Markup Languages Books

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

If you are looking for info on XSL, don't stop here. The information in this book is far out of date for the IE5 implementation of XML/XSL.

The book covers what seems to be an older spec for XSL (theremust have not been XLST at the time) (the book published in thebeginning of 98).

The book seems to cover CSS stylesheets quite comprehensively. I do not need to have a deeper knowledge of CSS so I have not read any other books on the subject and cannot compare.

Examples and explanatory text in the book seem a bit difficult to comprehend, especially if browsing. Even when reading carefully it seemed to be more difficult to understand what each example illustrated that other reference books I have read. END

I would like to thank all involved in the creation of Professional Style Sheets for HTML and XML. As a new developer in Internet development I can frankly say this book is a godsend. From its cutting edge, accurate information, user-friendly writting style to its excellent layout a superb reference.

This time is perhaps one of the most challenging times to enter into Internet development. There is a lot to do managing to stay current while waiting for user agents and software on the web to become 100% standardized jointly and impliment the standards properly. This book gave me a great in-depth look into using CSS and related skills effectively and sure helped smooth out the learning curve.

I was easily able to find answers for on-line formatting control even when I wasn't quite sure what exactly it was I was looking for. This to me is an excellent barometer of how well written a book of this nature is. I can also say that despite having a topic that may lend itself to being a little less than exciting reading, this book was very easy to stick through entire chapters! You just have to get this one folks.

Eventhough CSS1 and CSS2 are covered, the major stress is given for XML and XSL. Using this book I created a number of good XMLized sites. It has good introduction to XML, XSL, CSS1 and CSS2. Eventhough CSS for HTML is covered less when compared to XML, this is a good book.

This book is simply not standard enough to be entirely useful. It covers way too much XML as opposed to the straight CSS standards. Also, many of the examples don't even work under Netscape 4. This text is too IE4 biased to be that good.

I'm a freelance web designer, i find this book very useful.It teaches you about Web marketing and some hot tips, The structure of the website,rating a website.How to design a perfect webpage.include some case study which is useful. Yet another good book.

There is some really good material here. Unfortunately the first three chapters are incredibly fluffy and vague. They are also full of grammatical mistakes, non sequiturs, and spelling errors. The home page of one fairly pedestrian and old-fashioned site is shown in grayscale half-a-dozen times, wasting 15 column inches. The valuable ideas in the front could have been distilled into 8 pages instead of taking 70.

-Start at Chapter 4. From here out the book is very good. It starts with developing for the audience, navigation principles, color and graphics, etc. and goes all the way to Java, VRML and interactive design. So don't give up. The book design and editing are poor, but the last two-thirds makes it worth the price.

A general how-to-do-it book which excellently treats both the most nebulous questions (e.g. "What is the web and what design issues do its characteristics raise?") and specific techniques and issues (e.g., "What meta information techniques are available and which are likely to become part of a standard?").

Based on the reviews, you would think this book is a guide to design theory, laying out what`s good and bad about web design. I thought it might tell me things the "pros" know that I had overlooked and provide real examples I could implement.

Instead I got a book at is so general that it can make any point it wants, is INCREDIBLY dated, considering when it was published, and uses only 3 or 4 examples of websites in the entire book, most conspicuously Sun`s. Maybe that shouldn`t have been surprising since the writer is a former Sun employee. Much of the book comes off as lame PR for the company.

I learned nothing new in this book and I`m no pro. Even worse, much of the writing is couched in such terse, psudo-academic prose that you have no idea what the authors are trying to say. What is clear, though, is that they say it over and over again. Save your mdoney and get, believe it or not, Learn Great Web Design in 21 Days. While I usually stay far away as possible from the "in XX days" books, this one is a beautiful, all-color, large format book that uses dozens and dozens of examples and ofers design tips you may not have tried, like pull quotes, color schemes, etc. Wish I could get a refund.

This is not about how to make a site look great so much as how to organize and structure it. I found it very useful and hardly dated at all. - Marcia Yudkin, Author of Internet Marketing for Less than $500/Year and nine other books

I think this is the only book on the market that shows useful code. I am very happy that I bought the book. This book is my bible for my consulting job.

I think this is the only book on the market that shows useful code. I am very happy that I bought the book. This book is my bible for my consulting job.

*** Disclaimer: I couldn't finish this book, so my review only covers the first half. For all I know, the 2'nd half is a masterpiece, though I doubt it. ****

This book is terrible. In 20 years of reading computer books (including several years reviewing prospective book manuscripts), I've never come across a book anywhere close to being as badly structured and written (and, just as unforgivable, as badly edited) as this mess. The author clearly is handicapped by not being a native English speaker as the writing is dense and sometimes takes quite a bit of effort to decipher.

OK, I can work around the language difficulty, but in addition, the book's remarkably content-free. For one, the examples -- which don't come till after a few extrordinarly tedious rehash chapters on XML structure -- are trivial.

The ultimate insult: the book assumes that the reader *is already intimately familiar with XML*. "XML for Real Programmers"? To me, the title sounded like the book would be a good intro. to XML for an experienced programmer; it's not.

Avoid this book. If you need to learn XML, start with the W3c.org standards documents.

The first sentence almost made me close the book to never reopen it again. "Extended" Markup Language? When writing a book about XML, its a good idea to know what the acronym stands for!

What dissapointed me was the title compared to the contents. I was expecting lots of good code, explanations, and tips from someone who had found a lot of the gothcas that come about from writing code with these new XML parsers and stylesheets. There is almost no code until page 178, and even this code uses IBM's xml4j and the TX methods, which are very outdated. SAX is barely mentioned until chapter 8, pg 424 of a 449 pg book. The Author spends a lot of time on this "XML website" development, but I don't feel the pages were well spent. Not much code and not a real production level design IMHO. The "Java and XML" O'Reilly book is more of a programmers book. For XSLT, I like "XSLT Programmer's Reference" from Wrox.

Though I did find the book a bit pricy, it was more important to me to have it as a reference manual in my library. As a designer focusing on UI and architecture, I find it necessary to know, understand, and be able to use HTML. It's horrible when designers put together fantastic designs that developers have to later alter, because the code would have to jump through too many hoops to make it work.

It is worth the buy if you need a reference manual and can't wait for responses from email mailing lists or your developer friend who's out to lunch.

I was impressed with the scope and detail of this volume. Very useful

GREAT

One of the worst proofreading jobs now in print seriously diminishes what otherwise might have been a useful reference.

The authors were able to clearly express themselves such that it was quite an easy read for a non-programmer. However, "Advanced Html Companion 2nd edition" requires a serious rewrite due to its numerous and obvious mistypes. The cover of this book is indeed appealing but the content of it is just an OVERVIEW of several web markup languages. If you require just an overview of the subject, this book is for you. If you want a reasonable grasp of Html or other markup languages, please find another book; I wish I could trade mine for another.