XML Books

The book does not focus on the "Scientific and technical" side (only 1/3 of the chapters). Maybe that is why the subtitle has disappeared from the cover. Chapters 1-9 and 21-24 are generalities about XML and XML-aware applications. These would have been much clearer if the authors omitted to present all these useless options such as PUBLIC identifiers. Chapters 10, 11 and annex A paraphrase the MathML specifications. The MathML specs, freely downloadable online, are unusually clear themselves so the book does not bring much. I would have liked a word about the XSIL format, an index for the CD, and a correct table of content. I understand that if the authors had taken the time to write a well focused and pedagogical text, it would have been obsolete before publishing. Yet I am still looking for a book on XML for scientists.

Because the topic is changing so quickly, it is difficult to publish a current book on XML. Even with this disadvantage, the book gives the reader the information needed to understand how XML works, what its potential is, and generally how to implement it. I have two negative comments:
1. The book is a too cursory with emerging technologies which will be the mainstay of the technology: DOM, XSL, XSLT, SAX. These parts are critical for implementors and should have been discussed more thoroughly.
2. For a book on markup, they should have gotten the table of contents marked up correctly.

On the whole, an excellent book. Very readable.

As a dislexic computer user I will not be able to use this publication.
I need instructions in colour and well spaced, laid out in an imaginative manor. What can I do, could I return this book as I found it impossible to understand how to begin to use it? It is not user friendly for those with this learning difficulty.

Most HTML instructional books I've seen are closer to reference manuals than learning tools. If you want to learn how to build web pages from scratch using native HTML this is the book you should be looking at. Years ago I used the 1998 "Revised Edition" of this book which came with a CD to learn most of what I know about HTML. What I liked the most about it was that it separated each major study area into standalone elements. When I finished a particular tutorial session I could actually start using what I learned in real life web pages. In addition, all the coding examples presented in the book were also on the CD I got with the book. On thing I especially liked was that I found nothing strange in any of Callihan's coding examples. Unlike a lot of authors of technical books he doesn't make any assumptions about his readers' prior technical knowledge. His coding example only used HTML commands that he had already thoroughly explained in his instructional text.

The "Revised Edition" version of the book I read began with teaching you the basic HTML commands, then it moved on to the intermediate commands, then advanced commands and finally it dealt with a few of the more esoteric subjects. The book would almost certainly bore most web savvy readers; however, if you're a novice and want to learn HTML from scratch I highly recommend buying this one.

One last thing, it's just a cute title. Don't expect to be whipping out web pages after just one weekend. It will take you at least two or three. I never did get around to reading "The Frames Tutorial" section of my book and since I don't use frames I probably never will.

I was assigned to study this book for college credit. Although the book is very large (about 1000 pages), I completed studying it in about 2 weeks. I was impressed by how well it was written and was easy to follow. Everything that was taught was then applied to 'hands-on' tutorials.

At the end of each section are various Case problems, which allow you to apply what you've learned and design a sample web page, either in HTML, JavaScript, or XML. You will find that some of the files they give you have supposed 'typos'. However, I think that some of these are intentional. For example, the sections on XML validation though DTD's and Schemas have numerous 'typos' in the included files. But these are necessary to test out your work.

There are a few 'unintentional typos' as well in the book, but you will find that in any course. If I were to complain about anything, it may be that too little attention was given to XHTML and XML.

Overall, this course can be easily grasped by most, from the beginning student to the advanced.

Very high quality paper, printing, photos, and binding. But in my opinion...

The content is low quality. If you have to read this book for a class, you have my sympathies. If you do not absolutely have to read Carey's book, find another HTML book.

XHTML claim: The cover says "Includes XHTML coverage throughout". I found precious little to support that. I did find XHTML code violations all over the book and code files.

Next the errors: I downloaded the student files on 4/27/04. Every code file which I tested with XHTML code validation (strict, transitional, and frameset) failed miserably. There are case (upper/lower) violations. There are mostly tag closing (xhtml) errors throughout. There are unbalanced tags like in figure 5-19 on page 5-20. There are missing quotes like in figure 5-29 on page 5-27. There are instructional (bold) typos like item 3 on page 5-33. There is the demo on the author's web site which does not work (as of this date) on page 6-46. There is the JavaScript if/else error repeated five (5) times on pages 8-31 and 8-32 before getting it right at the bottom of 8-32. There are others.

Verbose: Carey uses too many words, stories, and pages to convey a limited amount of HTML. Maybe he should switch to dime store novels so that he can entertain people who want that.

Off Purpose: Cary spent 2 out of 10 chapters on JavaScript when he should have used the ink to finish the job of covering HTML and CSS. JavaScript is too big of a job to cover in 2 chapters and he did not finish either HTML or CSS first. This makes for a disjointed and incomplete book.

Publisher errors: What was the publisher doing to pass this many problems? This confirms something I read from another reviewer regarding Course Technologies. I doubt quality is very important at Course Technologies / Thompson Learning. These guys are off my "buy list".

The book does have some good information and value, but there are too many problems which get into the way. I wish I had not purchased this very expensive book, or had not marked in it, so that it could be returned.

Well, I was tempted to pick this book up for sometime. It seemed to read very well and is chocked full of helpful examples - at least to me. Eventually I gave in and bought it. Oh yah, there was no CD but hey, all that stuff is available on the Web right? Well apparently, not in this case. And especially for a book written by authors with such distinguished credentials - Mr. Gulbransen et al ... not to mention a reputable publishing house - QUE ( they have produced good works in the past ) I have been unable in my efforts to unturn a single piece of code for this book.

Ironically, the helpfull ( we want your feedback ) page that Que places in all it's books was , well useless. Someone named Candy Hall did reply, only if it was to say - No! So the email trail looked like this:

Attention:

Alexander Kachur

Hi Alexander,

I bought this wonderful book
done by Que entitled:

Using XML (second edition) by David Gulbransen, et al ...

Well, it didn't come with a CD

so naturally I was expecting to be directed
to some web page where I could download
the examples discussed in the book.

Can you help me out. and tell me just
what the URL is for that download page?

I visited your website but did not see any such
link ...

and when I sent an email off to Que Publishing
as identified in the forward for the book,

the response from Candy Hall was not
encouraging. This is what I got:

Thank you for your email about Special Edition Using XML. I'm glad you like
the book. Unfortunately the code for this book is not available for
download.
Candy Hall

Well, the declaration on the front of the book reads:
" The only xml book you need "
fine, it's a great book, but I need the code ...

If you can possibly point me to where I can
download this or email me a zipped archive
I would truly appreciate your help.

Thanking You
in advance

Dwight Lemaire

Alexander Kachur

Hi Alexander,

I bought this wonderful book
done by Que entitled:

Using XML (second edition) by David Gulbransen, et al ...

Well, it didn't come with a CD

so naturally I was expecting to be directed
to some web page where I could download
the examples discussed in the book.

Can you help me out. and tell me just
what the URL is for that download page?

I visited your website but did not see any such
link ...

and when I sent an email off to Que Publishing
as identified in the forward for the book,

the response from Candy Hall was not
encouraging. This is what I got:

Thank you for your email about Special Edition Using XML. I'm glad you like
the book. Unfortunately the code for this book is not available for
download.
Candy Hall

Well, the declaration on the front of the book reads:
" The only xml book you need "
fine, it's a great book, but I need the code ...

If you can possibly point me to where I can
download this or email me a zipped archive
I would truly appreciate your help.

Thanking You
in advance

Dwight Lemaire

............. Well, Alexander never answered because
I kept getting Mail Administrator responses saying the
plug was pulled on his email.

In spite of the apparently all negative reviews on-line
about things like content, and gross inaccuraies, I find
there are salvaging comments to make about this book.
Essentially, it works for me .... however, there is no Code
to be found for it anywhere. Gulbransen cannot be contacted.
Que denies any code is available for this book. Well, what did
they use to put it together anyway? This spoils everyone's
reputation for excellence in providing information and follow-ups doesn't it? In conclusion, Gulbransen and el should be shamed into leaving this work as is. Que should be shamed of providing no support ( inspite of the friendly teaser page).
Shame Shame Shame Shame Shame.

At times like these, one really appreciates an Oreilly Text. I'll never stray again ..

This book covers a wide breadth of topics in XML, without going thoroughly into the depths of any one topic. It often refers the reader to other materials for depth information. This is as it should be, but then the byline "The ONLY XML book you need" is somewhat dishonest marketing; they should remove it.

Second, _Using XML_ has quite a few typographical errors. So far I've found more than one per 10 pages, more than I'd expect for a Second Edition book.

Far worse, the book contains technical errors and is not clear on important points. As an example of the first grievance, p. 44 states that PCDATA cannot contain <, >, and / characters. In fact, it cannot contain "<" or "&"; ">" can legally appear, but should be escaped for compatibility with SGML, and "/" is just fine. An example on p. 94 puts comments before , yet the xml prolog must occur first in any document (even before whitespace). Mr. Gulbransen should know that. Page 91 uses an unparsed entity inline, violating Well-Formedness Constraint: Parsed Entity. And the example soc="123-00-1234" p. 83 violates Validity Constraint: ID, because a SSN is not a valid Name. Having found all these technical errors in the areas of XML I do know, how can I trust this book to correctly teach me things I don't know?

I also can't say the book is very clear in places where I want it to be. After pp. 130-133, I should know how to associate XML Schemas with XML documents. Instead, I can only blindly follow the example; I surely don't understand what is the role of each of the components, especially of the URI ending with "/contact".

Due to technical inaccuracies and occasional lack of clarity, I cannot recommend this book. I would like to find an XML reference which is similarly broad in scope, yet both clear and correct in its details.

Michael Floyd's Special Edition Using XSLT starts with an informative and accessible overview clearly explaining how XSLT fits into the bigger picture of the Extensible Stylesheet Language, and the differences between XSLT and XSL-FO. Special Edition Using XSLT then demonstrates practical examples of XSL transformations from XML to a variety of other useful formats including HTML, PDF, SVG and others. Later chapters discuss developer techniques for implementing XSLT within dynamic web environments including ASP and JSP. Flyod also covers debugging techniques and how XSLT relates to .NET. Highly recommended for beginning to intermediate level users, Special Edition Using XSLT then concludes with a useful reference section including detailed coverage of XSLT, XPath and XSL-FO. 480 pages.

Granted; XSLT and XPATH in particular aren't easy to cope with, but I did never find the "key" to the sequence of material in this book. Especially XPATH must be covered better, since XPATH are so central in XSLT.

When you also find typos, such as not well-formed XML in the examples, you waste time to figure out if the XML itself is correct or not.

In short, I didn't like this book.

This is a no crap book. I didnt need a tome that would tell me what i want. I know what i need to do i just needed a book that would help in the How To part. Some of the application discussed in this book are of commercial quality in their design and funtionality. the stuff on the voice command performace shows the author's experiance on the matter. I could have done with some more stuff on IP telephony but the application discussed here elaborates a design which is common more or less in a lot of IP telephony apps. Nothing really usefull though but you can realy take the concept and the code further as you please and gives you something to think about. The very presence of the IP telephony introductory chapter in the books kind of completes the book and the discussion. I wouldnt mind though if this book had a few more pages and completed many application that i though were on the verge on being turn key solutions.

While this is the only book I could find with direct reference to VoiceXML, ASP and SALT, it was a dissapointment. The title says VoiceXML 2.0, but the major examples are all given in 1.0 syntax. There are many errors and the formatting is poor. Finally, there is no discussion about mixed-initiative applications or natural language processing.

I purchased this guide (along with several others) to gain an understanding of the web programming job market.

This book contains just enough information so that you can get the
job in web programming, and start earning.

This book will help you land a job.

So, no, this is not a reference "bible" or web programming manual. Anyone
who purchases this book alone as a web programming refernce should
consider purchasing another book.

But if you want to learn about how to land the web progamming job, then
this is a good buy.

In short, this is a troubleshooting guide compiled by someone who has no knowledge of Web Programming. I think the text is copied from some technical forum or Blog...I am not sure how the manages to get published, but he has written similar books on many other topics, sold on Amazon. I think the author publishes his own books. Authors credentials are not mentioned anywhere in the book (just the name)....the book has no logical flow or content management. It is highly disorganized...actually after reading few pages you will even forget anything you know about Web Programming ....

While this book is clearly aimed at migration from HTML to XHTML, and does contain some good content (not many books mention that tfoot should come before tbody!), it's very incomplete, and the quickref manages to mention only tags - no attributes at all!

There are much better and more complete books for those who are faced with conversion to XHTML, such as 'Mastering XHTML' by Ed Tittel, Chelsea Valentine, Lucinda Dykes and Mary Burmeister (ISBN 0782128203).

As one of the authors of this book I feel that the previous reviewer has missed the point of the book. Its title "XHTML Essentials" should not lead one to expect a complete or bible-like work. It is designed to cover the essentials that everyone needs to know to move from HTML to XHTML. Yes, there are more complete books, but they will cover many things that many Web authors don't want or need to know.

This short reference is very technical, as is everything else by the W3C. It is a good reference to have if you don't prefer looking things up on their web site, otherwise it's redundant information. It's a consise text designed for seasoned XML users -- it's not designed for beginners. Though I refer to this manual periodically, it is written in very unfriendly terms and it is difficult to work with. I prefer other sites on the web for reference over this small text.

This is a fine article/case study but the code is not available online anymore.