Markup Languages Books

I have read books about HTML, JavaScript, C++ and honestly THIS BOOK IS THE WORST that I have ever read! I wanted to learn some XML from this book, it starts talking about its capabilities, use, implementation, functionality, examples, examples, blah, blah, blah... zzzzz.
If you want to learn how to use XML take my advice, do not consider this book. However, if you know XML this book has examples of how can XML be implemented, though I think it is not worth its price.

Definitely this book is for those who dont wanna know XML, it contains nothing.

You'll spend most of your time waiting for something to happen. There is essentially no connection between the CD-ROM and the text.

Others have already said it better than I, so I'll keep this short:

* not enough information to be useful

* poor presentation of the details

* it only babbles on and on about how great XML is, without telling you anything about any pitfalls or, for example, the shortcomings of DTDs.

Charles Goldfarb should actually look at these books, before lending his name to them.

If you want the real deal, go with the Wrox Press book: Professional XML. Sure, it's big, weighs a ton, and you'll probably never need to look at more than a third of it, but I swear even just the first 4 chapters are worth the price of the entire book!

I was greatly disappointed with the contents of this book and above all after learning that the editor is the one who invented SGML(Mother of XML)...they should think a hundred times before writing this kinda books. Please stop circulating this book in the market. Why are you people giving wrong information to people???

This book is a great book for those just starting out, and for those who want a reference guide to HTML.

I have used this refernce guide for a year exclusively, for its easy to read format and quick to find index. I highky suggest this to all.

This is an excellent book for those who want to learn HTML without using an Editor. This is an excellent book for those who are dedicated to learning HTML properly. Most of the people I talked to that did not like this book were the type of people that thought it was just easier to use FrontPage. While this is true, they are missing the point. This is an excellent book to teach HTML as well as use as a reference guide after you have learned HTML.

This book came HIGHLY recommended and I have to admit I'm completely disappointed. If I hadn't opened the CD I'd return it. Tries to touch on everything but leaves you with an understanding of nothing. Makes the simplest things very complicated. I bought SAMS Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours ($20.00, 450 pages, paperback) prior to this purchase and find myself referencing that book because LeMay either covers the topic in such a disjointed manner or doesn't cover it at all. Buy a less expensive book. This one just isn't worth it.

I am presently using this book as a recommended text in an HTML college class. It is not the primary text, but I am CONSTANTLY referring to it because it is so thorough. I recommend it for anyone who is SERIOUS about learning HTML in depth.

1)They should break this book into series and cover the various topics in depth.
2)You master nothing,just barely scratch the main topics.

Lacking any serious depth even for beginners, and a complete waste of 900 perfectly good pages worth of paper. What a mess!

If you know Html and want to learn XML, this is a book for you.
It tells you in layman terms the concepts of XML without getting you bogged down.If you are a programmer (java)you can read just upto chapter 11 and then look at the java Api or go through one of the IBM tutorials and you will be all set.I agree that there is lot of repetition of the concepts but you can just skim the topic or read it again.

This book tries to cover a tremendous amount of territory:
* The history of document markup and XML.
* XML concepts and syntax.
* Document analysis and DTD and schema design.
* CSS
* XSL/XSLT
* An array of development tools
* A range of XML application servers
* IE channels
* RDF, P3P, WDDX, MathML, SMIL
* Case studies from D&B, Dell

That's an impressive and ambitious list.

Unfortunately, the authors are over reaching and have prepared a book that looks like it was rushed to market. It is full of typos, grammar mistakes and nonsensical examples. It is almost incoherent in some places. The coverage from chapter to chapter is extremely uneven: Chapter 22 provides 13 pages of coverage on XML and Java. If it only took 13 pages to teach it to you, you probably wouldn't need the book to learn it.

Even as a dedicated reader with eight years' experience in publishing and content management, I found these shortcomings extremely frustrating and confusing.

If you need a survey book that covers a lot of stuff about XML without really trying to teach you the language and how to work with it, this book might be okay. For example, a business manager who has heard about XML or is contributing to the decision to use the technology might get some mileage out of the Dell or D&B case study. A curious home user just trying to get their feet wet might also appreciate the book not giving too much technical detail.

But if you're in technology or really need to learn how to use XML, Mastering XML is not a good choice. Its shallow coverage of the language's fundamentals and the hardcore technology for using it will disappoint.

(...)

This book is useless, I recommend Sybex to review this unorganized book again. Not suitable for beginners at all.

I found myself trapped with verbal explanations that keeps saying "you don't have to understand it now, more of it will be in the next section". This kind of stuff really discourage readers. This book will only prove that when you buy it you will "waste your money and your time".

I pointed my browswer at the website for the examples in the book and was shocked to find the following message:

"Currently this site uses DHTML as implemented in
Netscape 4.x and Explorer 4/5.x under the Windows platform ..."

Folks, this is the antithesis of what web designers should be doing.

This book is visually enhanced with lots of full-color screen shots and color that separates the code samples from the text. This book focuses primarily on animation and dynamic menus, while there is more to Dynamic HTML. Much of the animation can be accomplished in Flash, but this is a good alternative to paying for expensive software and relying on the end-user to have the appropriate plug-in. This book is one of the few that I originally found to be cross-browser compatible and is very useful and well-documented for the animations and menus. The visual screen shots make it easy to flip through and find what you are looking for ... as long as it's in the book.

interesting read. doesn't explain examples very well. my personal opinion: don't waste your time, learn Flash.

This book presents code for accomplishing 16 tasks using combinations of HTML, style sheets, and JavaScript. All examples and graphics are included on the accompanying CD-ROM (which worked fine on my IBM ThinkPad in Win2000). Yes, the tasks, like flashing text, circular animations, and pop-up menus, are rather cool. But are they really necessary? Will they bring more users to your Webpage? My biggest complaint with the book is that Rouyer repeats 4 out of his 10 or 11 steps for each task verbatim in every single chapter, giving full explanations each time. An additional 3 or 4 steps for each task are basically identical, with only filenames or numbers of calls to files different. This book would be a lot shorter and probably a lot cheaper to produce if these steps weren't repeated so many times. If you like to learn from examples, then this book can give you a lot of ideas. But if it's concepts that you're looking for, it will be up to you to find them on your own with this book.

If I could re-title this book, it would be "How To Go Out Of Your Way To Spend Four Weeks Creating in DHTML What You Could Do In One Day With Flash". That pretty much says it all.

My problem with this book is that it goes against the basic concept of software development that says "use the right tool for the job". And let's get real, the DHTML in this book is NOT the right tool. For example, consider the chapters on image animation. The author spends a huge amount of time and effort to show how to create many different graphics and write many different layers in order to glue them together with complex DHTML so that'll animate as one flying bird. That's great, but what did you really accomplish? The user has to download all of those different graphics, which considerably slows down the page. The page is fatter because of all the layers and DHTML to glue them together. And the page will render slower because the browser has to evaluate all the DHTML, load the images, and load the animation. Instead, why not spend one hour using a graphics program to create one animated GIF that loads quickly with *NO* threat of browser incompatibility. And that's the way this entire book read: I bet I can show you a somewhat-decent way of doing anything that animated GIFs or Flash can do, no matter how complex and unrealistic my implementations may be in the real world. That's great as an experiement or research thesis, but so would a book about how to type on a keyboard using only your nose and one ear. Sure it's possible, but who's going to do that?!?

This book was an absolute waste of my money. I walked away remembering why Flash and animated GIFs exist and how helpful they can be. If you're looking for a book on building Dynamic web pages, I suggest "DHTML For the World Wide Web" or "JavaScript For The World Wide Web".

One star because this appears to be the only book available on the subject. The examples are POOR and incomplete, if they exist at all. There has to be more than this to HTML help.

Help for VB applications is a sick joke to begin. Mr. Wexler took me no closer to writing professional Help Text than I was before spending the money, and time, on this effort.

This book is written in a point-and-click, monkey-see monkey-do format. If you follow the steps EXACTLY you will end up with (usually) a working help file with no explanation for what you have been doing. The author even tells you that some of his code "won't run in this version but will in the next" - and most don't. Half of the things I want to know (TOCs, FullText indexes, WhatsThisHelp for VB, etc.) do not have adequate (if any) coverage. It is too bad that the minimum rating is 1 star because I don't even want to give it that. If you are looking for a ... guide to ineffectual help systems - this is the book for you! Everyone else - save your money for a DECENT tech reference that is worth reading...

This book is written in a point-and-click, monkey-see monkey-do format. If you follow the steps EXACTLY you will end up with (usually) a working help file with no explanation for what you have been doing. The author even tells you that some of his code "won't run in this version but will in the next" - and most don't. Half of the things I want to know (TOCs, FullText indexes, WhatsThisHelp for VB, etc.) do not have adequate (if any) coverage. It is too bad that the minimum rating is 1 star because I don't even want to give it that. If you are looking for a moron's guide to ineffectual help systems - this is the book for you! Everyone else - save your money for a DECENT tech reference that is worth reading...

This book suffers from shortcomings, but to be fair, so does Microsoft's HTML Help SDK. The SDK suffers from a sloppy user interface, modal windows that should be modeless, some unbelievable bugs, etc., and you can see that it has made the book less useful than it could be.

Specifically, the book is missing information that users of a reasonably well-debugged application should not need, such as a list of bugs, features never implemented, features that don't work correctly, etc.

The other reviews for this book are on the money as to this book's problems. To learn to use HTML Help, I found this book useful, but you must supplement it with information that you can get from web sites that devote themselves to HTML Help issues. These sites point out the bugs and other issues that HTML Help authors absolutely need to know about.

More and more books are written lately by poor visual basic programmers that have nothing to do with computer programming or computer science in general. This is one of them; a real shame for Microsoft Press...

The concepts are presented in a chaotic manner, without small and clear samples. The book could have some value only for html programmers that just want to broaden their knowledge a little bit. ...

This book has no direction at all. The author inserts bits and pieces of info that he has collected about varying topics. Buy this book if you want to learn nothing about alot of XML topics from a MS perspective.

I was wading my way through the book skimming the extremely long and irrelavent examples hoping the Windows DNA chapters at the end would make it all worth the pain. Nope - I don't think this guy has ever written an application that used Windows DNA architecture in his life.

The best thing about this book is that I didn't have to pay for it. Don't buy it, I am sure Wrox or someone else has a much better XML book.

Not only did this book fail to provide me with any succinct information with regard to the problems I'm attempting to solve, it was also a very dry and boring read. The author did not present concepts in the order in which one would regularly learn them. Given this, it is highly unlikely that the author has real world development experience.

In summary, painful book; purchase at risk to your own mental health. Oh yes, THANKS JAKE STURM.

This book is nothing more than a whirlwind of Microsoft marketing terms and hype. It starts off by laying groundwork for understanding XML: defines XML documents, explains well-formedness and validity, and details schemas and DTDs. The fact of the matter is the subject of validity, schemas, and DTDs is pretty pointless for those of us who aren't deeply involved in B2B transactions. Nevertheless, it is essential to giving a general overview of XML and XML related technologies. Definately, this part is also the most tedious and boring part. After laying the groundwork the book immediately jumps into a chapter by chapter introduction to the various Microsoft initiatives, most of which have not even been released yet and may be radically altered by the advent of Microsoft.NET. These include a cursory examination of SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol) followed by a lighting fast touching upon XML DOM, and finally, a scanty introduction to XSLT. After reading this book I've concluded that the nature of XML is such that it doesn't require a book to learn. If you have access to the Internet then you have access to all you need as far as Microsoft development goes at MSDN online. It boils down to this. XML is a type of document, XML DOM is a bunch of functions, XML schemas and DTDs are also a type of document with rather simplistic content that you shouldn't have to read a book to understand. The conceptual details don't go much deeper than that. The last great book I read was "Developing Distributed Applications Using COM+ and VB 6". I wouldn't recommend that book if you are looking toward moving to MS.NET in the near future but I now see that your money will go farther if you focus on general infrastructure books that explain things such as COM+ and .NET. The rest is just technology that is used within a framework and can be picked up quite easily. If you want to find out something about developing XML solutions in the Microsoft environment then just save your money and go to msdn. microsoft. com and jump right in. Save your money for assistance in understanding difficult concepts rather than being bombarded by reference details and marketing hype.

I felt this book is decent enough. ... But when I was reading "Java and XML" I find that Presenting XML provides more information on XML than the OReilly book. Ofcourse OReilly book is good on Java programming part. Things like enity references are well explained by Richar Light. Some of the initial chapters try to present a story of sorts which is .... But the following chapters get more technial. Overall concepts are presented in reasonable and simple to understand style rather than W3C's website's formal XML specification.

Very badly organized and hard to follow writting styles. If you are technical enough, just go to w3 website to learn XML, because this book does not provide anything easier to understand (if not more confusing) than the pure specifications.

I've only read 4 chapters so far on this book. But, it has been extremely painful! I will probably press on, but this is definitely snooze material!

Briefly: this book is dry, repetetive, and way too light on code samples that should help reinforce key concepts.

Just walk right past this one.

The book has some good information for the new and novice user. Unfortunately, you have to filter through too much to get at them. On several occasions, I had a sense of deja vu because the author decided to repeat a concept covered multiple times earlier in the book.

I don't consider it a total waste of money because I did complete it and feel I learned something. However, if you have some experience with HTML or XML, spend your money elsewhere.

If you are an XML guru, then a high-density syntax reference may be all you need. You will note that those who have given positive reviews were all reasonably accomplished in XML and happy for the reference material. However, as someone that had never even seen any XML, I found the tutorial incomprehensible. The author seems to have a terrible grasp of English, uses it sloppily, and makes errors to boot. As even those that gave a positive review seem to agree, if you want a book to learn XML give this book a wide berth.

I'm almost certain I speak both English and technical English. I definitely speak HTML and I can parse XML.

So why is it that I stopped and re-read two full pages trying to determine what they were trying to say? And came away knowing merely that I had been correct on my first pass; no actual useful definition of the terms was given in those pages.

Also, Plain English structure puts the Tutorial first rather than last...

First of all, this is a book for people who know their stuff and need to be able to go an extra mile without spending an hour wading through deteriorating Web. Even tutorial part is for people who know and understand a lot and that is how it should be for a book which is already too heavy.

Things that could be better - information on case sensitivity of Xpath functions and patterns, marking up which stylesheet elelments are in CSS1, which in CSS2 and which in neither, more complete table of Unicode character references (to include full ASCII for example including interpunction), 8-bit Character set tables and mapping to Unicode, font, leading, and even margins could be a level smaller to make book thinner, lighter and more dense for everyday use, the "Releted Properties,Objects etc." could go to a small print to both not eat up the space and be faster to spot when needed.

I have to agree with Annette Truong (below) on this one, it's a great book. After going thru every XML book in Borders I finally settled on this one as the most comprehensive and UP-TO-DATE reference I could find. (There is so much xml stuff out there that is just out of date!) ... Make no mistake, this is not an xml wet-nursing book. This is for people who are familiar with (although not necessarily accomplished in) xml. It packs a lot of punch into each page and although it is primarily a reference it has plenty of examples and tutorials.

If you are an XML guru, then a high-density syntax reference may be all you need. You will note that those who have given positive reviews were all reasonably accomplished in XML and happy for the reference material. However, as someone that had never even seen any XML, I found the tutorial incomprehensible. The author seems to have a terrible grasp of English, uses it sloppily, and makes errors to boot. As even those that gave a positive review seem to agree, if you want a book to learn XML give this book a wide berth.

This book wastes quite a few things, very respected names like Finkelstein, Aiken and Zachman and lots of pages. It will waste your time as well. This book is a vague attempt on connecting XML with information engineering.

I'm a programmer and sometime-architect. I was looking for a book that identified (1) Why XML is useful and (2) How to use it. This book is over 500 pages long; about 20 pages of it have XML on them. If you're a practical person looking to get up to speed quickly, look elsewhere.

Good description of Data Warehousing techniques, etc but NOREAL HELP for XML Portal builders. I may be a little critical since Irun a PS organization that does this but really, there isn't much meat here around anything new. The title is only a clever marketing ploy and the writers admit as much in the intro. Pass it on by unless you need to understand DataWarehousing in General and are trying to sneak it by your manager as an "XML book".

Better for Data Warehousers is the Data Warehouse Life Cycle Toolkit by Kimball.

This book assumes you already are knowledgable in most areas. Wanted to know more about XML and portals. Actually, found nothing useful. Very little about XML. Examples and guide are for a portal someone else already built. I don't want someone else's portal.

The first 300 pages of this book read more like a systems design book from the late '80's than an up-to-date treatise on portals and the use of XML.
The rest of the book jumps glosses over XML, reengineering tecnnology, "Organizational Quality Initiatives", and the all important final chapter, " The Central Role of Enterprise Portals" starts by fawning over a Microsoft XML web site that illustrates how you can convert some of your old applications and spends 15 of the 50 pages in the chapter giving a poor description of those 9 'scenarios'.
Unless your data systems are mired in the late '80s information architecture described in this book, you'd be best served by a more modern approach to data presentation and distribution.

I bought this book for its sections on XML-RPC, SOAP and such. It had no in-depth coverage of these topics, but the overview wasn't too bad. However, the editing is bad, so you have contradictory sentences, even on the same page. Also the examples have lots of problems. If you want to use this book to get some overview, it's ok, but don't rely on it as the final word.

Making a claim to be the Java, XML, and Web Services Bible is a big one, and one that this book fails to deliver on. While the author clearly knows the subject matter, his coverage of the basics is sometimes terse and confusing. I have some familiarity with xml, but the author takes just over 200 pages covering xml, xsl with Xalan, and xslt. Considering the scope of the subject, the author would have been better served to split this book into 3 or 4 volumes and cover the material more in depth in each volume. As it stands, the book lightly covers the basics then moves into more advanced examples, giving a feeling of being rushed through the material.
However rushed the book may feel, it is organized in a logical manner from start to finish. Although there is a slight detour in the middle of the book to cover the fairly new SVG, each section of the book builds upon the preceding sections. But I found that at the end of sections that I wasn't familiar with already, I felt lost because I hadn't been adequately prepared.
I was dissappointed with the sample code also. The code was written using software from the Apache Project, which was fine, but like most software books, the code was outdated before it was published. While the code was written using older versions of Xalan, Cocoon, and others, I also found that many of the samples didn't work. The sourcecode is downloadable from the publisher's site (no cd), but there are no compiled versions of the samples. There is supposedly an updated version of the sample code in a zip file, but that turned out to be fairly buggy as well.
If any of these technologies is new to you, I suggest you spend more money on other books because this one will only confuse you. If you are familiar with most of what's in here already and need an all-in-one reference or refresher without spending a lot of money, this would be the book for you.

The book isn't really for beginners. I don't think Java beginners can make sense of the Reflection or servlet code. The XML/XSLT part is hard to follow even after you've already read other books on the subject. The site [url] doesn't seem to exist (I tried on Oct 12 and Oct 13, 2002), so there's no source code available to download. If you're serious about Web Services I recommend you look at Jesse Liberty's books on C# and .Net instead.

This book is full of good information about XML and Java, and almost any developer using XML for the first time would find it useful. However, I think it is a little out of date. A lot of the "extension" packages it talks about have actually been encorportated into the Java platform in one way or another, and there are a few new XML-Java initiatives that it does not cover. Also, some of the examples in the book are a bit contrived, and not very practical for real world applications. But on the whole, I think this is a very good introduction to the subject.

I bought this book based on the 4.5 stars that the original reviews had given it. It must have the author's friends. None of the examples work and could never work no matter what platform. It is obvious that the author never actually worked through these issues although it looks good enough that it faked me out. Examples: he uses virtual base classes as if they were implementation classes (DOMImplementation class), he uses methods that dont exist (System.out.null()), he fails to declare or instantiate items that he uses in the examples, ..., ..., ... It took me a month to work my own way through the 2nd chapter. Not worth the time, not worth the money.