VoiceXML Books

It is funny how I was glancing at the books and this book Voice XML caught my attention. I was looking for a book like this. This is a great resource for Voice XML developers like me. The book covers wide range of topics. The book is an excellent hands on guide to build voice applications with Voice XML 2.0. I liked the VUI design tips throughout the book. Great job!

This book is an excellent resource for a VoiceXML developer. It covers a wide range of topics in detail and has some excellent VUI design tips. I love the cross reference of voice technology companies and the services that they provide.

This is the best VoiceXML book I've seen. Most VoiceXML books try to do too much: talk about voice hardware, telephony, the history of voice, tts, as well as be a VoiceXML reference. The weakness of these books is that one or more of these sections reveals that the authors do not really command the knowledge needed to make these sections useful. This book also attempts to do these things, but for the most part is able to carry it off.

If you're looking for a reference, this is the book to get. The reference section is current VoiceXML 2.0 (October 2001), which is an advantage in and of itself. But the real strength of the reference section is its depth. Each element, (e.g., , , ) has an entry for syntax (how to invoke the element), a description (what the element is used for), a thorough discussion of its attributes (that is, a description of the attribute), a usage statement (the elements parents and children), and an example (a snipet of complete code that uses the element). The examples and discussion of attributes really set this book apart from its peers.

There is a brief discussion of the architecture of a VoiceXML app, and a couple of paragraphs discussing the differences between VoiceXML 1.0 and 2.0.

The book also gives, contrary to my expectations, a history of the voice industry, a history of VoiceXML, and a discussion of players in the industry. What makes this book's treatment of these topics unusual is that the authors (particularly Kunins, I suspect) actually know these fields. I don't normally want these sections in a reference book (it just adds bulk around the section I really want) but I found them quite compelling here. I learned quite a bit from reading them.

The book also contains sections on Dynamic VoiceXML, Security, Voice App Life Cycle, VUI Design, the Future of VoiceXML, and a case study. I haven't read these sections yet, so I can't comment on them. I do know, however, that the sections I have read are sufficiently superior to make this THE VoiceXML book on their own.

If I were to criticize the book, I would fault the authors' lavish praise of TellMe (this is minor and not unexpected) and the examples in the reference section. The examples are quite good for someone learning VoiceXML, and the authors are commended for including them. The fault (albeit a minor one) is that they are fairly vanilla. So, while I would have preferred more examples, I concede that such examples would make the book much larger and the inclusion of "advanced" examples to the exclusion of "canonical" examples would have made them less useful to developers learning VoiceXML.

Overall, if you are going to own one VoiceXML reference, THIS should be that one.

This is a summary of the full review available at:
http://voicexmlplanet.com/reviews/vxmlbook.html

In short, this is the VoiceXML book I wish I had written. The authors have produced a comprehensive title that includes gems that could only have originated from masters of the craft.

My only complaint is that the book is a bit too biased towards Tellme (one of the authors is an employee), but this can be forgiven based on the quality and depth of the content.

My judgement is that this book is the most well rounded in-depth book on the topic that's been published to date. I am very happy with the mix of content, summaries of important concepts such as linguistics, speech recognition, and speech synthesis, as well as the in-your-face examples and complete reference. In fact, I liked it so much that I will probably be using it as a standard reference in my company's VoiceXML training course.

I was mislead by the accompanying great reviews for this book. Having bought and read the book I find that it serves more as a reference than to illustrate how VoiceXML can be used through example applications. But I should admit though that this book does a good job of serving as a reference. I also bought "VoiceXML: 10 Projects to Voice-Enable your system" that helped me to come up to speed to do a VoiceXML project.

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.

This book is really two books in one. A VXML tutorial and an overview of all the technologies used to build voice applications. The authors, in the overview portions, have presented detailed information yet have made it manageable enough to allow the reader to gain a good hold of the material without getting lost in the detail. Where the book really stands out though is in the VXML tutorial. The tutorial is written in a layered fashion in which the basic concepts are presented before moving on to the next more advanced feature. At each step an example is used to help make the concepts concrete. I loved the fact that the authors never underestimate the my intelligence nor did they seek to impress the me with their advanced knowledge. I was very happy to find this in a recently published technical book. I was able to move quickly though the tutorial building on the example presented. I bought the book hoping to come up to speed on new voice application technologies having been out of that field for many years. The book has done that and I consider it one of my better tech book buys.

I seldom write reviews for books on Amazon, but I just had to do it for this excellent book. This book is by far the best resource for building enterprise caliber voice applications. I have purchased 5 other VXML books and none of them delivers the information that this book does. This book not only delivered the content I needed, but it's comprehensive and deals with complex issues in a simplified fashion. The real highlights of this book are Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 explains Enterprise applications, possible architectures for dealing with state, and interacting with a backend. Chapter 5 deals with more of a deployment and physical architectural angle. Get it for those two chapters alone.

The only thing that I found missing was techniques for versioning a voice application (No not the CVS source-code control type versioning). I mean having the same backend server provide different content to the same voice browser and techniques on structuring your application to smoothly transition from one set of content to another. For example, the voice browser cache is full of old static content - how can I gracefully switch to new content without forcing a dump of the existing cache through the HTTP headers or some other external mechanism - It has to do with using relative pathing beneath the application root document for vxml scripts and static content. Some information about Browser to Browser interactions might also be nice - but I recognize the VBI specs are just emerging.

Anyway, anyone thinking of building a real voice application with speech recognition and integration to backend applications and data should definitely add this book to their library. It has helped me tremendously. Two thumbs up!

This is an excellent overview of VoiceXML. In addition to a thorough discussion of the VXML language and technologies, the author had the great idea of illustrating the material via a Personal Information Manager project (address book, calendar, and to-do list), which the reader creates while reading along. IMHO, this is by far the most practical of the VoiceXML books that I own. I learned quite a bit, and have even been able to create a number of useful VXML apps on my own since reading it.

This is a great book. It is an example of how a modern
technical book should be written to really teach the
reader both the substance of the subject and the context
in which that subject is meaningful. There is high level
motivation throughout the book which enables the reader
looking for an overview of Voice XML and how it relates
to technologies used with it. There is technical detail
that will enable the software engineer to understand
the technical foundations and how they relate to technologies
used with Voice XML such as XSLT, JSP, HTML, JavaScript, etc.
In addition, there is an architectural framework of browsers,
gateways, web servers, servlets, grammars, telephony, and
the transformational processing model, which is concisely
presented with the essential concepts needed to understand
how all these technologies are woven into a cohesive
structure to enable the building of Voice XML and multimedia
applications. If that is not enough, there is working example

provided which is explained throughout the book, and it is
even presented in a UML framework which will be useful to
engineers who want a good example of effective use of UML.
And there is a CD, and associated web site, with both the
application and all the tools you need to build and test
the example - note: some of the tools like XML Spy, IBM
WebSphere, Allaire JRun, and Apache Cocoon may have time
limits, so don't install the software until you are ready
to spend the time necessary to set up and test the
application. Finally, the book is written at an extremely
intelligent level and the reader may find some of the
philosophies like cognition and artificial intelligence
stimulating. Sounds like a lot for a 200 page book, but
the author has succeeded in delivering all the above and
more in a manner that should serve as a model for
presenting new technologies.

This is more than just another VoiceXML book. It goes into all the elements and architecture needed to get started developing phone web applications. I've bought 3 books so far and sent two of them to partners working with me on getting a phone web server online. Covers Voice XML Gateways, two different grammar formats, AVR Software, TTS, dialog design, even a chapter on XSLT, plus tons of VXML code examples. Highly recommended!

Roz

I am director of user interface design at Audiopoint in Fairfax, Virginia -- a voice portal/voice technology company. I work mostly in human factors, not programming. This book is exactly what I've been looking for, because it gives, I feel, an excellent overview of the many kinds of systems, software, and hardware that are involved in the work I do. I agree with another reviewer, who said that the author clearly states that not all the examples will work in every case, for various reasons. The great plus for me is that, even though my training is not for the most part in technology, I could still understand the book. The author takes you, usually, from the very beginning, and gives you the big, simple picture, which is crucial to have fixed firmly in your mind. This book is making it much easier for me to understand our IT people and talk with techies, and visualize various products which I'd like to see our company launch. So I give this book top rating....

In The VoiceXML Handbook: Understanding And Building The Phone-Enabled Web, computer telephony expert Bob Edgar takes the reader through a step-by-step introduction through all the features of VoiceXML (including VoiceXML 2.0). Readers will learn about Graphical Web Browsing, HTML, and HTTP; Telecommunications; Computer Telephony; Voice Recognition and Text-to-Speech; and XML. Also provided are a VoiceXML Tutorial and instructions on using Voice Browsers to crated Phone-Enabled Web Sites. The VoiceXML Handbook is an indispensable "how to" reference for anyone who needs to enhance their website with telephony-enabled technology and ability.

I can find more information on the internet on this subject than reading this book. In fact I turned to the internet while reading this book for answers to the questions this book failed to answer.

The book is a general overview of telephony application and a thin introduction to VoiceXML. It covers important matters in a very rapid and unprecise way. It contains even errors in the examples.

As a VoiceXML developer, I looked forward to this book. I was disappointed. Too much time was spent speculating on Version 2.0 and not enough time explaining Version 1.0. If you are looking to learn VoiceXML this is not the book.

This is an outstanding book with useful information and clear explanations. It doesn't just cover the VoiceXML spec but also shows you how to use it in IVR-replacement systems and other real applications. If you really need to build stuff with voicexml then you need this book. You can tell in reading the book that these authors have *actually done* voice application development and aren't just guessing at how it ought to work. I'm looking forward to the online voicexml 2.0 appendix, too.

This book isn't a good book to use if you're looking to develop VoiceXML applications. This book delves too far into proper software engineering and doesn't give enough information about the VoiceXML standard (doesn't touch vxml 2.0). I wish I would have purchased the wrox version that covers voiceXML.

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.