Markup Languages Books

I got this book with the intent of writing a set of custom control to interact with a database in real time over the web, it was probably a bad choice. Though the book itself was very good, I found the content to be a little basic for my requirements. Probably a good starting point from an administrative or reasonably junior programmer's point of view, but not really in-depth enought to satisfy a seasoned veteran =]

I bought this book a few months ago and have used it as a reference several times. Each time, I am frustrated that it doesn't have a detailed Table of Contents or an Index. This seems especially curious for a "reference" book.

Since the HTML tags are listed alphabetically, the author claims it doesn't need an index. I disagree. Besides tags, one might want to look up tag attributes, or perhaps concepts or synonyms.

In summary, I feel that this book is flawed as a reference, and the price seems rather high, as well.

I program and Network I have learnt to do most all that I do on computers through example books. Kathryn Toyer has made a poor job with this book, especially as this is such an easy program to learn. She includes the "example disk" attached to the back page that has examples in text the same as the book. The book is filled with snapshots of examples from the program with parts missing on the command lines. Example the chapter on FRAMES. Time to get through the book and understand most of it, 14 hours.

1) The author blithely attempts to cover both XHTML and XML in this book, and does an absolutely horrible job; He tries to cover too much in one text which in my opinion, does a great disservice to the reader. **LOL it's like talking to someone who claims to be an expert in several topics, yet knows only vague generalities which anyone can pick up within five minutes of reading at their local bookstore**

2) Lots of time is spent discussing very (basic) HTML tags; might I suggest the visual quickstart guide (5th edition or higher) from Elizabeth Castro.

3) If one is serious about learning the ins and outs of XML and all of its technologies, (XSLFO, DTD's, XSLT, XHTML, XML Schema, etc) might I also suggest "XML Family of Specifications"...its a very dense text, chock full of information, challenging at times, but worth every penny.

The book is very weak in content and has absolutely no practical examples. I'm not an expert in XML, so I won't give a technical estimate, but with new technology like XML one should not only show his favorable opinion, but provide examples to prove it's value. Title is also very misleading - in fact you've got a combination of 'appreciating the need of xml' and XML short description.

I had to buy this book for a classs I was taking and I wish I could've returned it instead of using it. To give the book some credit, the explanations are easy to understand and the author gives good examples. However, the codes he gives are useless, because most of them are spelled wrong. For a coding that relies on accuracy, this book should have been edited better. My suggestion: Find a different book to teach yourself CSS and XHTML. Pretty much anything would be better than this book.

This book has some good information, but it tries to cover too much. It covers web services created in .NET, Java, and even Perl. Most of the book is related to .NET though.

It is funny that in the intro the authors say they assume you already know XML, but then the first chapter is an intro to XML. Actually, that's one of the reasons I bought the book though. I didn't want to buy a separate XML book.

The other reason I bought the book is that it was on the bargain rack. I wouldn't have paid full price since I am not interested in .NET.

This book presents some good, simple information. The screen shots are nice except they are hard to read if you want to try to recreate them on your own. My biggest objection to the book is its use of XMLSpy as an application of creating the XML. XMLSpy, as the book indicates, is very expensive and not at all necessary for successfully completing an exercise in xml. This is particularly true for such an elementary book as this.

no wonder from all these hilarious reviews that it's being sold for pennies. this is a retail $30 book and i saw it on half for $.99. so i came here looking for a review and no wonder at the price. that sucks for the author(s). they should pull a recall.

I have tried to get through this book a couple of times, even tried to follow the code samples and make a sample web page with the graphics loaded from the web site and manually typing in the rest. Found out I was missing some of the graphics referred to in the book and had to either create or modify existing graphics to make the page come out right(this in just the first two chapters). I am relatively new to HTML and luckily a quick study otherwise I doubt I would have made it through chapter one. I can understand not covering all of the html in the book, but it would have been nice if the download had at least a working example based off of the book. I only have access to IE presently and I had to delve into chapter three to make the some of the items in chapter two work and then I couldn't get the last section of chapter two to work anyway. I have several of the O'Reilly books and I think I will stick with that publisher over Prentice Hall if the rest of the Essential books are are bad as this one.

Read the back of the book - looks good. Read the table of contents - looks good. Read the book ... you'll want your money back. This was the single most poorly put together technical book I have ever read - and I have read a lot of them. The only reason I can say I learned anything from this book is because I worked so hard to make the inoperable examples actually function. Prentice Hall, how about returning me my ($)?

After having learned of the power of CSS this was the first book I bought off the shelf. I had hoped it would follow in the footsteps of other essential books but was sorely disappointed. Do not buy this book if you are trying to learn CSS. I think they just titled it the way they did to get more prospective buyers. IT is definetly not a learning book, and to me, a complete waste of paper, time and money.

Well, I have most of the Web Professional series and this DID NOT match up to the others in terms of quality. It was ok, but there were errors aplenty in the code and at times it was incoherent. If you're looking to get a good book on DHTML get Rouyer's Dynamic HTML Web Magic. Sure, its a bit old but the code works and the examples are really cool, so you'relearning and havin' fun at the same time. For more of a reference get O'Reilly's book on DHTML as well.

This book does not explain DHTML in any degree of depth, neither is there enough information on JavaScript to be of any value. I do not understand the author's choice of material. Very poor. If I had paid money for it I would be looking for a refund.

Sorry, I have to give 1 star because is the minimum. I bought this piece of crap looking for a starter book for DHTML... a waste of money, I don't know what this dudess was thinking at the time of writting, has no examples, is not clear, has lot of errors, tries to follow an entire project, but surely is only on her mind, there's no source code to follow...

The problem with this book is its lack of point. The author explains how he is designing a site for some company he tags as NWU. Why he doesn't just give his readers the address for the site atleast to give them an idea of DHTML in action I don't know? He has absolutely NO examples that are worth trying and the whole first couple of chapters are donated to the history of the web! I didn't spend my money to read about HTML's existence. I bought the book because I want to know DHTML. The capper for me was when I tried to download some source code from a site recomended at the back of the book. The site doesn't exist!

I returned this book after reading about half of it. To me, examples are everything. The examples in this book were incomplete, vague and non-existent. Just when you think the author is getting down to the nitty gritty, the section ends. If you are looking for a how-to book on DHTML, this is NOT it. Instead, I would recommend "Dynamic HTML" by Shelley Powers.

Other problems with the book - tons of spelling errors, confusing tables, enormous (and useless) diagrams, and outdated data.

The author clearly needs to work on his delivery of information in the context of multiple intellligences. Face it, most of the "crack the book" learners on the Internet are a combination of the logical/mathematical and kinetic intelligences. So what makes this book so useless is the lack of examples to explain the author's points! Even after the author promises something in "Part 2: The Project" they never really appear, nor do any direct references to any code that might be on the associated website. Obviously, this book was rushed to print without good review, but the true hypocrisy comes on p. 24 when the author refers to involving the student's senses as a basic principle of teaching. Wherever that came from it's clear the author stuck with the old "sage on the stage" approach. Next time try "guide on the side" and involve the student with practical examples.