XML Books

Got an used copy of this for my XML study.

This book was arranged with great concentration of various key concepts in the XML realm. Very concise and quite useful for experienced program developers.

However, the downside of this book is that some of its examples are not consistent with the Interface Definition, for instance, SAX 2.0, example in this book used .addAttribute Method, which could not be found in SAX 2.0 class definition at all, therefore confusion was there. The same problems were there in the DTD chapter, e.g. vague Entity explaination..

For you can get an free copy of this book on the web now, I gave it 3 stars.

Not only explains very clearly all the complex stuff of xml schema when u're a beginner, but also well organized so that it's easy to come back to it when u have a precise questionning.
For me it's THE reference book about xsd, like stroustrup for c++ and kerningam for c.

This is a reference book. It's not intended to read, but rather provide quick reference to just about any XML related topic. Unfortunately, the examples are very short and don't provide a great deal of insite. My next task is to look for a reference book that does provide useful examples -- I hope one exists.

Who can remember all the little details surrounding XML? This book is a great summery of the most important XML technologies. It isn't a tutorial, it isn't for beginners, it's for "What's the name of that XPath function that removes excess spaces?" (normalize-space). Highly recommended for finding answers fast.

Keeping in mind that this is a "quick" reference, this book is organised well and very easy to use. When learning XML I had it by my side many times and almost always found what I was looking for. My only comment for improvement would be a more comprehensive index and maybe some a more suitable cover design (I am constantly pointing people to the text on the cover in order to convice them this is a book about XML).

I have been trying to use all the resources - bundled manuals, vtc, lynda.com since 2005 to learn filemaker/a database from scratch. I chose filemaker for 2 reasons - ease of use and support for OS X technologies like Applescript. I found it a bit challenging to understand concepts in Database design but with this one book things were more clear than ever before. I have finished this book and am planning to buy the latest version for filemaker 9.

If you are a newbie in database programming and need to get a well explained book to help you through building your own database. Get this book. It is well worth it.

BTW thanks for this book, I have a fully functional database to manage information related to my studies and research.

This manual has everything I ever needed to know about Filemaker in it. Easy to understand and a great tool for those who are new to Filemaker (as well as people who aren't so new, but don't know it all).

Why software cannot come with good manuals anymore is a mystery. This is exactly as advertised, the missing manual. Some other books will show you how to build bigger, more sophisticated solutions, but this one covers every aspect of how Filemaker works, which is what a manual should do.

Oh, and by the way, Filemaker is an amazing, underappreciated tool which helps manage a mailing list or build an entire database system. You cannot go wrong with it.

I hesitate to write negative reviews because I always suspect that the errors I find are my own misunderstandings. In this case I felt COMPELLED to write one. I bought this book wanting it to be great and having high expectations based on the reviews I read. I doubt many of the reviewers OR the EDITORS read this book very closely. There are so many mistakes (small and large) and examples which flat out DON'T WORK, that the book has almost driven me mad. I've wasted HOURS trying to get things to work the way the authors described. The errata posted on the oreilly.com site lists maybe 1/4 of the errors. There is ONE posted review on Amazon.com which took notice of this, but all of the others seem to miss it completely. Kudos to Raymond Smith!

Two perfect examples (in case you want to save yourself a few hours of struggle):

1. The Invoice Finder tutorial on page 372 simply doesn't work using the "minimum amount" field as they describe. It will work using the date range criterion, but when you add the minimum amount match, it fails. I built a file following along with the text and thought it was MY file that was broken. Then I tried the files supplied with the Missing Manual "CD". The authors' files don't work either. They SEEM to work with the data already in them, but if you add an invoice, it doesn't work. And if you simply open the "options..." definition of the Total Due field on the "Invoices" table, then OK the dialog box, all the existing data fails as well. It must be some kind of indexing problem, but the fact that it slipped by the editors is almost impossible to believe.

2. The Repeating Fields for Multiple Results on page 417 is totally wrong. The formula they supply will not work at all, and in fact, unless the "Price" field is a repeating field as well (which they don't mention at all), you can't do any calculations using the "Get(CalculationRepetitionNumber)" that will work the way they describe. Not to mention the fact that in the second mention of the calculation they call it "Get(CalculatedRepetitionNumber)" which is wrong and won't even take. The text suggests that you "test this calculation with a few numbers", but I doubt that any editor tried it. AND THIS IS LISTED IN A POWER USERS' CLINIC.

I don't know if this is an author problem or an editor problem, but either way, it is a REAL problem for readers.

What a disappointment and a waste of many hours... Don't listen to the majority of reviews on this book. They have clearly come from people who read it but were not actually trying to learn from the DOING the examples in the text. The book is written in a friendly easy style, but there are too many errors to make it valuable. And it's been out for TOO long for these things not to be listed in an available errata or supplement.

I was disappointed by this book, especially considering the high reviews that it has received. I would consider myself an advanced computer user and intermediate in working with programs like FileMaker. (Though database programs I have used before have had less features). This book uses an example of building a database throughout the book that involves customers and invoices, etc. The problem is that in later chapters the ongoing example database begins to interfere with the presentation of the material. If you have the time to work through the example database in detail (for a few hundred pages+) you might have a decent understanding of Filemaker-at least within the context of the example. Or if you have that kind of time, you might just want to take a class. I started with the beginning of the book when I began to build my database (which does not involve customers and invoices). After doing the initial planning/building work, I tried to skip to other parts of the book that were relevent to what I needed to do. Unfortunately, most of the descriptions are based on the original example--this made it difficult to apply the information to my own project. If the functions had been just described clearly at the beginning of each section, without relying on the example it would have been much better. There are a few mistakes as well-small but they cost me a bit of time. E.g., the book states that the "missing fields" problem can be fixed by changing a setting in preferences. This is not necessarily right--in my case it turned out to be a layout issue. I've had better results with trial and error than on relying on most of the book. Also, the language is not as clear as it could be, and precision is important in a book like this, especially for those of us who are not advanced users. Most importantly, I would have preferred a book with more straightforward descriptions and instructions.

As many C++ programmer, I have heard of XML and its supposed wonders, yet, I always thought it was just another web-specific kind of technology. I knew the basics, but was not really aware of how it could be integrated with C++.

This book was exactly what I was looking for. It just covers every possible way of integrating XML into C++ applications. This book is a wonderful survey of all possible solutions.

The fact that this book covers every possible technology is of course very appreciated, but its coverage of every technology is very brief and may only serve as an introduction.

Worse, the very comparison between every technology and the "when to use what?" section is of a mitigated quality. The author just doesn't explain well his point. The book looks more like a compilation of chapters than a unique book with a clear vision.

After reading this book, I fell like I know more how to integrate XML into C++ and dispose of some information on which technology use, but definitively need to buy another book to cover the chosen technology.

Overall, this book is a very good introduction to the integration of XML into C++ apps, but a better "guidance / technology comparison" would be appreciated.

Well I know Java and XML well, I needed a good reference book on "best practices" on using XML with C++, this book is really the only game in town and is quite useful as it covers all the bases.

It will get out of date pretty quick as most tech books of this kind do but as a reference it does nicely.

Well I know Java and XML well, I needed a good reference book on "best practices" on using XML with C++, this book is really the only game in town and is quite useful as it covers all the bases.

It will get out of date pretty quick as most tech books of this kind do but as a reference it does nicely.

Well I know Java and XML well, I needed a good reference book on "best practices" on using XML with C++, this book is really the only game in town and is quite useful as it covers all the bases.

It will get out of date pretty quick as most tech books of this kind do but as a reference it does nicely.

Although XML is a buzzword du jour, its acceptance in the C++ world
is surprisingly slow, especially in non-Microsoft environments. This
is mostly due to the lack of an accepted and standardized API. The
standardization process is painfully slow and even though there are
a number of publicly available parsers with C++ bindings, they vary in
their approach to XML processing as well as in the minute details that
make them work with some C++ compilers but not with the others.

In such an environment, a book devoted specifically to processing XML
using C++ is mostly welcome. Read below and decide for yourself.

The good:

- the book covers all major XML processing technologies
available for C++ programmers. It provides examples and explains the
difference in various approaches.

- It will not bore you with XML basic description, excessive quoting
of XML standards, or useless hype (99.9% of XML books out there are
plagued with all of the above).

The bad:

- Even though all of the technologies are compared, the comparison is
crammed in the back of the book, after the chapters describing all
of these technologies in great detail. This sounds like a poor
choice, because these technologies are very different from each
other and different tasks require different approaches. A good
overview and comparison of all of those in the beginning would be
much welcome. It would give readers an idea of what technology to
choose.

- Most of the large examples are Windows-oriented.

- Source code for the examples is only available on an attached CD.
It is not available on-line, which is a shame - I though we've
already passed the stage of "proprietary examples." Apart from other
obvious advantages, having examples on-line would facilitate
contribution of patches and improvements from the readers.

- Speaking of the examples on the CD, they are presented in the worst
manner I've ever seen. The examples I've played so far are bundled
with XML parser distribution (each of them!), have plenty of
temporary files around (like editor backups, or files that Visual
C++ produces). Even those examples that are supposed to work in both
UNIX and Windows come with no Makefiles, the source code looks and
feels rather immature (I though, one learns to NOT supply an
identifier to #endif directive during the 1st year of C/C++
education). All in all, each example I've seen so far feels like a
quick hack, hastily cooked up and released without a mere attempt to
make it look presentable. This is really bad, since, given the
scarcity of books on the subject, there will be plenty of people
fighting with the source code from the book.

The bottom-line: this books falls way short of my "golden standard"
(UNIX books by W. Richard Stevens). Nevertheless, it seems to be the
only book on the subject and it does cover all major technologies. If
you need to work with XML in C++ - buy this book. Once a revised
edition is out (or a better book appears), switch to it.

This book was very helpful to me when I was creating an executive-level presentation on AJAX because of the AJAX architecture diagram in chapter 1. More importantly, this book helped me research how to parse an RSS news feed with Atom.

But this book has much more than introductory material - it has valuable information on AJAX Principles, Who's Using AJAX, AJAX Patterns, AJAX Libraries (such as Prototype and jQuery), XML, JSON, RSS with AJAX, and AJAX Debugging Tools.

In addition, this book covers something near-and-dear to me: real-world case studies at the end of the book.

The authors' back-end-agnostic approach was very helpful because of the many platforms (JavaEE, .NET, Ruby, PHP, and so on) that people are using.

A concise and informative introduction to AJAX technologies. A lot of great examples, including famous ones like Google maps and Gmail make learning about AJAX relevant and fun. A short history of AJAX and how it evolved into what it is today was also nice. I was hoping for more of a reference guide, but other than that, no real complaints here.

Wed 10/03/2007 5:15 pm. I'm not sure who writes these positive reviews, but an early example in the book ("The Hidden Frame Technique", starting on page 21) is obviously broken. The book shows "HiddenFrameExample1.htm" in an illustration but there is no such file in the ProAjax2ePHP.zip file downloaded from wrox. Judging by quotes on the internet probably from the first edition, I'd guess the actual file is probably GetCustomerData.php (?) but whether it is or not, that file has an obvious syntax error, missing paren in line 12 "if (is_numeric($sID) {". Of course if I were a php/ajax expert all this would be blindingly obvious; but I'm not, that's why I bought the book. I can't say I'm optimistic about the remainder of the text.

I'm a senior ASP.NET/Web developer with no Ajax experience. This is my first Ajax book. I wanted to learn Ajax from the ground up, not just the Microsoft controls. Our ecommerce site is very highly trafficed and there's no forgiveness for inefficiencies. This book certainly fulfilled my expectations, but it also introduced me to some new worlds of concepts that I did not expect. For instance, the chapter on Ajax Patterns: It's a new way of thinking about Web Development. I'm very impressed with its content. The book is clearly written, the examples are excellent. I am learning a great deal from this book. Nice job guys!

This is a great book but entirely irrelevant in todays world. The libraries and methods outlined here are outdated. With modern javascript frameworks like jQuery and Prototype there is, in my humble opinion, certainly no need to delve into the techniques of this book.

I am one of those who wish to pick up a book and be able to work with the technology in matter of hours, and this book is not the right one for it.

This is the best book I have ever read on XML related technologies. If you own just ONE book that wonderfully teaches this in's and out's of XSL as it relates to XML infrastructures, this is the book you absolutely MUST buy!

This books presents XSL in nice bite-sized chapters that are clear, to-the-point, and illustrated with good examples.

I am an experienced and (I think) pretty good procedural programmer, and I find XSL to be a challenge. I've looked at tutorials on the web and at other XSL books. I recommend this book because it reads well, covers the territory, and leaves you with a clear understanding of what XSL can do for you.

I am working on my IBM XML exam and had to study "Professional XML" and other books.

I found out there are two types of computer books
1) one type can tell you the same things in few pages(200-300 pages) and (of course in cheap price) without wasting your time and money.
2)second type will tell you the same things in 800-900 pages with price upto 60$ and size that will make you afraid even to pick up the book.(mostly "Professional series")

this book is from the first category. the author has done an excellent job to simply the understanding of how XSL,XSLT and XSL:FO works. what are different ways to do the same thing, whats the adv/dis to do them.

I got a chance to borrow it from my public library.
you may not find solid examples(only fragments) but believe me you wont miss the concept what the author is trying to teach at that point(he will use picture, fragment or whatever).

so here is the summary, if you want to save your time and money, pick this book.

A reasonable work on XSL, but certainly not the best. This book is neither fully a reference or an introduction. On the positive side the book provides a terse and intelligent introduction to the topic. On the negative side the explanation of a complex topic like XPath not covered in as much depth as it probably should be, and there are some extraneous sections on HTML and CSS which are better covered in other works. On the whole a good book, but not a great book. If you are interested in XSL you should try Michael Kay's XSLT Programmers Reference and Sal Mangano's XSLT Cookbook.

It is a good book with useful tips and tricks.
the authors use an elegant way to catch the target.

I should preface my review by saying that I generally love the sitepoint books. Simply Javascript (also co-authored by Adams) is hands down the best programming book I've ever read. That said, this book isn't really so much a "book" as it is a "handy reference." If you skim this book and find something you need, then you may be able to justify the cost. As a cover-to-cover read, it's definitely lacking and will leave you wanting. Taken as individual chapters, the writing is excellent and the solutions offer solid coding practices. My recommendation would be to find this book in a bookstore, skim the table of contents and chapters, and see if you will actually use any of the included solutions before you buy.

I purchased this book out of desperation after using a 1000 page Javascript Wrox book published in 2000 that was worse than useless. The author's blog posting here is very accurate: it is a modern javascript book that gives usable solutions and concepts that work well. I recommend this book to anyone who has at least some programming background and is sick of cut and pasting garbage code from other mickey mouse tutorial sites that break at the slightest change. It is also a great start for working with AJAX, which is what I needed it for.

That said, the book is surprisingly a great read. I am reading this book cover to cover and also use it as an every day reference with dozens of tips. It is obvious the authors have worked extensively with web sites and write from experience. Thanks for a job well done!

This is an excellent next-step up from an introduction to Javascript and looks at its use in real world situations. You will need to be reasonably fluent in the language to get the best out of it.

The book presents a topic as a question and then presents code to action that query as a solution, then goes through that code in a discussion section. This is where I have a relatively minor criticism of this book; the necessities of discussing the code do not always mesh well with the question and answer format of the layout.

The authors have gone to great effort to ensure that the book is as up-to-date as possible, though this is a rapidly moving target of course, and detail how to ensure that the code will run on as many platforms as possible, rarely giving up and saying 'forget it..', though this proved necessary in a number of the more esoteric options and older browsers.

A highly recommended read if you are looking for a quick solution, or a detailed understanding of what's going on.

I didn't really think I needed this book -- I have sever other JavaScript books, including the O'Reilly JavaScript Cookbook, and it seemed like this would just be a duplication. But I kept reading really positive reviews of this and other SitePoint books on sites that I trusted, so I decided to take a flier on it.

I'm really glad I did. Unlike some of the O'Reilly books, which are dated at this point, this has really up-to-date, professional code that incorporates best practices. Depending on what kind of JavaScript code base you need to integrate with, you may be able to use this code as-is in many instances. Even if you need to modify it for your own uses, you will never find poorly-organized hackwork here.

Also nice is the up-to-date topic selection. Classics like DOM, form validation, drop-down menus, and cookies are supplemented with topics about accessibility, XMLHttpRequest, in-page dialogs, and using class prototypes. When the authors tell you how to launch popups, they also tell you about all the pitfalls and problems.

No cookbook is going to cover ever possible topic (personally, I would have liked to see JSON examples), but this one is about as complete as you could reasonably ask for. Really, the only downside about this book that I can see is that you need to have at least an intermediate understanding of JavaScript to understand what's going on. There isn't a lot of handholding, and you will likely want to own both a good tutorial and a solid reference on JavaScript and spend some time with them before you're ready for this book. But if you have a good working knowledge of JavaScript and are looking for practical, well-written examples of how to incorporate new techniques into your code, you won't find a better book than this one.

I am professional web developer and have been using this book for already a year. It is exellent as an introductory book and then as an everyday reference. For some resons its coverage of JavaScript is not displayed in the book name, but this is the best book I have found about JavaScript and its integrations with browsers.

This is a thick book. But never misunderstand the fact that no matter how many pages are included in a computer reference, there will always be information missing for the most advanced user. HTML 4 is covered in-depth -- and should be the primary reason for wanting to purchase this title, for I have not found a better reference on the subject anywhere. Java 1.2 and XML receive good general overviews. A review previous to mine suggests other, more comprehensive titles, if one wants to delve into the world of Java and XML fully. An excellent suggestion and something that should be taken into account before buying.

Regarding "Platinum Edition Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2," it should be noted that for first-time site developers that are looking for an introduction to HTML 4, this is probably not the best way to go. The basics of Web development, such as the best placement for links, graphics, and text, are summarized in the first fifty pages. (First-timers should look for Web development books that cover both HTML 4 and graphic design well.) Following, is a reference-style book that comes in very handy when looking for specific information (that this book covers). I would say, and I think that I share the sentiment of other readers, that this book is geared toward the intermediate to advanced site developer.

Several more aspects worth noting: The style of writing is clear and straightforward, with few grammatical mistakes; there are plenty of examples (code and screen) with good descriptions of why something works; and I would've preferred that the screen shots be in color, but that would probably double the price.

This is a good reference book for HTML 4, that includes an overview of XML and Java. It's not everything, but it's excellent nonetheless.

The book covers a little bit of everything, which makes it overall a nothing. Although it attempts to be encyclopedic, yet it fails to even make mention important and basic things such as http cookies! From cover to cover, the book is filled with contrived examples and useless discussions on generalities. This is NOT a good technical book. -- NOT RECOMMENDED.

Thank goodness the copy I have is hardcover. I've had to hot-glue the binding already (Ok, it's been after a year of use).

Use it every time I want to launch into learning a new web development technology. It's not exhaustively in-depth on any subject. But it more than gets your feet wet on all of them. Presents a well-rounded view of what it takes to get the job done.

Often use it as a reference -- when other, more focused books fail. Chock full of useful tips. Have found it to be consistently accurate.

Buy this book, read it cover to cover as quickly as you can, then expand on it with more focussed books. I consider it a bargain.

This book is just what i was looking for. When i was hired to a web company i didnt' even know what HTML stood for. This book takes you deep enough into things you need to make basic html pages, all the way to venturing into basic javascript, and java. Its isn't something you want to buy if you want to learn java, or java script. This book, however, will help you tremendously when it comes to two things: (1) Just learning html, from what it stands for - to creating tuly user friendly webpages, that look and feel good to users. (2) it serves as my offices Number ONE reference for HTML. It has been our reference manual for months now. It has yet to really let us down. IF you want to learn html with no background in computers (even if you didnt' even have a commodore) GET THIS BOOK IF you want a good reliable reference manual for HTML; GET THIS BOOK

It's one thing to build Ajax applications because you can and they're cool. But the real issue is building Ajax applications that actually solve problems and use established techniques to do so. This book can help you move from "cool" to "correct"... Ajax Patterns and Best Practices by Christian Gross.

Contents: Introduction to Ajax; The Nuts and Bolts of Ajax; Content Chunking Pattern; Cache Controller Pattern; Permutations Pattern; Decoupled Navigation Pattern; Representation Morphing Pattern; Persistent Communications Pattern; State Navigation Pattern; Infinite Data Pattern; REST-Based Model View Controller Pattern; Index

Gross uses the familiar formula of most books that deal with design patterns. First there's the Intent (what is happening), followed by the Motivation (why the pattern is necessary). Applicability talks about when it should be used, and the Associated Patterns talks about other patterns that may work well with this one. The Architecture and Implementation sections go into the most detail, talking about how the pattern is laid out and built, as well as what issues might be encountered in the real world. The final section, Pattern Highlights, does a quick summary of the material and is a good overview/reminder of what was covered.

This is an important addition to the Ajax books that are currently out on the market. I've always been a believer in the maxim "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Because Ajax is "hot" right now, it's tempting to use it to build applications that might well be better designed without all the whistles and bells. This book helps the reader to make the leap from "how can I use Ajax in my next project" to "would Ajax be a good fit for my next project." It's a subtle difference, but an important one to professional developers...

While this book does present useful topics that are particularly relevant to AJAX applications, my main problem with it is the poorly edited and structured way it is written.

The book is full of paragraphs like this one (found at the very beginning of the "Applicability section" of the "Decoupled Navigation Pattern"):

"The Decoupled Navigation pattern is used when content is navigated. The statement is obtuse and does not really say anything because HTML content is always navigated. However, because of the way Dynamic HTML is used, content navigation is sometimes used to generate an effect. When links are used to generate effects, the Decoupled Navigation pattern does not apply."

That's the whole paragraph beginning to end -- what the heck is this trying to say? Apparently aware of how non-sensical this is, the author starts the next paragraph with "To clarify this explanation..." and then goes on to present an example of a website in Swiss German (I think), with no translation given. Two pages of more examples and a summary rules-of-thumb later, and the only implied take-away is that the Pattern applies when decision-making and data processing are required, and the contents of the page change but not completely.

A few sections like this could be forgiven (and you could quibble as to why he had to write this example this way), but stuff like this prevails throughout every chapter. More often than not, ideas which with some thought could have been condensed into a few sentences, result in half a page of digressions and logical dead-ends.

Here's another one:

"The need to separate the resource from the representation has not been adequately explained, and some developers may wonder why it is necessary at all. After all, may websites work well and nobody has complained too loudly. The reason why many websites work well is because they have probably implemented the separation of resource from representation. And those that have not done so have received complaints."

Upon reading this, I feel some irreplaceable portion of my lifespan has just been wasted.

At least one good thing this book does is that it only focuses on Patterns that are particular to an AJAX environment (e.g. Persistent Communications, Decouple Navigation, etc.), without wasting time on stuff that is applicable to other more general software design settings (which plenty of other books already cover of course).

While the ideas in this book are interesting and potentially useful to somebody beginning to design an AJAX application, the writing style makes reading it a true chore. Surely there is better written stuff out there on AJAX software design.

I had finished several Ajax and JavaScript books before I read this one. Be honest, I am totally lost in this book. Not sure whose fault it is, the writer or the editor. but it's not good book.

First of all, too many words. Second too many puzzle words and sentence. I don't care how great idea you have, if you cannot present it clearly, forget about it.

I just don't get how this book even made it past an editor? The writing is horrible, which causes the reader to put the book down in frustration. At least there is consistency among the lowest rating reviewers.

I read a lot of technical books in relation to my work as a software developer and also out of my interest in particular topics. I was highly motivated to read this book having a great deal of interest in the material. Frankly this is one of the worst technical books I have ever read. Actually I can only admit to getting to page 86 before giving up. Technically the material is good and the example code is well presented. Unfortunately the rambling text made the whole experience painful and ultimately I just gave up.

This book is a regurgitation of O'Reilly web material. This book had a real opportunity to discuss Ant internals or at least something that can't be found on tech sites or the software documentation. Project wikis will undoubtedly replace the need for tech books of this sort.

This book can take you from zero Ant knowledge to being productive in a matter of days. After starting with some simple examples, it builds up the following concepts very well: properties and types, compilation, deployment, testing with JUnit, working with CVS, and Eclipse integration. I skipped chapters 8, 9, 10, and 12 because I did not anticipate a need for them right now. However, if I need to know about web deployments, working with XML docs, optional tasks, and extending Ant I know that this book covers these things too. To get the most out of the book, you need to download ant to your computer along with the example code from the book's web site. It is very easy to modify the code and see how different options for the various tasks work.

Web research on Ant revealed a lot of explanations, but they were very hard to understand. And I didn't want to waste time scratching my head. This book explained what Ant is and how it works in an approachable way without insulting my intelligence. The author obviously has a lot of experience in Ant and many of the other technologies it interacts with. While other comments have pointed out that it's not a reference, I can easily get those other details on the internet. This book got me up and running with Ant quickly and painlessly. It contained useful examples that actually worked when I tried to follow them.

Apache Ant is the primary build tool for Java projects and this book is excellent introduction to it. Although the title is misleading - this is not really a definitive guide (its not really reference book for starters), it is well written and easily understood. If you work through this book from start to finish then I'm confident that you'll come out the other end as an Ant expert.

This book provides a good enough introduction to Ant, but it only takes you to the point of knowing how to use Ant and not the point of knowing how to use ant on a project of any size. As an introduction it works well. You learn how to get up and running with Ant very early on in the book, and you learn all of the key tasks rather quickly as well. Everything is explained clearly, and it seems reasonably organized. What it lacks is really any explanation of various best practices for using ant, whether on a small program or a large one. For a book of this size, I was surprised at the absence of this info and ultimately I felt that it was only a bit more useful than the free online docs for ant.

This book was (1) of (3) books recommended by the teacher of my online CSS & XHTML class.

It's more like a workbook than a manual, so it helps to work chapter by chapter.

It's easier to use than a manual and much less cumbersome.

However, I feel "Headfirst HTML with CSS & XHTML" by O'Reilly is more comprehensive while still holding onto the "workbook" style.

Make this book your SECOND choice to the O'Reilly book.

I got this to be an aid in teaching HTML and CSS to a 13-yr-old.

There is a lot of your standard HTML stuff in here and even some decent CSS basics, but as for being a good start towards creative or "cool" sites utilizing the contents; it's not. Just some run of the mill examples. It even has whole sections dedicated to frames. Yech. The CSS examples are pretty limited too. One small chapter on CSS inline text formatting (no stylesheet use) followed by a large chapter on table based layouts. What a shame.

Decent for a beginner, but I'd gravitate towards "CSS Web Design for Dummies" instead.

Among nearly two shelves of CSS books at the store, this was the best one in terms of brevity, usefulness, and practicality. (With honorable mention to "Eric Meyer on CSS." I was there quite a while checking books out, and I hope somebody finds this opinion useful.)

I had some experience with CSS which is why I had questions. Chapter 4 is twenty-odd pages that I assimilated in 15 minutes --it answered ALL of my questions and had me itching to try things out! I immediately re-factored my site's pages and it ALL worked on the first crack! Chap. 4 alone justifies purchasing the book. If you're still using the FONT tag or positioning images with TABLEs, kiss that goodbye forever! CSS is so much more professional and controllable, and this is a killer introduction.

There isn't much to know on CGI so it's "all" here: it's just an additional line of code for Perl hacks, assuming one is at least clinically sane about security, i.e., doesn't pass a form field to system("$form{1}"). Doesn't cover PHP. Has a good chapter on essential JavaScript (how to check form fields to make sure they were filled in, etc.). The book is aimed at beginners, yet I (a career techie) did not find it annoying. It is to-the-point and I quickly found what I wanted --and more! Lots of cool tricks + good "under the hood" info (such as: the HEAD section loads entirely before the BODY, which is why it's a good place to put JavaScript functions so that they're all ready by the time the user sees anything).

I'm glad I didn't open the enclosed CD. I'd then be selling this book. I understand the basics of HTML coding haven't changed, but when I read the forward of this book, I knew it was out of date. 2nd edition, first published in 2000 this book is behind the times in computer time. Netscape the wave of the Future? All code checked with windows 98? What good could the enclosed CD be with a 2000 version of Explorer and Coffee Cup. This book would be of no help to a Myspace user and was no help to me. Still looking for an up to date guide.

hurricanejerry

And I don't even play one on TV. But I sometimes find myself having to do techie things, such as making revisions to my Web site, or trying to figure out why the $%@!#$ thing isn't doing what I thought it was supposed to do. That is when I reach for this book.

Dave Taylor is a techie, but fortunately for us, he is able to communicate with those of us for whom HTML, CSS and XHTML are not our native languages. The explanations and examples in the book are easy to follow, and the companion Web site provides additional information.

Although the reason I wanted this book was to help with coding issues, it is much more. Creating Cool Web Sites is a one-stop shop with information about building Web pages, adding features such as graphics, audio and video, forms, and more. You even get suggestions on making your site more user-friendly, and attracting search engines and visitors.

There are hundreds of books out there about HTML, CSS, Web design, graphics, Java script, RSS, search engine marketing, etc. If you want one book that will explain all of this to you from start to finish in easy-to-understand language, Creating Cool Web Sites is the one you need.

Cathy Stucker, IdeaLady.com