Rating: 
Summary: the only XSLT book you need
Review: I needed to learn XSLT and fast. The folks at Wrox press have always been great about covering their topics thorougly, making their books useful both as a means of learning a new technology, and as a reference once you've gotten your feet wet. On this experience, I went with the XSLT book that the Professional JSP 2nd Edition book recommended, this one.And they were right. This book has a good intro to XSLT, enough of an explanation of XML to get you going - though I would strongly recommend you knowing your way around XML before you attempt to tackle XSLT. The recursive nature of XSLT is a kinda tough thing to get your head around at first, so the book starts out with some simpler implementations, so that you aren't completely horrified by the whole thing, as I was when first messing with XSL. Also, the book is rife with examples of common uses of XSLT, which helped me out a lot, especially as I was trying to whip up progressively complex XSLT stylesheets. All the XSLT functions are laid out in the middle of the book, dictionary style, making them easy to find. The entries include the syntax, explanation, and implementation examples, making the concepts and usages easy to grasp. Same goes with the XPath explanation which is in the following chapter. All this makes this book a great desk-side XSLT reference as well as a learning tool. If you need to learn XSLT, you can't go wrong with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent XSLT tutorial and reference
Review: This is a great book on XSLT from the author of the popular Saxon XSLT engine. This was the first book I read on XSLT, it gave me a very thorough understanding of the subject and even though I have bought other books to cover some of the whole (in particular the XSLT cookbook), I keep turning back to this book as a reference. The coverage of XPath, which is critical for writing good XSLT, is concise and excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Covers everything you need to know about XSLT
Review: I have this book and the XSLT Cookbook. This book covers all technical aspects of XSLT and the XSLT Cookbook gives you solutions to solve common tasks with the use of XSLT. It is all I need to have as a programmer/designer working with XSLT.
I highly recommend this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Destined to Be Dog-eared By the Veteran Programmer
Review: This book will be picked up and flipped through repeatedly, --partly b/c it constantly refers you to other sections almost incessantly-- and will be reliable for anyone who's already learned XSLT. The regular "Usage" section for each element and function is very appropriate and well-written. It's not for starting out (well, it _is_ the programmer-to-programmer series), and if you have bad eyes, the gray-background code sections will infuriate you on a late, bleary night. Alphabetizing the functions works well for reference but, as in the hand-in-glove functions like key() with top-level elements (xsl:key), you have to constantly go backward and forward to understand. Hard to understand the section on other processors in places, though the author's Saxon --now a near standard since XT's no longer developed further by J. Clark-- is suitably covered. The glossary is rather sparing, and could do with page number or even at least W3C spec. references.
Rating:
Summary: A good intro to a tough topic
Review: XSLT is almost the official programming language of XML - in fact, it uses XML as its representation. Given the importance of XML, XSLT is going to be a critical tool at anyone's workbench sooner or later. XSLT is also a hard language to work with. That's where this book comes in. When I needed to write an XML-based application of my own - one involving DocBook, HTML, and XSLT itself - XSLT was the natural choice, though a daunting one. Using only this book, I managed to pick up the XSLT programming model (hint: there is almost no such thing as flow of control) and get the job done. Kay's discussions of XML name spaces and other basics were part of what got the job done right. This book should be on the shelf of every serious XML programmer. I don't know whether a programming beginner would get the full value from it, but experienced readers will find it dense, well-organized, and above all helpful.
Rating:
Summary: great great book
Review: Great book. Can't believe how much work was put into it. Seems to have a usefull, concise example for every problem I've encountered. Useful as a reference as well. I wish more technology books were like this. Book is appropriate for beginners and experts alike!
Rating:
Summary: Challenging but well worth it.
Review: This book is a challenge, but once you understand the fundamentals, the beauty of XSLT starts to emerge. All of the recursion, immutable variables, predicates, and patterns start to make sense. After a week with Kay's book, you'll be pretty durn handy with just about any XSLT-related task (except maybe complex grouping... give that two weeks). XSLT is a fascinating language, and for a thorough understanding of it I suggest Kay's book, above all others.
Rating:
Summary: XSLT Indept
Review: Covers 'every' detail you need to know about XSLT. If you use XSLT fairly often in you work then this has to be within arms-length. Minor inconvinence is references to XSL 1.1 features (which doesn't exists anymore). I also wonder how big this book would be when XSL 2.0 is supported... wait Wrox (the publisher) is gone... may be this is the last edition.
Rating:
Summary: Best XSLT Book
Review: I have been developing XSLT for a few years and this is the only book I use. It is the best book on XSLT, by far. However, it is not for beginners. Mr. Kay did a fantastic job!
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Summary: A really really good book!
Review: I only bought this book because the guy whose copy I stole found me out and demanded that I give it back. I absolutely love this book and keep it by my desk. I have no negative things to say about it, except it's a little too Microsofty for my java tastes. But that doesn't detract from it one iota. If all developer books were as good as this one I'd be a LOT happier!
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