SGML Books

This book is fiercely awesome.

While the first half of the book teaches you all about proper HTML authoring, the back half of the book is a giant, yet easy to read reference of nearly all HTML tags, most of CSS2 style elements, and the most commonly used Javascript.

As a professional webmaster, most HTML books I've read have no re-readability value; you read them once and then they collect dust. This book, however, is a very different animal with it's excellent and extensive reference manual in the back. I've owned this book for almost 5 years, and all the pages are falling out of it and the edges of the pages are well-worn and dirty from the extensive usage of thumbing through pages and from using it as a makeshift pillow during those long nights at the office.

The rumors are true.

One drawback is that this book is swinging towards way past out-of-date -- I would strongly reccommend "Mastering HTML and XHTML" here on Amazon.com as that book is 3 years more up to date and written by the same authors.

I found this book on the New Horizons Computer Learning Center website. I liked it so much I decided to buy it. Why? Because it offered more than just HTML. Not only did it provide all the information one needs to write a webpage, but also Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript. As more and more basic code becomes deprecated CSS is becoming the favored mode for writing HTML. Finding A comprehensive list of special codes also sold me on getting this guide.

I bought this book in a hope that it will be similar to the Mastering java script book full of Javascript examples and code and tutorial. It had some tutorials but not enough examples. The book is basically in 4 sections 1: html tutorial, 2: CSS, 3: Javascript and 4: Html tags. the author quickly lost focus from HTML to CSS and Javascript. I would like the book but if I was a complete beginner, but it was not Mastering HTML. I hope it had more examples. A better book would be HTML source code or cook book I don't remember. This book went back to the book shelf very quickly.

This is a pretty good book for learning HTML and XHTML. It's very basic, and perfect for a beginner. Most codes are explained thoroughly, however, sometimes the author just writes a code to do a job and doesnt explain how it works or how exactly to use it.

It has ALOT of important information about creating a website and how to test a website, so you can meet all your users needs.
I would recommend this book to a beginner who wants to learn more about HTML/XHTML or someone who would like a great reference book.

Exactly the book on Web Design that I was looking for to advance my knowledge! I bought it used on amazon.com and it surpassed my expectations! This book explains everything that it claims and more...HTML and XHTML, as well as related technologies are discussed. This is an awesome starter book for beginners to learn quickly, and is an all around great reference for experts. This book will help you learn HTML, and XHTML and prepare you for where you want to go next. GREAT GREAT GREAT!

I would highly recommend this book for all type of users, from novice to experts. This book is easy to read and understand. It has excellent tips through out the book. The writer's made sure in this book that you would learn everything about coding web pages in both HTML and XHTML. They also touch on other web technologies like CSS, JavaScripting and XML. Don't look any further, this book is the right book for you.

I have a self-taught knowledge of XHTML, and I got this book hoping to learn more about it. I studied it from cover to cover, and, though I would not claim to me a master or expert of the subject, I definately have a broder, sturdier understanding of XHTML. The book provided good examples, so the reader can clearly understand the lesson. I was also surprised to find that it is strikingly different than online tutorials in that it does not simply define tags or provide template-like code for the reader to copy into notepad. Instead, it breaks down the tags and the code, so the reader can fully understand it and manipulate it in his/her own code. I was also surprised to find that it was not at all like the technical reference books that I am used to. The Mastering XHTML book does not assume that the reader has any knowledge of XHTML when starting the book. So even if you know absolutely nothing about XHTML, you will be able to understand this book.
It is definately for beginners, though. So if you're formally trained or already at the O'Reilly Definitive Guide level, you will be horribly bored. If, however, you are like I was and are looking for something to build a sturdy foundation about XHTML, you will be pleased. This is also a good book for transitioning from HTML to XHTML.

This is a long read but pack full of great info. The future of the web is XHTML, any developer needs this book.

This book lists everything in HTML 4.x that has been deprecated in XHTML 1.0. Though not especially great for writing XHTML from scratch, this book is a prize for updating sites written in HTML 4. x to XHTML. With a few dozen searches you'd know everything in the web pages that needs to be changed.

The resources herein are top-notch. I have an international collaboration ongoing with Harvard and Kyoto with XML in which the Kyoto group is all working with Emacs. The chapter (2) on Emacs and PSGML is crisp, clear, and "standalone" in its clarity. This is the place to START with the big and little details of mark-up technology.

-J.R. Gardner, Ph.D.

DuCharme's book offers everything you need to do SGML authoring (which includes XML and HTML). He provides literally all of the world's best software for writing, validating, and publishing documents with SGML, under both Windows and UNIX.

He explains everything clearly and simply, but most of all practically! After reading this book you won't need to look anywhere else to figure out how to apply his ideas and get started. You'll be up and running.

I am new to HTML/XHTML and wanted a definitive reference book that told me about EVERY HTML tag - and exactly what were and weren't the correct ways to use them. After buying and reading about 5 other similar books, I finally got to this one and it is exactly right. All the other books cover useful snippets here and there, but they aren't exhaustive.

Note that this book isn't good for learning the basics. Rather, it is useful reference once you know the basics and need a source that tells you authoritatively that this such and such tag (e.g., 'p') does or doesn't support such and such attribute (e.g., 'padding') - fyi, it doesn't, except thru the 'style' attribute.

If that's what you need, then this is what you should buy.

AMAZON, SHAME ON YOU!!!!! You should state what edition and the date copyrighted in the book information and indicate whether there are newer editions.

Watch out. Though Amazon has it covered by the "look inside", the book entitled only HTML is the 3rd edition of a book that is in it's sixth Edition. Amazon has combined all the reviews for all the editions. This should not be done!!!!!!! I have always felt comfortable buying from Amazon, no longer. I did have a seller (ordered through Amazon)send me this edition for the full price of the 6th. He got the sixth to me, but it took my time to get it corrected. The 3rd edition is probably not even worth the $10 for the used edition, but is certainly not worth the $20 for the new. Don't be fooled! I can't believe Amazon is stooping to this sort of a con. The most serious problem is that much of what you learn in this edition is being put out to pasture in the next 5 years.


There is a World Wide Consortium that is trying to standardize language and browswers. HTML is being replace in the interim with XHTML and eventually XML. A new, more powerful, formating language, CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is replacing any formating in HTML.

Many of the reviews you see are for the 6th edition. It does have errors (it doesn't stick to the more stringent XHTML as it should, and the redundancy is annoying. Castro's is annoying in that she sectionalizes the code and it's not clear at first what she's doing. I haven't yet seen the others that are offered.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this book will teach you how to code web pages using HTML and CSS. This is a reference manual that exhaustively discusses the mechanics of coding web pages, but it doesn't walk you through the process step by step. For that, I recommend O'Reilly's "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML." The benefit of this book is that it covers every aspect of HTML and CSS, including some which the W3 consortium has approved but no browser yet supports. It's best as a reference book for those already familiar with web page coding. It's full of surprises and "I didn't know I could do that!" moments, given its comprehensiveness.

I have the 3rd edition and use it most everyday in my job. I figured it would be a bit outdated so I bought this latest version. The new version is essentially the exact same as the old version and I feel like I wasted my money. It's also missing the handy quick reference the older version had. However, if you don't have an earlier version, I would definitely recommend it. It's indispensable.

I wanted a complete reference & guide to html/xhtml and that's what I got. I didn't want to be ignorant about any features. I didn't want to be left in the dark about anything. This book has all the info I wanted, and much more. In fact in a way it has too much info. It has info about tags, attributes, and other features that are obsolete, deprecated, or not supported by any browsers. You can skip over those rather than slogging your way through every word in the book. Maybe it's just me, but one downside to this book for me is that the writing style tends to be convoluted, verbose, and somewhat boring. I had some difficulty staying focused and concentrating on this book. But since it fulfilled the reason I got this book, I still give it 5 stars. So if you're looking for a complete book, don't worry, it's complete.

Note that there are at least 3 editions of this book. Check for the latest edition if you want the latest.

This book is not an explanation or tutorial of how to make beautiful pages with CSS. I think the people who give it below 3 stars may have been looking for that, and instead they should try CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. This book IS, however, a complete reference to all CSS properties and values, and also contains some valuable tips on browser behavior and bugs. If I'm coding along and forget what all the possible values are for list-style-type, this is the book I reach for.

This is the 'go-to' reference for me. The truly ultimate guide to CSS from one of the construct's primary innovators and authors. Mr. Meyer is the most knowledgeable person in the field of CSS, browser compatibility and all around HTML design.

I had done some work with style sheets, but was confused bythe terms and had no idea what they can do. This book completely changed what I can do when I design web sites. It'sa real eye-opener and a great reference.

Probably a bit out of date at this point. For me, this book wasn't that useful, since I generally refer to the W3C site for information about CSS. But it's a nice desk reference, and a standard tool for almost all CSS developers. There's probably a new version out by now to address all the developments that have happened in the past couple of years, I would look for that (or wait until one comes out, it won't be long).

In "Part I - Intro to IA," obviously the basics are covered, like what exactly is IA? What does an Information Architect do? After reading this title, I would define an Information Architect as a glorified content manager. Someone that occupies the realm between UI designer and DB engineer.

Google is pretty good at finding information for us on the vast Internet, but there is a long way to go. I believe these authors make a valid point that IA will become increasingly relevant. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that in the future you will actually be able to obtain a BS in IA. Nonetheless, IA is around us everyday when we use technology no matter what we want call it.

The elements that make up IA are covered in "Part II - Basic Principles of IA." The basis of IA is the interaction or retrieval of information in terms of organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, search systems, thesauri, controlled vocabularies, and metadata. What this basically means is, how do we categorize our data so that it makes sense, is easy to navigate and search, and is relevant or adaptable according to our users' vocabularies.

"Part III - Process and Methodology" helps one plan a path to your IA goals. For instance, developing a research management team to discuss such goals, your target audiences, functionality/deficiencies of your current IA system, and integrating other software, such as your customer management system (CMS).

My favorite topic here is the detailed discussion of "building vocabularies." This is something everybody needs to constantly perfect. An example of this is, two people can search for the same thing using two different criteria. How can can we build a vocabulary system that recognizes that?

Many research tools are discussed. My favorite technique, and it's so simple, is card sorting. Get some blank cards (20-25) and write on them the headings from categories, subcategories, and content within your site. Ask a user to sort this stack of cards into piles that make sense to him and have him label those cards using post-it notes. Make sure to tell them to think-out-loud and be sure to take notes. This will give you an idea of how one would "travel" through your site, what is relevant, and what should not be on your homepage, etc.

The authors take the reader through the process of the IA development cycle, from concept, to getting managers to buy-in, to the implementation and administration of the system; very thorough.

The hands-on aspects of IA are explained in "Part IV - IA in Practice." One thing I found insightful was how one could pursue an official education in the area of IA, albeit there is no such degree. To gain a competitive advantage, the authors suggest obtaining a degree in Library and Information Science (LIS) or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

At the end of chapter 15, there is a list of position titles making up an ideal IA team.
This list may prove helpful for potential readers to get a better understanding of what IA is comprised of.

1) Strategy Architect - responsible for overall design goals and integration

2) Thesaurus Designer - develops classification schemes, controlled vocabularies, and thesauri

3) Controlled Vocabulary Manager - manages the evolution of controlled vocabularies and coordinates the indexing specialists team

4) Indexing Specialist - tags content and services with controlled vocabulary metadata

5) Interaction Designer - creates navigation schemes and page layouts with a focus on user interaction

6) IA Software Analyst - links the IA and IT teams, focusing on ways to leverage software to create, manage, and drive the user experience

7) IA Usability Engineer - focuses on intersection of usability and IA by conducting studies that isolate IA elements, such as category labels or metadata.

8) Cartographer - converts patterns in content, structure, and usage into maps, guides, indexes, and other useful navigational tools.

9) Search Analyst - leads the design, improvement, and ongoing analysis of search system.


"PART V - IA in the Organization" was a little dry for my tastes and irrelevant to me. May be very helpful for someone in a large bureaucratic organization that wants to implement their IA concepts.

The moral of the story is that "site builders" must employ multiple info retrieval methods and tightly integrate them. Everyone searches, browses, scans, and finds info differently; accommodate them.

This book is very comprehensive and even deals with the politics of IA. To me, the book gets a little long at times, but if your life evolves around information somehow, this is an essential read.

The topic of the Polar Bear is very defined and focused, and the book reflects this. It's a bit dry - reads much like stereo instructions - but for someone who is dedicated to exploring content and information architecture in depth, there's simply no better reference.

I wouldn't call this a good primer, but I'd definitely recommend it for more advanced reading, and definitely as a reference book.

In general, this book contains some useful yet common sense information. This book is more about how to become a talker than a worker. I read through and found the first half confirmed my experience and the second half is a bust. If you want to become an office politician, this is a must have.

This is a perfectly good resource, if you're looking for the theoretical underpinnings of how IA should work. I was, however, looking for more specifically technical information, along the lines of algorithms and integration techniques. For this I ended up going with Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications, which is more geared in that direction. Again, if IA is your whole intention, then this is a great resource, but if you're looking for technical detail, look elsewhere.

As project manager, I was in a bind when our contract information architect failed to understand the complexities of our matrixed business model and client base. Rosenfeld's book helped me design a IA for our 700 page HTML site that has since been described as simple, intuitive, a no-brainer. What great compliments!

The book describes basic theories of IA in general (i.e. book indexes and tables of contents, libraries, etc.) and the pros and cons of different organization, labeling, and navigation systems. Then Rosenfeld advises on presenting IA to management, etc., managing expectations (yours and others), and gives detailed examples of IA strategies online.

Next Time before I purchase the book I would like to know if the CD in company with the book will be included in the mail or not.

This is the best XML/Java book I've seen to date. Why? It's well written. For example, unlike most books written by more than one or two authors, this book does *not* repeat a lot of material that an author previously addressed. The code contained in the book and on CD is well formatted and doesn't contain a lot of needless fat surrounding the meat; it get's right to the concept they're trying to relate.
I especially liked the chapters written by the lead author (Maruyama) and especially his XML Security chapters. Worth the money - just for the code.
Additionally, the code is well written - example, the import statements list each class; they don't use ".*;"

[This is a review of the second edition.]
It was with some trepidation that I opened this book. It has 9 authors. Sometimes this many can mean that the style varies widely between chapters, and that there may be little logical continuity. Glad am I to say that this book appears seamless. Thanks probably in part to good editorial management by the publisher.

This is an advanced treatment of XML. It presupposes that you are already familiar with java and XML. The emphasis is on developing higher level applications that use XML as message medium.

As a consequence of 8 of the authors being Japanese, they stress that for internationalisation, XML is a good choice for the medium. It was designed from the ground up to handle Unicode. This is needed to describe Chinese and Japanese, which, out of the major languages, are the hardest to deal with, because of the large number of symbols. You should design your applications to maximise outreach to as large a user base as possible. Native English speakers tend to live in a happy technological cocoon, because leading edge stuff mostly appears first in English speaking countries. It is easy when programming to inadvertantly build into your code restrictions to ascii or extended ascii. Then it becomes much harder larger to remove those. Whereas if you choose XML (andjava), you get internationalisation right out of the box.

The discussion of DOM (Document Object Model) and SAX parsers is very nice. Especially in showing how to add SAX filters, and in quantitative estimates of runtime and memory usage of the two approaches. They make the point that XML processors are the result of intensive intellectual work, and that hence you should use these, instead of writing your own. More reliable, and you can concentrate on higher level issues.

For more advanced XML uses, XML Schemas are described, largely supplanting DTDs, since they allow the easy handling of datatypes (like String and integer) and namespaces.

They give succinct examples of how to connect XML messages to databases via Enterprise Java Beans. In doing so, Java Server Pages and servlets are explained. Very logical progression. Then the Web Services Description Language is introduced, along with showing how to use it with UDDI. Security via XML Digital Signatures and Certificate Authorities is then implemented.

The logic flow is very clear. Plus the accompanying CD with the full example code is a great convenience for learning.

I found this book very useful, covers a lot of unique topics
in advanced XML processing, practical and to the point.
Especially enjoyed coverage of advantages and disadvantages
of different techniques.

Would be nice to cover these topics a bit deeper,
little more on architecture.
How about making 3rd edition 1000 pages,
maybe without CD-ROM, put code online
(any XML/Java developer has Internet access now).
And Websphere and DB2 getting outdated very quickly.

Even if 9 different authors wrote this book, the logical flow remains intact and the writing style is consistent, clear and concise, without any redundancy. The authors provide plenty of well written, relevant code examples, almost to a level of a cookbook. I was very pleased to see some pretty advanced topics covered in details and, while the focus is on Xerces, JAXP get a good coverage too. In my opinion one of the best Java/XML books on the market

This is not a quick read. This is not a book with templates that will help you make a site. This book can be useful for beginners, it just may seem daunting to some at first due to the sheer volume of information.

This is a book I tend to use as an occasional reference while I work. I especially like that at the end of each section, the author discusses what is or is not compatible with various browsers. Were I an instructor teaching a CSS class, this book would work well as a textbook.

I've seen quite a few bad reviews on this book and wonder why. I am an experienced user of CSS. I bought this book because weeding through websites, message boards and tutorials have a limited usage. Tutorials are always very rudimentary, message boards are hit or miss for your particular problem and posting to them returns an answer a little too late when on a strict deadline, and web sites are too tailored to a particular problem.

This book gives a good overview of CSS and all of its contructs, from the first working model to new recommendations that haven't been adopted by a standards group. Its gives a summary on all properties and their adoption by differnt browser/OSs, and gives examples of proper application of the properties. It also explains some of the quirks and work-arounds with CSS which is a subject that could be a book in itself.

As a reference, I find it complete, but difficult to access information. It requires a bit of hunting because the index isn't thorough. I actually find it easier to use the TOC instead which is not a compliment.

If you are new to CSS, this book could serve you if you are a patient person. If you are a novice, this book would probably serve you better. If you are an expert, you may get a couple techniques out of this book, but if you're looking for a quick reference, this book will not serve you. It would possibly open your eyes to some techniques, especially with CSS2-3 and IE specific elements, although the execution of IE elements in this book are not streamlines.

Despite having a very good index, this book is not adequate even as a reference book, let alone instructing on the nuances of web-site development supported by CSS, due to its poor use of examples, skimpy descriptions of subjects, large typeface with wide-margins (leaving scant room for CONTENT), and inappropriate inclusion of a worthless color section. As an avid reader of the PH CORE series of books (Cay Horstmann's Java books being the shining jewels, IMHO), this book left me terribly disappointed. This book has sat on my shelves for years, and in the event that I need help with something relating to CSS, I will go online and look it up there, rather than suffer the frustration of trying to find something in this overly-sized book. To illustrate my rant, in many places the book references the fact that "colors have changed on the page," as you could clearly see WERE THE BOOK IN >>COLOR<<, yet the actual color section of the book contains a chart detailing compatibility of CSS properties in various browsers from IE 3.02 to Opera 3.6, which CLEARLY could be represented by a normal black-and-white chart with symbols denoting in which browsers a property is safe to be used. The color section of the book, which is very nice high-quality glossy stock, could be used more appropriately to illustrate how CSS can be used to control things such as, oh I don't know, maybe COLOR?!?!?! And clearly the overwhelming point of CSS is that the styles should be set up in a SEPARATE STYLE SHEET, not embedded into the HTML code, which Keith never illustrates anywhere. It would have been a real bonus if he had included two pages that had the same underlying HTML code, but were completely different looking based solely on the stylesheet used. Perhaps that would have been a good use for one of those pages in the glossy section - showing that you can have a "Halloween" version of a page, and a "Christmas" version of that same page, with no underlying code changes required. This book has made me change my philosophy regarding CORE books, from having no doubts that the content of the book will be worth the price, to being wary of purchasing another tome to be relegated exclusively to propping up the good books on the shelves of my library.....

The book didn't really teach me anything, and it makes for a lousy reference. I do not recommend it to either new or experienced CSS designers. Far better free resources exist on the web.

There's little discussion of external stylesheets, and instead it focuses on inline CSS (which is useful, yes, but not as useful as it could be).

The reference material in the back of the book doesn't refer you to related items, doesn't provide examples, and doesn't refer you to the pages in the main text which describe the reference item in more detail.

Prentice Hall has artfully concealed the lack of content in this book by providing a "Browser Compatibility" section at the end of every sub-section of the book. This pads every subsection of the book by 2/3 of a page. To pick an example randomly, Chapter 4 runs from pp. 53-80 (27 pages). There are nine of these "Browser Compatibility" pads, taking up around 6 pages in the chapter. This suggests that the book should really be about 80% as long as it is -- or, god forbid, have another big chunk of missing content to fix some of the lacks above.

If all of the information in this book was re-written to exclude all of the redundant and worthless muck, it could have easily fit onto 50 pages. As it is, the author managed to strech it into eight HUNDRED pages. Greenpeace should be all over this guy for the monumental waste of trees.

There *is* informative information, but you really have to dig to get to it. The entire text is truly an excersize in copy and pasting. The table of contents alone is over twenty pages. The index (which is really what we use) is only ten pages. A good example of the amazing bloat in this book are the pages on "padding". The primary properties are padding, padding-left, padding-right, padding-top, padding-bottom. Any sensible author would have given a comprehensive description of one of the properties, and then breifly stated the obvious difference between left and right. However, two pages are dedicated to each property. Each two-page description is virtually identical to each other, substituting "right" for "left" where appropriate, etc.

Since it's been on my shelf, I've gone to it occasionally for quick reference, and it's painfully difficult to find anything specific. Far better references can be found on the web for free.

Small, Informative, and easy to use. It does everything it needs to do.

I would very quickly buy this book again.

I used this book as a reference to take a certification exam without ever touching CSS and scored in the 96th percentile... enough said.

I'm doing a lot of CSS work these days and figured this guide would be a good book to have on hand to quickly pull out when I can't remember a selector or how to write a certain pseudo-class, etc. And it *is* a decent little guide for the most part. It gives a short description of each element and what browsers support it (although no version information included) and even has a basic CSS tutorial included. Certainly not substitute for the full length book, but okay to quickly refer to.

The thing I didn't like about the book is that it just often seems to take a little time for me to find things in it. There are just so many different ways a "pocket guide" could be done that would make it a matter of seconds to find the element you need information on...with this one I'm often resorting to using the index to find what page it is on. Since the entire book is black-and-white and there's no page separation of element from element, it all just kinds of blends together and just visually is not very pleasing to use. If you are familiar with Visibone web developer cards/sheets I find those much more useful as a quick-reference due to how well the information is presented. While the material is not as comprehensive as what this book includes, I find myself pulling it out more often than this book simply because I can literally get the information I need in a second versus spending time just trying to locate it in this book.

So final score...it's a decent book and worth considering. If you've used other O-Reilly pocket books and like them, you'll probably like this as well. But I personally think there are easier "pocket guides" available.

Large books, by their very nature, can have good points and bad points. After all, if you have a couple or several hundred pages worth of material, you are bound to get some things right and some things wrong.
But these pocket reference books from O'Reilly are great. They aren't for learning, rather they are what they say they are: a pocket reference. (Nice to see some truth in advertising for a change.)
If you buy this book you will use it. A lot. Period.

Great little reference book. It is not intended to be a learning tool. If you want that, try the Head First book on HTML/XHTML/CSS that O'Reilly also publishes.

It's a super little time-saver, and also makes for a quick read when designing a new page or project, to see if something you haven't used previously could benefit your work.