm on Chapter 11, and so far every single code sample works.

If you are a seasoned Windows/C# programmer facing similar mind blocks against XAML, this is the book for you. If you are a Web programmer for whom C# is subservient to VBScript, or JavaScript, and are comfortable with HTML, this may not be the right entry point for you (as evidenced by some of the low ratings that this book got). You may need to get in via XAML, and a book that overly emphasizes its importance (such as Adams or Sells) might be the way to go.

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.

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.

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.