Markup Languages Books

This is a really good book to introduce SGML. Also, especially now that SoftQuad is out of the SGML web browser business, and no longer provides its Panorama SGML Netscape browser plug-in, the copy of Panorama Pro included on the CD that comes with the book is worth more than the price of the book.

Are you frustrated trying to get started learning about SGML, and how to do things with it? Do you feel like SGML is something out of a Kafka story? This book really can help you make that first big leap from helpless confusion, to being able to do things with SGML, and to be oriented so that you *can* become your own guide in going farther. Buy it: It works if you work it!

This book is an excellent introduction to SGML and XML. Its well written and covers the topic in a reasonable amount of detail. It includes an evaluation version of an SGML browser from Softquad that is worth the price of the book itself.

I highly recommend this book. Very well written and the projects actually work once you work out your own knowledge of CGI and Perl, but that was not a big deal. I especially like the detailed comment on the code and the in-depth analysis of each of the VoiceXML elements and attributes. I hope Mark Miller plans to write a sequel!

I bought this book last week and implemented most of the hands-on exercises in the book. The exercises are fun to do and the author's explanations are very clear and organized that made learning VoiceXML very interesting.

Now I feel very comfortable to write a VoiceXML script for my upcoming project. No to mention some typos in the scripts that provides you even better opportunity to learn hands-on.

This book offers a great step-by-step approach. The working VoiceXML sites created in the book provide great, practical knowledge that you can put right to work. And the code-check database was very helpful in detecting where a program might have gone wrong. I would recommend this book for anyone getting started with VoiceXML.

The title of Dennis Gaskill's book, _Web Site Design Made Easy_, says it all. He did his best to make it easy to grasp the concepts, and he succeeded. He wanted students and do-it-yourself web designers to understand how to create web pages using CSS and (X)HTML coding rather than relying on tables to position page elements on their web sites. The old style of using tables to control the visual appearance of web pages is now self-defeating.

Web designers ignoring CSS simply don't realize its importance. Whether they're coding for their own "Web Dreams" or for clients, designers dismissing CSS's significance do so at their own peril. Now that browsers embrace CSS more consistently, relying on tables rather than the somewhat more complicated CSS for (X)HTML layout is foolhardy.

Why?

Because of the magic word "Accessibility." A lot of folks don't realize that search engine robots (can you say, "Google"?) read (X)HTML code the same way assistive technologies do. Robots "read," they don't "see."

CSS allows you to create visually pleasing web pages which are optimized for search engines and assistive technologies. What more could you ask for? That's why CSS is a dream come true for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In addition, user agents (e.g., browsers, screen readers, handhelds, cell phones, etc.) can "read" your site more easily if you employ CSS and (X)HTML to create valid, well-formed (i.e., well-structured), accessible web sites for them.

More and more folks are interacting with the Internet without using a personal computer. They're using many different types of user agents. They won't, and sometimes can't, visit your site if your coding doesn't make them welcome.

Don't turn away traffic because you think CSS is too hard. It's not, Dennis made it easy. His books are used as classroom texts in high schools, colleges, and tech schools all over this country. He wrote _Web Site Design Made Easy_ specifically to TEACH students and do-it-yourself learners. He wants to help you help yourself succeed as a designer. And you can, with his help.

The Preface explains that nothing other than an understanding of how to use the Internet is expected of you. Dennis will show you, in easy steps, how to create a web site. "...This book mainly focuses on teaching HTML coding and formatting using CSS, utilizing both IBM Windows and Macintosh. Other areas are touched upon, but these basic skills will carry your student a long way toward their goal of website design...."

Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Internet and Web Design
Chapter 2: An Overview of HTML, XHTML, and CSS
Chapter 3: HTML Kick-start
Chapter 4: CSS Kick-start
Chapter 5: Text Formatting
Chapter 6: Applying Styles to Text Elements
Chapter 7: Applying Styles to Other Elements
Chapter 8: Color, Backgrounds, and Images
Chapter 9: Links and Multimedia
Chapter 10: Creating Lists
Chapter 11: Tables
Chapter 12: Frames
Chapter 13: Forms
Chapter 14: Creating an XHTML Document
Chapter 15: Good Design
Chapter 16: Publishing Your Web Site
Chapter 17: An Overview of Other Technologies
Chapter 18: Bonus Chapter
Appendix A: HTML and XHTML Charts
Appendix B: Cascading Style Sheets Charts
Appendix C: Color Charts
Appendix D: ASCII Character Chart
Appendix E: Troubleshooting
Glossary
Index

I've been visiting Dennis's BoogieJack web site since 1999. I enjoy his monthly low-key e-zine, Almost A Newsletter. I own two of his books, plus our library's Branch Manager bought two of his books for our library. So, yeah, I'm biased. But that doesn't change the fact that he's a great teacher who knows what he's teaching and makes it fun while he's doing it.

_Web Site Design Made Easy_ is definitely worth five stars from gobbysreviews. Buy a copy today and ENJOY!

gobby
Book Reviewer at Marathon Branch Library (Retired)

I bought this book as a text book for a college course that I was taking. Text books have a tendancy to be dry and boring, however, I found this book to be humorous. The lessons teach you step by step how to build a website. You can find inserts in the book that teach you advanced material based off of the basics that are given in the previous chapters.

There are references to the authors website in the book. The website is a great companion to the book, there is a lot of knowledge on his website as well.

Have fun programing!

This is a great how-to book for web design. Easy to read with wonderful graphics. It takes you though the basics into advanced designs. It assumes that you are a novice, with all the details included. However, experienced web designers would benefit from this book if they have only used canned software. Gaskill's details will help you to customize your design. I actually started with his first book many years ago in my quest to designing a better web page.

This book is a must for anyone interested in Topic Maps. It would certainly pay to have some familiarity with XML, URIs, etc, because otherwise the examples will be hard going. If you do know XML, then you'll be away, because XTM is a very small and simple vocabulary.

Each chapter is by a different author, and each one comes at the subject from a different angle. Topics covered include tutorials for using the XTM specification, topic maps for website Information Architecture, Knowledge Representation, Ontological Engineering, e-learning, visualisation, relationship to RDF, information about various software implementations (a bit dated now, but still valuable), as well as sample topic maps and XSLT code.

Because of the diverse - even contradictory - viewpoints, the book as a whole provides an excellent overview of the field.

In order to fully appreciate this book you will need a good working knowledge of XML and associated W3G documents, and more than a casual exposure to knowledge management. The first four chapters are a blend of historical information about XTM (XML topic maps) and fundamental technical information that describes design rationale and components of XTM (which is a separate open source initiative that is based on the ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps standard).

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 dive into the mechanics of XTM and knowledge management, and requires the prerequisite knowledge I cited above. This part of the book is not an easy read. This is not a reflection of the authors/editors ability to write as much as it is of the nature of the material. Knowledge management and development issues are given both wide and deep treatment in these chapters. Chapters 8 and 9 go deeper into the XML family as they relate to XTM (with an emphasis on XSLT), and address creating and maintaining sites that use XTM/XSLT as the core of a knowledge management strategy.

Related topics are covered in Chapters 10 through 13, including open source tools, RDF (widely used as a mechanism for weblogs and blogs that are gaining popularity), and semantic networks (intelligent agent-based systems). The final two chapters tie together the preceding material with a chapter devoted to topic map fundamentals for knowledge representation and a chapter about topic maps in knowledge organizations.

If you are interested in using an XML-like technology as the foundation of a knowledge management strategy, or are interested in learning about new directions in the integration of web technologies and knowledge management this book is ideal. For the technical reader the code examples, pointers to open source and commercial solutions and the website that supports this book (using topic maps, of course), this book is an excellent way to leverage knowledge of XML and use it to develop knowledge management solutions.

Since Tim Berners-Lee wrote of the Semantic Web
several years ago, there has been speculation about
how we might embed meaning within Web pages, as
opposed to merely displaying content. To answer this,
XML offers the separation of content from display.
From its user definable tags, different user
communities can define their own sets of tags and
associate meaning with those. XML offers the
infrastructure. But it is still fairly low level.
Assembler language, as it were, compared to more
powerful languages like C or Java.

So if XML is like an assembler, what is the analog of
C? This book puts forward XTM, XML Topic Maps, as the
answer. It consists of 17 chapters by different
authors, outlining various aspects of XTM. The
chapters can be divided into two types.

One type has nitty gritty explanations, replete with
examples of XTM written in XML. If you are a
programmer, these chapters are for you. There are web
sites listed with XTM definitions that you can

incorporate into your XTM, just like using standard
namespaces available on the web in normal XML.

The other chapters deal with the much deeper and
harder problem of how XTM may be used for Knowledge
Organisation and Knowledge Representation. They are
high level and abstruse, edging up to the issues of
semiotics and artificial intelligence.

As a side note: In the XTM examples and
implementations given, I was surprised to see no
mention of altavista's graphical representation of

search results, circa 1998. This was not in XTM, but
it conveyed the flavour. What happened was that if you
searched for, say, 'tornado', the results would appear
as a graph. The nodes would be the main keywords in
the documents containing 'tornado'. Nodes would be
connected to each other if documents contained both
those words. In this case, one might see two non
intersecting clusters - one related to weather
patterns, and the other to jet planes. By clicking on
a node, you could expand it into finer grained graphs.
It complements this book, whose main thrust is in
manually describing XML documents in an XTM format,
because it could achieve much the same visual results,
but derived automatically from arbitrary web pages.

XML,XML,XML everywhere.

Also, there are tons of RE-written w3c XML specs.
but this is different covering all practical subjects with some java codes.

Make sure, if you are a novice at XML, get another introductory book(like inside XML) first.

When I got this book I already had quite a few XML books in my bookcase, all from Wiley, Addison Wesley, O'Reilly and yes, even Wrox... :-|

Being an IBM Certified Developer on XML, I know my way around the topic and this book certainly qualifies as a great addition to my collection. With all the numerous XML books out there that keep covering the same material, this book with its excellent content on the more specialized XML standards for B2B certainly is refreshing. So even if you know XML very well, you can learn a lot in this book.

Despite its average size the book covers a lot of topics, and the discussions are still very detailed while being concise and "to the point". There is little rambling here. The writing style is professional and interesting, and also include those personal insights that I appreciate in computer books. I like books by pros who use the stuff, not just write about it.

If you're a manager, analyst or some other less-technical IT worker who wants to know a lot more about XML itself as well as its B2B uses, you'll love it. It is technical and you'll have to get your hands dirty a little, but you'll finally be up to speed on XML & B2B and understand what people are discussing around you. Not only will it provide you with the much needed knowledge on XML, Internet transports and security, you'll get a lot on the B2B angle and help you in identifying which technologies and standards you should consider for your business.

Developers who know XML will have to expect some redundancy early in the book since there is a whole chapter on XML fundamentals. It can serve as a good recap, may cover some of the XML-related standards you might not know so well, but definitely paints a clear picture of how the whole range of XML stuff fits together in "El Photo Grande" (the big picture).

Unless you're an Internet protocols and transports guru, you'll learn some very valuable low-level stuff here and be better positioned to understand the impact of your designs. The chapter on security - one of the most critical topics in B2B - is very well explained and is an excellent intro to the various concepts, but you'll need a dedicated security book to truly achieve the necessary level of expertise that is required in the implementation of a B2B project.

Unfortunately, since the book introduces you to many topics and concepts but obviously cannot dig as deep as we'd always want (unless reading a 14-volume work), I would have expected the author to refer us to external resources and other books and he almost never does. There is also no bibliography so no help there either. With all the new concepts in there, a glossary would have been nice too, although there is a much welcome "Notes" section at the end with various references to terms and concepts found throughout the book. The companion website ...does offer references but they're mainly W3C sources (quite exhaustive though).

The best value of the book comes in part II with coverage on the various frameworks, vocabularies and standards in B2B XML such as ebXML, xCBL, cXML, RosettaNet, SOAP and BizTalk. Little of this appears in other books so you'll want to buy this one if only for that. You'll have to do more digging on the one standard you'll pick when comes the time to use these technologies in real-world scenarios, but at least here you'll be able to decide which way to go and why, and you'll be able to start prototyping too.

If you're an XML novice, the fundamentals chapter is nice but you'll want at least another XML book to gain any detailed and "hands-on" knowledge on the classic XML standards (XSL, XSLT, DTDs, DOM, SAX, XLink, XPointer, XPath, etc.) Allow me to recommend "Applied XML: A Toolkit for Programmers" and "XML Specification Guide" by Wiley, and "XML in a Nutshell" by O'Reilly as good starting points. Maybe you could even pick an XML book better adapted to your language since the B2B book strictly uses Java.

I don't mind the Java code throughout the book, even though I'm more of a VB developer. I hate books that provide examples in multiple languages since they waste space and end-up being confusing, and I understand how Java can be the best choice for the widest audience of XML developers. Anyways if you can't read Java code yet, you're probably in trouble already.

All in all an excellent book, I highly recommend it. You can expect the high level of quality that is so customary to Wiley books (and which seems to elude Wrox so often). It's cheaper than other Wiley books but still comparable in price to other publishers. Personally I would have preferred a thicker (even if pricier) book with deeper coverage but here you get a very good return on your money. Enjoy!

"Developing SGML DTD's" is both a great book to get up to speed on SGML and a reference book for you SGML guru's. Eve and Jeanne deal with many of the complexities of SGML, but in a way that anyone can understand. I particulary liked the sections on managing an SGML project, and Training and Support. Hats off to Eve and Jeanne on a job well done !

The company I work for threw me into the arduous task of not only setting standards for our document data but to manage the entire process of an SGML implementation. A dream job for a technical writer? Maybe but I must have been delusional!

An Arbortext consultant, who was concerned for my sanity gave me this book as a wedding gift and advised me to read it on my very short honeymoon. By doing this, I would hopefully have some background and be able to participate effectively as a team member during the data modeling and system design with Arbortext. I had been putting in many long hours on the project already, had a good understanding of databases and had a better than average understanding of single sourcing concepts, Therefore, I felt I knew enough to get through the tasks without doing this reading. I DID skim through some of it on the plane but failed to read anywhere near enough.

The book is a complete cookbook on how to put together a data modeling team and how to complete the process.

So what's in the book that's so great? The book has a very good review of SGML concepts in general. Since the author loves to cook you will be treated to some excellent recipes while reviewing what you already know and learning the processes! You will understand what a good DTD is, why you need one, who the people you need are, and how to get the work done. You will also find out about the pitfalls in the design process and some ways to avoid them.

You'll learn how to perform a needs analysis and develop DTD requirements. In this process you will find ELM tree diagrams useful and will learn how to both read and design these equivalents of program flowcharts which become very useful documentation of your work. You will learn the importance of setting naming conventions and of documenting every single step.

Read this book BEFORE you start your first SGML or XML development project! Follow the concepts religiously and use the suggestions. You will save time and dollars in the long run and that's what it's really all about.

The book is full of real-world examples and the content would make it an excellent text book for a class on eCommerce or ebXML in any University. However, it was written with a personal flair that makes it very readable and easy to follow and understand. It will continue to be a valued reference book in my eCommerce library for years to come as it hits on subjects that are relevant for today and tomorrow, as well as giving a good historical perspective of EDI and other standards for business messaging.

The real difference of this book is that its focus is on how to use ebXML to solve real-world problems with examples, rather than providing an overview of the ebXML specification itself.

This level was better than the first level. Lots of CSS examples and advanced topics. The first level is good for the novice web designer. Together its a good learning combo.

Great examples that anyone can use to create nice styles. I used a portion of this book in a course and it did very well.