Markup Languages Books

If you are a web developer, this book is a MUST HAVE! The instructions are clearly written and the examples are very descriptive. Christopher J. Goddard and Mark White have done an excellent job! Don't code a single line of VBScript until you have this book

There is nothing real-world, quick or easy for web development in this book. The author assumes the reader to be already well versed in web development. There is only enough information given to allow the reader to make the determination that there is "insufficient information". Although there are many examples, they are not "Real-World" examples and I found them lacking in clarity. There was very little but quite useless information on FTP and HTTP controls (which was what I was interested in most). There were too many references to incomplete code snippits that left the reader hanging. I found more useful documentation from the M$ website.

The one 5 star review must be from one of the authors or their friends, because this book is useless. I returned it after the first day.

I started out with Que's HTML 3.2 Starter Kit. It lived up to it's name and had most common HTML commands with general descriptions and browser tips. I highly recommend it for "starting out" because it's written in layman's language with good examples and screen shots.

HTML 3.2 Starter Kit is not a starting place. It does discuss the origin of HTML and gives simple examples but fails to include some basic elements like a reference to HTML tags. There is no place to find the standard form or how to use some elements. The index doesnt even seem to include all the tags. The book also uses some tags before introducing them in the text. They start giving examples of things that show up in later chapters. The explanation of colors and their use in backgrounds is unintelligible. The book comes with a CD with some HTML editors. These are shareware which will expire after a time period or number of uses. One is supposed to have a 30 day evaluation period but by the time they got it to the CD it has 14 days left. I am not a professional programer but I have taken courses in programing in Fortran,Pascal and C. HTML is quite simple but trying to learn it from this book will make it more difficult. J. Claiborn Ph.D.

With the introduction of the Microsoft and Netscape 4.0 series Web browsers new and exciting Web development design options have arrived on the scene. Touted as a method of quickly designing and updating HTML documents, Style Sheets programming promises an easier and quicker way to produce cutting-edge results!

The authors demonstrate throughout this book some really innovative approaches to designing Websites. Readers will learn how to creatively add color to their Web pages, how to set margins as never before, how to prescisely control element positioning. how to indent text, how to manage font properties, and more. Readers will learn how to graduate from basic HTML to this higher level of programming challenge! Actual Websites and sample Web pages are provided to demonstrate this latest concept in Web design.

The book features plenty of sample exercises readers can work through. They provide a variety of layout options and illustrations of style and structure. The CD that accompanies the book is loaded with all of the sample style sheets source code from the book as well as software programs allowing immediate implementation of Style Sheets programming.

Coriolis rates this book for intermediate through advanced users. I concur. Beginners will have a difficult finding their way through this book but the rewards can be great for those who can master this Web development programming tool!

Don't be seduced by this book's lavish cover or large-format, its 60-page color section or the considerable writing experience of the three authors. This book's potentially timely and valuable information is crippled by the publisher's decision to get this book on the shelves without benefit of the least editorial proofing.

Page after page of obvious problems completely undermine your confidence in the technical content. Statements like "The Times font is probably the most commonly used font written in languages using Arabic letters." (p114) surely won't convince you that the authors have something to teach you in the way of fontfaces.

Poorly thought-out and unimaginative illustrations have only a tenuous relation to text. Sometimes they have no relation. On p105, the authors "illustrate" the block nature of a list-item with a picture of Felix the Cat in a non-browser window labelled "Animated Gifs". Another example shows us Lotus Notes instead of Netscape.

It is clear that technical facts have not been thoroughly checked. This is very important in an area where published standards are not completely implemented and there are wide variations in the type of implementation across browsers and platforms. We are told that "font size (sic) and font weight (tsk tsk) are abbreviated using the slash (12pt/14pt)." No, font-size and line-height are abbreviated that way.

The book is poorly indexed, but that is normal for computer books. What is abnormal is that the color section, about one-third of the book, has not been indexed at all! Especially amusing was the 5 full-color pages gushing about Time Magazine's exemplary use of style sheets *without one line* of code to back up the authors' esteem.

No, this is one beautiful book best admired from afar.

If you have any java programming experience whatsoever, this book is not for you. Even if you have no java experience, this book is not for you because its code examples are horrible and half of them do not even work. The first 1/3 of the book details how to write overly simplistic programs and files in java and xml. However, when you get to the part of the book that actually goes into what you want to learn, it provides very few details, sometimes only a page of text dedicated to a topic. This book takes the very basics of java and the very basics of XML - but if you hope to do anything further than write "Hello, World" to an XML file and then read "Hello, World" back into an object - this book is definately not for you. And if you are a beginner, consider other texts.

Well, i dont have much to say about this book. if you want to learn java and xml and you dont have lot of experience with java, this book will give you a helping hand. however, if you do have a fair amount of experience, then this book will be a little too novice style esp. since it begins with an introduction to java language itself.
So, in a nutshell, this book will supplement many online tutorial nicely and give you quick info on how to get your hands wet with xml. however, the information may not completely satisfy an experienced user (for that go for O'reilly's java and xml)

Contrary to one of the other reviews on this site I found this to be an excellent structured approach to learning XSL. The book however is not a reference guide as much as a step by step tutorial. Read cover to cover the reader should gain a good indepth knowledge on the subject. The content is light enough to keep you interested but not so light that you're left guessing and the later chapters (while not necessary to gaining good XSL knowledge) cover a lot of advanced topics such as XSL-FO.

PS. No where on the back cover or in the contents are topics such as JAVA or CGI mentioned. The reviewer who expressed dismay at lack of coverage in these areas should have bought a different book if that's what they wanted to start off with.

After a comprehensive search through the jungle of available literature on the much talked topic 'XSL', I - a total beginner to XSL, X-PATH, X-POINTER, X-LINK - decided to purchase the book 'Just XSL'.

My objective is:
- to be able to develop professionally written XSL
with all the necessary surrounding languages where necessary
(such as X-PATH, X-POINTERS, etc.)
- to know 'XSL surrounding languages' where necessary or to be
able to evaluate what is why, where necessary under which
circumstances

My goals are:
- to learn the principle structure of XSL
- to learn the correlating languages going along with XSL
- to systematically understand all necessary syntax, tree
structure and whatever should be involved
- to practically apply studies to 'real-world' examples
under different degrees (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
(eg including CD, etc.) for XSL and necessary surrounding
languages
- to know how to incorporate XSL into or with web based
languages (eg Java, CGI) and database development
- to be provided with suggestions on available tools on different
platforms (for Mac, Unix, Linux, Windows, etc.)

My learning targets have unfortunately not been met by this book, unfortunately. Although the books talks a lot, it lacks of a structural approach and has thus not met my learning goals. All in all, I am obliged to get another book on the topic so I am left with the starting situation again: which one? I hope it will not be another waste again ..... Students always have a limited budget.

Before buying this book please read the title.
This is only what you are going to find a spec. usefull?

This book is a peek into what will become Microsoft's major new web services intiative, .NET My Services. It contains a preliminary set of specs on the architecture of these XML-based web services, and a chapter or two on what .NET My Services is and how you might use it. The upcoming (spring 2002) "Introduction to .NET My Services" book from MS Press will contain a more in-depth introduction, including code samples and an updated "What is this and how will I use it" section.

This book totally sucks. Topics are reworded and are all over the book.

Then he'll have a special note wherein he will recall the days of the typewriter days.

You would see mention of washing machines, your mom.

Total nightmare.

I have been researching moving SGML documents to the Web, and this book provided a comprehensive coverage of this topic. The authors lay out the various approaches to converting SGML to HTML and give the positive and negative aspects of each. Although the book is geared towards SGML/HTML implementations, it also gives a good description of SGML (in particular DTDs). I recommend Using SGML to anyone who needs to understand SGML and porting SGML documents to the Web.

In this book I found some information available nowhere else -- like using the "eval()" function to get around the fact that Explorer 3 doesn't support cookies. It's brilliant! For those who find it too steep, read the information under "What This Book Is Not" (p.3): "This is *not* a beginner's book, in the sense of teaching how JavaScript or Perl work, ..., and several assumptions are made: .You're familiar with HTML... .You have an *understanding of Perl, JavaScript, or VBScript* .You have created your share of Web pages..." The author is honest from the start. It's a great book if you need some answers as a scripter or (even light) programmer, not as a new-comer in the web or scripting fields. But if you are a scripter, this book will make you look good more than once. MC - Santa Cruz, CA

This book had chunks and sections of code, it gave you some great ideas for an experienced programmer. It does not teach you how to do anything. These examples could be found for free on the web. This book was a waste of money, if you are trying to learn Perl, "Learning Perl(llama book)" is a good one, Javascript, "Javascript for Dummies is a good one", but it is a thorough language and a C/C++ background would be good for either Perl or Javascript.

I'm still slogging through this weighty tome but so far it hasn't provided much in the way of solutions. This book might be a nice reference for someone who's at the point where they want to address obscure SGML problems, it definitely isn't appropriate for someone new to SGML.

The XML and SGML Cookbook is really more about SGML than about XML, but users of the entire family of markup languages will find much to learn in this entertaining and readable tome. Jelliffe starts with vivid descriptions of the information structuring process, with useful warnings and suggestions throughout. His recipes for document structures are useful and cover a wide variety of possible situations. The section on internationalization is compelling, explaining clearly the wide variety of issues that complicate data processing and typesetting.

The price may seem a bit steep, but the information is well worth it. The layout is much friendlier than the rest of this series, a welcome companion to keep next to your keyboard as you work on your latest *ML project. Beginners will need an introductory guide to the syntax, but this is an excellent guide to the process and the theory behind markup language development.

I usually read just to get a big picture. I thought this did the job. Dummies Books are a lot more palatable than other books on topics as dry as this.

I'm never disappointed with Dummies books and this one is no exception. Great read, easy to learn.

As a complete newbie to XML this was a good starter. As I got deeper into XML I found several mistakes/deficiencies in the book, and sometimes the author just flat out seemed to not know what he was talking about. For instance, the claim on page 86 that (#CDATA) is a valid DTD element content definition is flat out wrong. His description of Schema element declarations (pp. 114-115) teaches that using globals/refs is the only way to define complex elements, and is inappropriate for his example. He makes no mention of globals at all, leaving the reader confused. I have ceased to trust this book as a valid source of XML information.

If you want to kill your time without learning anything, this book is absolute right for you.

These reviews are all very misleading as they refer to a previous edition of the book which is no longer available, the third edition of XML For Dummies. XML For Dummies, 4th edition, the book featured here, addresses many of the concerns raised in the reviews of the third edition.