Markup Languages Books

While this book is clearly aimed at migration from HTML to XHTML, and does contain some good content (not many books mention that tfoot should come before tbody!), it's very incomplete, and the quickref manages to mention only tags - no attributes at all!

There are much better and more complete books for those who are faced with conversion to XHTML, such as 'Mastering XHTML' by Ed Tittel, Chelsea Valentine, Lucinda Dykes and Mary Burmeister (ISBN 0782128203).

As one of the authors of this book I feel that the previous reviewer has missed the point of the book. Its title "XHTML Essentials" should not lead one to expect a complete or bible-like work. It is designed to cover the essentials that everyone needs to know to move from HTML to XHTML. Yes, there are more complete books, but they will cover many things that many Web authors don't want or need to know.

This is a good tutorial book on HTML - it explains concepts that most tutorials gloss over, especially the separation between structure and presentation. In fact, this was the only tutorial I liked out of the dozens on the shelf - none of the others did justice to style sheets. It's a pleasure to read Pfaffenberger's writing, but very disappointing to see the numerous editing mistakes (the Appendices are rendered useless by systematic errors, and there are several cut-and-paste errors in the main body of the book). IMHO he should have left out the ActiveX and CDF chapters, and expanded the layout section; it especially needs more example screenshots.

This short reference is very technical, as is everything else by the W3C. It is a good reference to have if you don't prefer looking things up on their web site, otherwise it's redundant information. It's a consise text designed for seasoned XML users -- it's not designed for beginners. Though I refer to this manual periodically, it is written in very unfriendly terms and it is difficult to work with. I prefer other sites on the web for reference over this small text.

It's strongest point, succintness, is also its negative. I found many places where I wished the author was more detailed. Although the layout of this book is better than most of the books I've checked out (including the top sellers here), the examples in this book contains too many errors for beginners to follow. Had I not had some HTML knowledge, I probably couldn't make any sense out of the examples. Considering the book is published by Prentice-Hall, I find this poor editing job surprising, because I rely quite a bit on this publisher for other professional computer references.

HTML CD was read over two weeks. It has an excellent detailed description of how to create web pages (The book's objectives). The software on the CD is ONLY GOOD ON WINDOWS 3.1! And the HTML descriptions are all for Netscape 2.x - IE Explorer is never mentioned. Good for basics only.

Coverage of SGML.Consists of three sections in which the 1st gives the background of SGML and HTML. The 2nd part talks about the languages used in case studies and it talks a bit deeper about those languages. The last part talks about some implementations of those languages.

This book has got a decent content about XML. But, most pages have been added to technologies that aren't being used much and just adds bulk to the book. A little rhetoric and not always concise to the point; but can live with it. Over all a good reference book. 3 Stars.

With so few truly useful VRML books on the market, it is lclear that writers are at a premium. While this book was useful in putting the VRML phenomenon into perspective and allowing newbies a glimpse into its programming worth, it was a little shallow on actual content. It would have been nice to get some hardcore coding in while the business is still new. A mark could be made. Sadly, there are too many books of this quality. I recommend this one if you want to know more about where VRML is going, but not if you are a part of that direction.

This is a great book for HTML beginners, it outlines most of the basics in html and shows how to do some cool stuff with lists & tables. This is a good book to have on your shelf for referance, it's also great value for money. The one thing it did lack is extensive examples of posting forms to a file, creating scrollers, changing scrollbar attributes and making the page refresh. 3/5.

A general overview of VBScript. Definately not the best book. If you are used to books like Professional Active Server Pages (Wrox) or JavaScript for the World Wide Web (Peachpit Press), you will be sorely disappointed by this book. One good thing about it is that it gives review questions at the end of every chapter, which I liked, but as far as information goes, it is not the best.