Rating: 
Summary: Content: fair; examples: poor.
Review: I am growing to dislike this book more and more, as this author refuses to support 'coding along with the text' using his examples. I am frustrated by the examples not working, and again by the fact that he refuses to indicate what the files should be called..is this file a .dtd, an .xslt, or an .xsl file? I like to be able to verify that the examples work so that I can understand it as I go, but the author apparently expects us to take it all on faith. No thanks, buddy.
Rating:
Summary: Content: fair; examples: poor.
Review: I am growing to dislike this book more and more, as this author refuses to support 'coding along with the text' using his examples. I am frustrated by the examples not working, and again by the fact that he refuses to indicate what the files should be called..is this file a .dtd, an .xslt, or an .xsl file? I like to be able to verify that the examples work so that I can understand it as I go, but the author apparently expects us to take it all on faith. No thanks, buddy.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent advanced tutorial
Review: I approached this book expecting to be disappointed. After all there is no shortage of good introductions to XSLT on the web and in Micheal Kay's book we already have an authoritative reference. Actually this book is that rare breed - an advanced tutorial. The book begins with three chapters of introductory material. Wisely the author does not go into every feature. But the meat of the book is in chapters 5-8. It covers in detail keys() in chapter 6, sorting (chapter 7), document() ( chapter 8) and concludes with an excellent introduction to extension elements and functions. The writing is lucid and the author often evaluates alternative strategies. The appendix lists all the XSLT elements and functions with examples which alone is worth the admission. I have already read it twice and I recommend it strongly.
Rating:
Summary: XSLT or Autor hate examples
Review: I buy very often books in Oreally. I found this book very few useful. It have very few examples and it is very difficult taste your skill. Please, If you make a new edition of this book You habe to understand than Not all of us have your deep know of XSLT.I put 2 stars, because it is not a bad books, but You do not buy this one if you are starting in this world.
Rating: 
Summary: It's okay, but...
Review: I don't recommend this for a programmer. This book seemed to be a gloss over of XSLT and didn't probe too deeply into it. For that I recommend Michael Kay's excellent work XSLT. Basically I zipped through this book and wanted more - I wanted to understand what was going on and not just be able to do it. Kay's book provides that and much, much more.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for learning
Review: I have a nifty XML editor that renders XSLT and I found it impossible to make sense of the author's presentation. It is too cutesy (in the O'Reilly style). Instead of progressing in a straightforward manner, the author throws everything at you at once, including many obscure functions you'll probably never use. The appendix material may be useful (XSLT and XPath and functions), but only if you learn in some other way. I don't want to see SVG and VRML in chapter 2 with the "Hello, World" example.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best.
Review: I have bought and studied every book on XSLT that I can find. In my opinion, this is one of the best. I delayed getting it originally because of some of the reviews, but after having read one of the author's articles in IBM developerWorks articles, I immediately rushed out ot get it. I'm kinda sorry now I waited. The book treats the XSLT transformer Xalan as a command line utility to isolate and develop XSLT as a hands on approach. There is no Java or other managing code to divert the directed discussion. As such, it sets the stage for the next steps, in other books, adding Java and server functionality to the picture. The authors tone is friendly, but not overly intrusive. It is a good read. He anticipates questions and problems, and deals with some unique issues such as "emulating a for loop" that I haven't seen elsewhere. His explanation of the case study - the tutorial builder from ibm developerworks - is a great example. I enjoyed reading the book and I'd recommend it with 10 stars if they had it. The negative reviews make sense only if they were really due to the difficulty of grokking XSLT. They are not really due to this book by any means I can see. I'm sorry those readers didn't have a better time with the book. I don't think it would serve as an XSLT for beginners. It is for the next stage after that. I intend to use it in every XML class I teach, after introducing the basics to cover the first stages of transformming with XSLT prior to intruducing Java. Thanks to the author for writing it, and to O'Reilly for publishing it.
Rating:
Summary: Not Very Useful AT ALL
Review: IMO book is too simple, never really give you anything to build on.
I bought it for a school project at the end I still bought Michael Kay's book(much more detail) now this one is laying under my bed collecting dust.
Rating:
Summary: It is not a regular book
Review: It may be an exotic thing to do to start a programmer on the "Hello World" message in programming languages but not in XSLT. XSLT is not your traditional programming language. XSLT transforms the stuff written in XML and nothing more. I found it very difficult to follow the author's examples and actually got tired and confused. If I could follow the examples then this book may not be suitable, because I would have been looking for more specilist books on the subject such as XSLT/VRML. One message was very clear, XSLT has bit more complex rules than the simple "print (hello world)" message that I have been using. On the other hand XSLT can do a heck of a lot more to your messages than a simple program can do, for instance, it can add bells and whistles and make them zing. This book and the style of its writing is currently not for me for the following reasons - 1 I was unable to get seriously started on XML/XSLT after reading the first few chapters of the book; 2 The specifications used in the first examples are explained later, such as XPath. This book is not a total waste as it covers much of the XSLT design techniques. I may find it more useful as my experience in XSLT matures.
Rating:
Summary: spot-on
Review: Meets the high standard I've come to expect from O'Reilly books. I had bought "The XSL Companion" by Neil Bradley, and found myself often stumped when trying to do XSL 'for real'. I got the XSLT book and immediately found the answers to everything that had stumped me. It's well laid-out, very well-written, and chock full of examples.
My _only_ quibble is that the book is a bit thin - he 'pads' things by making up multi-page examples over and over, instead of having a standard set which he could revisit.
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