Markup Languages Books

If you are considering this book, Amazon includes the Table of Contents in the links to the left, where you can see the organizational structure of the 24 hours.

The error in logic mentioned in the second review was actually a typo in the layout codes...the code for a numbered list was used instead of the code for a bulleted list.

This mistake was first discovered in mid-February and has been listed on the book's errata page since late February. The errata page itself was made available in late October, 1999, after the book was first released.

For those who purchased the book before March, the mistake can be found on page 59 in Hour 5. This mistake (and several others) were fixed for the second printing, which started shipping in March.

I would have preferred to not rate this book, but it's a required field. I'm entering a 3 so that the current average remains the same. (Personally, I think it ranks higher than that! ;-) )

If you don't have the time or budget to go to a hands-on training class, this book is the best way to learn to use RoboHELP to create HTML Help. In 24 digestible chunks, the book leads you through all the major features of the product. There are plenty of tips to help you get started on the right foot, as well more advanced technical topics to help you "push the envelope" if you're inclined that way.

The author obviously knows her stuff, and I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a comprehensive introduction to RoboHELP HTML.

Looking through the TOC for this book, I was impressed at the extent to which it covered the applications of RoboHelp. But, once I started using the book, I found myself spending progressively more time trying to understand what the author was saying.

The structure for a good book is here, it just needs a few more months on the desks of some good editors.

I'm self-taught in a lot of different areas and have used a great many books of this type. The author needs to pare this down to the essentials before going into so many details. One problem is that she covers things like how to make DHTML effects before she covers something as essential as how to make a table of contents. She also tries to offer too much information in each page -- there are too many little "hint" boxes with information that you don't need to know yet. Larger graphics would be helpful, as I had trouble reading the text on many of them.

I'm self-taught in a lot of different areas and have used a great many books of this type. The author needs to pare this down to the essentials before going into so many details. One problem is that she covers things like how to make DHTML effects before she covers something as essential as how to make a table of contents. She also tries to offer too much information in each page -- there are too many little "hint" boxes with information that you don't need to know yet. Larger graphics would be helpful, as I had trouble reading the text on many of them.

This book has several frustrating errors in the examples, you have to find the errors to make the example work, e.g., mispelled field name in SQL statement. I was only interested in the XML portion of the book and learned far more by digging in at MSDN's XML site.

I read Mr. Martinsson's other book, ActivePerl, and I really enjoy his writing style. I guess some people get it, and some don't. This book is especially strong if you are interested in WMI. While it touches on XML, it may be misleading to put XML first in the title. Nonetheless, it is an excellent treatment of scripting for SQL Server 2000 ...

This book has several frustrating errors in the examples, you have to find the errors to make the example work, e.g., mispelled field name in SQL statement. I was only interested in the XML portion of the book and learned far more by digging in at MSDN's XML site.

Wanted to learn programming SQL Server 2000 with WMI. I'm a programmer, so the book's approach fits me. WMI text and samples worked for me. I learned WMI. I'm happy.

XML is not what I bought it for. I know MSXML, XSLT, XPath, yada yada yada. But I found some stuff I can use with ADO and MSXML. It's a bonus.

Another bonus: the code samples are available in Perl. Found them on the CD-ROM next to the VBScript samples. A pleasant surprise because the booktext shows example-code in VBScript.

I thought this book was one of the worst I have ever purchased. There are annoying mistakes in the sample queries, e.g., mispelled field names that will just drive you crazy. I can't speak for the WMI section, I bought this book for the SQL Server 2000 with XML info. I learned more at MSDN.

after reviewing the wanderful books that Amazon has on the internet I wander how can Amazon assist me in publishing my several, book lengh manuscripts. I have had several publishers and agents desire to see and perhaps publish my works. I am quite afraid to put my manuscripts in any= one hands for fear that they may change the theme of each manuscript. I write in several areas. including business, religion, psychology/thera- py, education and etc. Please advise me steps I should take to obtain a well known agent and publishers who may like to evaluate my manuscripts sincerely,

bill battiest 1201 E. Drachman St.#104 Tucson,Az85719

The tone of the book made it an easy read and an useful introduction to PageMill and web publishing.

However, I did find that some of the information was out of date - but it was printed 2 years ago!!

I was disappointed with the tutorials because firstly they did not span the whole book and did not include exercises in putting sound and video into PageMill and secondly I failed to find the Chapter 1 tutorial on the CDROM.

Furthermore, the web address - vmedia.com is not available.

Overall, I feel the book is a useful introduction but one you would borrow from the library rather than buy!

I have read several good software instructional books, and I found Ventana's "Ultimate Guide" to Pagemill to be ULTIMATELY FRUSTRATING. The author tends to mention a particular attribute of the program without telling you how to access it until the very end of his discussion. A good example of this problem can be found in his explanation of HTML "anchors." He tells us how to create a single anchor and how to name it, but once we've done that, he doesn't tell us of what use they are or how to move between one anchor and the next--the entire reason these objects exist. I find myself continually marking up my copy with questions that I hope are answered later in the book. Some are, others aren't. This book could be very useful in another, more carefully edited edition. (I've also found quite a few typos which suggests the haste of the publication process.) In short, stay away from the 1997 edition and be wary of this series of "Ultimate Guides."

This is a very simplistic introduction to PageMill with many key instructions either missing or buried between the lines of the overly-cutsie prose. For example, the Attributes Inspector has a key menu that allows the detailed placement of graphics - this menu is never mentioned nor is an illustration of it shown anywhere in the book (I only stumbled across it accidentally). Also, several files are not on the accompanying CD. Finally, it is very hard to concentrate when reading such rubbish as, "...do you recall seeing a funny looking bull's- eye... Surprise! That bull's-eye..." ad nauseum. Although the book is 418 pages, only 135 deal directly with the technical aspects of PageMill; all the rest is vague generalities about web design, hosting and outdated information about web software.

Couldn't find the author of this book to ask him to explain this ripoff and waste of time. The initial browse was tempting, especially the tutorials and online updates. But the files required for some tutorials are not on the disc. The online update information is outdated-wrong because vmedia.com is not available. None of this inspires a further investment of time. I would rather invest a little more money in another book that fulfills promises which were crucial in the decision-to-purchase. Who is responsible for this deception?

I was studying for the Microsoft exam 70-310 on XML Web Services and they suggested this MS press book on web services, but the MS press book is ONLY in C# even though the exam they want you to take is for Web services in VB.NET! Had to return that book. I got this one instead. I was happy to see that this book covered XML Web services in both VB.NET and C# and I was able to use this book to study for my exam. Passed!

Excellent book on webservices. Chapter 23 was something I had never seen before. WSDL is used extensively in the book, and Chapter 23 shows how to build take a standard HTML page and turn it into a WSDL document. What does this get you? Now you can screen scrape HTML pages and access the data as a property of the WSDL Document. I had never seen this before. Totally cool and unique technique!!

I have purchased three books on XML Web services and this one was the most comprehensive and got right to the point on how to not only build webservices, but also to how consume them in my applications (.NET, VB and classic asp). It is interesting that this is such a talked about topic everywhere, but there are not too many books out on this subject. You won't do yourself wrong by getting this book.

Any book on ASP.NET will mention Web services development, but "XML Web Services for ASP.NET" is an entire book dedicated to explaining all of the different sub-areas within the technology platform. And very well done. It's written by everyone's friend in .NET, Bill Evjen, one of the most outspoken advocates of .NET technology around.

The book is outstanding and takes an in-depth look at XML Web services, and Microsoft's specific implementation of the paradigm. All of the major considerations are explained well and adequately to become productive in developing your own library of Web services, or by extending the functionality of your applications.

The book's tone is very friendly, and non-intimidating, so it's a very easy, quick read. Bill also uses lots of practical analogies to make the more complex topics relevant, so it's an added bonus that this book appeals to the beginning as well as the seasoned developer.

Bill discusses areas critical to a thorough understanding of WS technology using .NET such as SOAP, UDDI, remoting, security, authentication, performance, and client development for calling an XML Web service from an ASP.NET WebForm or Windows Form, VB 6.0 app, or an ASP 3.0 Web page. The book also features some really good appendices, especially those on .NET's Web service classes, and an XSD primer for schema development.

The book is not about ASP.NET development, and so providing the reader has some experience with building third-generation Web applications, gets right to the meaty stuff. The chapters are short and to the point, and Bill's overview of ADO.NET is one of the better ones I've read in recent times. The most outstanding thing to me is that Bill liberally uses real-world code samples, with all code presented in both Visual Basic .NET and C#. Snafus in the code are very minimal, and I know form personal experience that good ol' Bill is extremely available and answers all his e-mail...about anything.

However, the book's printed code samples (I haven't checked the downloadable source code from the publisher) tend to reflect code generated from Visual Studio .NET, which in my opinion become confusing and therefore more difficult to replicate in an IDE environment like Dreamweaver MX or ASP.NET Web Matrix or non-IDE environment like Notepad due to all of the proprietary code VS.NET generates, and in doing so, using code behind. It's been my experience that it's easier to go the other way - provide the raw code and leave it up to the developer to implement in whatever means they see fit.

Another thing I did not care for (some of you may agree, I'm assuming most may not) was the physiology of the book itself, which was beyond the author's reasonable control. The binding is very flimsy and the spine breaks without much trouble. The paper isn't very durable, and doesn't lay flat for very long. I hope Wiley Publishing take into consideration that books of this nature get used & abused for their content more than most, and consider making corrections in the book's composition to make them last longer.

But beyond this, the book is a must-have for a user group as it's cross-language, multi-developmental platform, multi-subject appeal make it applicable to many different levels of developers, and is great for team environments.

When I purchased this book, hope will find examples, information about Web Services to help my projects. But I only found identical MSDN information. I could not believe my eyes but several of sentences was same with MSDN. If you want to buy a Web Services book this should not be one. I have purchased several books on XML Web services and this one was the most identical (also just copy and paste) one.

O'Reilly books are usually a good choice for a professional to learn a concept in an effective way. However, this book is an exception. If you think XPath looks difficult, it is just because this book makes it _seem_ difficult. Read the official W3C specifikation instead and you will see how simple XPath really is.

The book incorporates a lot of discussions about XPath but they really get in the way of XPath, beeing presented the way they are. It would have been more effective if the book explained XPath just by including the 30 pages of XPath specification, and instead focused not on explaing, but on discussing aspects.

My main point is that you learn to use, as well as master, XPath an order of magnitude faster by reading the specification than by reading this book.

From the back page of this book: "XPath and XPointer focuses directly on a critical topic that has been covered only briefly in other books". That is true as far as it goes for XPointer;however there are quite a number of XSLT books that explain XPath. That makes sense, because XPath is mainly used in the context of XSLT. (The other context is XPointer, but that is not official W3C recommendation yet, and will be much more limited in use.) That means that a book that deals almost exclusively with XPath should give a better and fuller treatment of XPath than most of the XSLT related books in order to have added value.

Quite frankly, I do not think that this book fulfills that promise. Chapter 2 "XPath Basics" fails to explain the theory behind XPath in a comprehensive manner, and is a tough read. What I am missing here is a clear explanation of how XPath relates to the DOM Model and XSLT processing model. Chapter 3 and 4 give a pretty decent explanation of how XPath expressions and functions work. The description is not complete however, I missed for instance an explanation of the key() function and element-available() function. What I also miss are the production rules of XPath. A more formal approach, with assistance of the official W3C recommendation, would have given a much completer explanation of XPath. Why was't the official W3C recommendation included via an appendix? Chapter 5 "XML in Action" is solely dedicated to examples. Very useful and clear. Chapter 6 "XPath 2.0" talks about how future XPath specifications are developing. Which is interesting of course, but by it's very nature speculative.

Chapter 7 thru 9 try to explain XPointer. These chapters fail completely for a number of reasons:
a) XPointer is not an official recommendation yet, so the authors are shooting at a moving target
b) XPointer will mainly be used together with XLink, which is not explained in this book
c) I found the explanation incomprehensible.

My advice would be to skip this book and buy a good XSLT book that also covers XPath instead, such as the XSLT Programmer's Reference from Michael Kay.

This is a relatively short book on XPath and, as one of the other reviews points out, it tends to complicate what is generally a fairly simple standard. The XPath portion of the XSLT : Programmer's Reference from Michael Kay is more succinct covers the important parts in enough detail to get the job done.

XPath is a crucial but often neglected technology for any developer that need to deal with XSLT in a serious way and it's also fully integrated in many XML parsers, like the ones from Microsoft or ColdFusion. This is a small and very focused book that manages to offer a detailed coverage of XPath mixed with some excellent practical advices. Personally I am not interested in XPointer right now, so I totally skipped the second part of the book, but I think the 120 pages dedicated to XPath are well worth the money

John E. Simpson has done a remarkable job in elucidating yet another XML-related techology in fun and easy small book. Care is taken to provide comprehensive examples (sometimes with hacker-type tougue-in-cheek approach) which illustrates the points of syntax. One does not need to read the book in comprehensive fashion, after a few chapters, you one can just start coding and refer to the rest as a reference manual.

One thing, however is missing, the book does you why you should use XPath or XPointer. What are the real world examples and applications? And what about XQuery? How is XPath related to XSLT? Those points are left for the reader to ponder about, and this is the only reason I am not giving the book 5 starts.

This is an outstanding book for ASP programmers ... It serves as a great reference source on a variety of topics. I have been very impressed with the depth and breadth of coverage (contrary to one of the reviews I read). Great value. It'll remain on my shelf for a long time.

I ordered the book and read it. I think that the book is not good for any ASP programmer. First, it is not complete. For example, it didn't cover server.transfer, which is an excellent feature in ASP 3.0. Second, the description about ADO is so simple that I cannot get any idea about ADO.

Why did I buy it? It is cheap and heavy. Another reason was the other users' review. Based on my experience, I suggest you to avoid this book as either study material or reference.

I'm an experienced programmer with 10 years of VB Client/Server and new to the WEB. The WEB is maddeningly different. This book has provided me with THE road map of modern ASP development. It is well organized. Each chapter is well selected. The content of each chapter is such that the subject is adequately covered and I can always get the book from which the chapter is extracted if I want more information. As one commenter put it, its like getting the work product of a half dozen research assistants, each of whom sifted dozens of books.

It is clearly aimed at the person who wants to understand the subject. There are no "To Create..." sequences that walk through the IDE to create a brain-dead and useless example so prevalent in the Microsoft programmer's guides. It assumes that the reader has a high school education, a keen mind and is willing to use both. Looking for a book that will do your thinking for you? This is not it. There are plenty of sample code snippets. They are there to give the reader working examples that augment the text.

I anticipate keeping this book handy as a reference on WEB ASP assignments.

There is a caveat for Microsoft oriented WEB developers. It does not address Visual Interdev. For that topic I recommend Wrox's "Beginning WEB Development with Visual Interdev 6."

I should also mention that this book does not teach one how to program. There are other resources for that. It does teach relational database principles, SQL, ADO, XML, and how to use XML in Microsoft SQL Server. The crowning glory is an excellent "class project," a walk through Microsoft's Biz Talk application.

The most valueable book for beginner and yet so usefull for professionals and advance users. If you don't understand and weak in programming concepts, you will find difficulties to cope with it because it is so stright forward to the point and not explaining much like other book. Please don't buy this book, you would regret it, however if you are experince programer then you must buy it!

Save the famous tomes; this one actually comes in handy.

Maybe it's just the size, look and feel of this little workhorse, or maybe it's because it feels like a super-thick pamphlet in your hands that you feel like you can treat in any way without regard to its physical condition, but somehow this book had surprised me my being so darn usable! I have rarely encountered a book that makes it so easy to get right to the subject you're trying to look up, get the facts/explanations you need... and get back to work. My pages are all dog-eared and highlighted. If you're a harried developer, I think you'll know the value of that.

The premise of the book is simple: combine the good parts of other books into one. So Chapter 1, "The Microsoft Toolset" is lifted straight out of the "E-Commerce Developer's Guide" by Noel Jerke, Chapter 2 is "adapted" from "Visual Basic Developer's Guide to ASP and IIS" by A. Russell Jones, and so on.

The surprising effect of all of this is that it's like having a research assistant who slogged through a mountain of material (useful and otherwise) for you and then handed you the highlights with post-it notes so you can save time. If one of those sources interests you, you can always read the book it came from. Or cast it aside and move on to the next piece.

And as books go, it has a high percentage of lookup tables and code samples. Why? Because that's part of the "good stuff" worth "adapting" from the other books. This won't win any book awards, but it does get yanked off the shelf more often than most others.

I just got this bok for the Libary, and on looking through I was amazed. Its undoubtedly the best DHTML book I have ver seen. Simply written, assumes very little and quite thorough! Only problem is that much of it is now outdated (The specification has since evolved). So please Mr Mudry hurry up with new edition.
If there was a 6 or 7 star rating I would still awárd it. I wish all books were written this way.

- Olumide

This book is excellent for studying IE based DHTML features although Netscape is barely covered, ignoring the title of this book. It thoroughly deals with essential concepts of Internet Explorer 4.0 based DHTML with step-by-step codes. However, it does not deal with its application. I mean, it was finished on the line of introduction of DHTML features. And it also does not give well-arranged tables which would contain the summary of each chapers for later quick reference. I felt that this book is very pleasant to read, and he *knows* how to explain hard concepts with easy to get words with humor. Great book for learning DHTML with IE.

This book is excellent for studying IE based DHTML features although Netscape is barely covered, ignoring the title of this book. It thoroughly deals with essential concepts of Internet Explorer 4.0 based DHTML with step-by-step codes. However, it does not deal with its application. I mean, it was finished on the line of introduction of DHTML features. And it also does not give well-arranged tables which would contain the summary of each chapers for later quick reference. I felt that this book is very pleasant to read, and he *knows* how to explain hard concepts with easy to get words with humor. Great book for learning DHTML with IE.

Without explicitly saying so, on the cover or in the main part of the text, this book is a one-sided look at DHTML. The cover says that the book covers the Netscape and Microsoft implemetations of DHTML, but this is misleading. Less than 10% of the book is devoted to the Netscape implementation. Readers of this book should be aware that most of the DHTML examples will not work unless one is using Internet Explorer. Had I known this I would not have been as interested in purchasing the book. I would have looked to spend my money on a book that had a good chunk of examples which would work in both Netscape and Explorer. If you are a Web designer, you don't want to alienate visitors to your site by providing interactivity that only works with one of the two major browsers, do you? In my opinion, the book is well written, but I can only guess whether the code examples will work since 1.) I do not use Internet Explorer, although I probably will at some future date, and 2) there were a number of mis-spellings of words in the text, typographic errors, which eroded my confidence about how well the book had been produced. Are there typos in the code examples too? Don't know. With these caveats, I would recommend the book to people seeking to get a handle on the powerful features of DHTML. I gave the book a rating of 6 in order to emphasize how misled I felt when I realized how little this book will help me design web pages for visitors using Netscape. Perhaps in a 2nd edition this capable author will give more space to Netscape. (My apologies for not putting copyright symbols wherever the words Netscape and Microsoft appear in this text. Just imagine they're there so I don't get in trouble, ok?)

Robert Mudry's book should be renamed "The DHTML Companion for IE". He does an excellent job of describing DHTML for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but nearly excludes Netscape Navigator completely. That is fine if you are publishing web sites design strictly for IE, however in the real web designers have to accommodate as many browsers as possible. The scope of Mudry's book is too narrowly focused to be useful. Perhaps if he defined what was compatible with the different browsers certain portions of the book would be of use. Finding out that Mudry's scripts don't work in Netscape through errors and crashed browsers is not acceptable. O'Reilly's "Dynamic HTML, the Definitive Reference" is the way to go.

This book proved a very interesting read. I bought it despite the negative comments below, and I figured the comments were split 60/40 on the positive side. While the book is somewhat short and to the point, I did like several things about it:

First, the coverage of XML products. While the products are updated since the book came out, the book did offer a good starting point.

I also really liked the chapter on different XML-based markup languages.

The book is slanted toward the Microsoft side of things, and I would have liked to have seen some coverage of SAX. I can't fault the author for not developing in other languages, especially since he offers examples of using XML from other languages (Perl, PHP).

I recommend this book if you're up for an easy read and would like a snapshot of XML's early days. I would buy a second edition if it came out.

I bought this book based on reading this summary: "Going with XML in an enterprise is an important decision that requires IT professionals to carefully weigh the pros and cons. In "Enterprise XML Clearly Explained," Robert Standefer provides a look at XML, not from within a vacuum, but with consideration to the tools currently available. The book includes a quick primer to XML, as well as coverage of all of the popular parsers, authoring tools, and programming interfaces available. The book also offers several glimpses into how XML can be implemented in the real world and leaves it up to the readers to decipher whether the techniques are appropriate for their needs." I felt it delivered on this promise 100%. I can understand why some others didn't like this book, but I think if you examine what it offers before you buy it you won't be disappointed.

This book is remarkably consistent. It consistently fails to deliver on anything. You could pull together all this information in about 5 minutes from a search for XML from any search engine. I am totally underwhelmed! I hoped to give my boss a book which would explain the power and utility of the XML technolgies available -- fat chance!! If I give him this book we will take a five-year technology step...BACKWARDS! The case study and sample were useless. This is what I did, and this is (kinda) how I did it but...I can't show you because it is proprietary, or copyrighted or...(add your own excuse here!)

What a waste of money -- don't bother

This book is amazing in the amount of no-nonsense, bottom-line information on XML it contains. This is no programmer's reference. But it is good both for those new to XML, or those, like me, who are so mired in the growing "family" of XML standards and products that they can't see the forest for the trees anymore. For example, the coverage of products is very concise, but precise enough that the reader can go to a vendor's web site and start right with the white papers, skipping all the buzzword-laden promotional material. I would recommend this to anyone who needs a solid overview of XML.

This book was miserable, and I gave it 2 stars to be polite. The author does not clearly explain XML. I was looking for a book that I could pass off to my staff to help bring them up to speed, and unfortunately this is not it. The author boldly states that the majority of his XML experience is through using Microsoft's XML parser, and the bulk of his examples are Microsoft centric, with a lot of example code in VBScript. His book touches on numerous ways in which other vendors have utilized XML, but does not focus on solid examples of how XML can be used in enterprise applications. The book is extremely short, and is certainly not worth the high price charged.

The authors of this book have done an excellent job at writing for the complete beginner. Clear and concise instructions provide an easy way to learn the basics. The book also dives into more complex subjects like DHTML and javascript. The CD included is not very good if you are the cut and paste type person because a lot of the code on it does not work. Besides, you learn and retain better by writing the code yourself. Don't install the CD, just explore it and get the free applications it has, such as Mapit!, an image map maker. I've had it for almost a year now and have bookmarked almost every page. I still find new stuff when I reference it.

I received my copy just a week ago although i have been doing html programming with javascript for almost 2 years now. i had some good books that helped me move on to html 4.0 though i had some unsolved problems and... walla it solved me most of them. it doesn't cover javascript,dhtml and css well enough but it is definitely inclusive about anything from within the scope of the html 4 specification :)

PS better rework could have been done starting at changing

to..

I used this book to learn HTML in a couple of days. It isn't really meant as a tutorial, but works very well for the purpose, as it progresses from simple to complex. I'm a programmer with 20 years experience and was looking for a book somewhere between one too simple and one that assumes you know too much. This is it. It gives just enough of the more complex topics that you understand the issues even if you need to find another reference. The text is very clear, if overly repetitive, and the examples are good. I didn't find the accompanying CD useful, however. For a book this size, it contains remarkably little "throw-away" text and as far as I could tell, no material copied from other sources as in the "... Unleashed" book series, which I dislike intensely. It's well indexed and makes a point of highlighting how various tags work with different browsers.

My first HTML book. Got me started but.... Poor organization. Had the feel of a superficial rework of a previous book. The examples on CD were particularly disappointing in their simplicity. Possibly OK for someone with no background in programming.

I have found the book quite wealthy in its contents but the accompanying CD was a complete failure... most of the more "complex" examples had to be fixed in order to be readable by IE4.01 or NS4.05. I liked the editing but the author gave topics like JavaScript, and gave only several basic concepts of the scrippting language although there was code in which he used JavaScript code which couldn't be understood without additional resources. But practically it's a good reference for beginners or those who only want to know the basics. I would personally suggest, in order really to get somewhere go for "HTML 4.0 unleashed Professional reference edition".

This is a good book if you already know HTML. Its kind of confusing because right in the middle of the book is a big section with all the tags and their description, but if you overlook that it is a pretty good book.

Overall, this book was a straightforward decent book. Graham wrote it very well, although I was sometimes confused on the order of things, and I questioned some principles laid forth. This book would be a good book for novices, as it might not help the beginner grasp the whole HTML concept

This is an invaluable tool and I my classes I use it daily for looking up syntax and finding the answer to questions. Alas, as always with print in this fast moving world, the paper edition is usually outdated by the time it even leaves the printshop!

When I'm not sure I turn to Graham. His text can be relied on. A very good feature of his book is the way he describes most succinctly the 'Can Contain' and 'Can Be Inside' aspects of each tag. With most texts you have to really hunt for this information - if it's given at all. OK, it's not the easiest book for a beginner, who may find Lemay easier, but his text is more reliable and isn't marred by a host of typos. So if you want a reliable tome, this is a good one.

This book does not specifically talk about a particular OS. It generally talks about HTML and cgi-scripting. I read little bit of this book and I thought, man I really wasted money on this. It's very complicated for beginners, and it's also hard to read and learn from it. It's not at all a step-by-step guide, I think it's just a list of tags. VERY good if you wanna just look up what a certain tag does.