Rating: 
Summary: High Thud Factor; Low on Content
Review: It appears I am in the minority with my opinion of this book, but I'll state it anyway.The book is too broad with the result that it doesn't cover anything in sufficient detail. An example of this is four chapters that are heavily Java based ("Creating Variables in Java" and so on). If I had wanted a Java Programming book, I would have bought one. The space should have been put to use covering XML Schemas (or many other topics) in much greater detail. My second complaint is that Mr. Holzner was apparently paid by the word for this one so he repeats examples over and over, just highlighting different lines. This means that packing this title in your carry-on may well result in an excess baggage fee. It looks impressive in the bookcase, though, and if that's your reason for buying, don't let me stop you.
Rating: 
Summary: XML in understandable language.
Review: Just finishing learning HTML only to find that XML is now more widely accepted and you need a book to help you learn what this language has to offer. Stop looking and get a hold of the book Inside XML and you'll find a world of information enclosed in the 1000 plus pages. The author takes chapter 1 to break down XML resources and validators, then has chapter 2 delve into well formed documents with great detail, making sure that no stone is left unturned and that you have every bit of information at your disposal. Move on to topics like DTD, basics of java scripting, CSS, XSL and DOM. The author goes beyond the scope of the book to give you coverage of XHTML 1.0 and 1.1. Then is that's not enough the author adds information on VML, WML, ASP, JSP and perl languages making this one complete manual. Using great examples to learn from as well as an abundance of diagrams and figures you have everything you need. The book is made for the designer with intermediate to advanced HTML and java Scripting understanding. About the only thing the author has missed with is there's no cd-rom with working examples to allow you to practice with. Although there is ample examples in the book, this should not detract from the books overall value and worth.
Rating: 
Summary: Review of my Review (sounds like a song)
Review: Mr. Holzner, believes in being thorough to the extreme, on every subject, in every chapter. I believe in thorough. But some subject matters need to be relegated to the Appendix, as they are in most books: list of XML Editors, Parsers, Validators, etc. My feeling is that they are tangential to the main business. XML competency. I don't need to know about every Editor. I will pick one. And then I am done. A list of the available ones at the back is quite sufficient. I reiterate as I had earlier that 'Inside XML' is amazingly well laid-out, with a natural progression from chapter to chapter, and more amazingly still, error-free. Maybe computer publishers should be forced to place a sticker on the cover certifying error-free. This book has no syntactical errors that I have detected, no factual errors, and the examples actually work without fiddling. I would suggest that you pick your way through the book, collecting the subjects that make you feel XML competent. And then keep it close at hand. It is one of the books that is destined to become your companion for a long time.
Rating: 
Summary: Wake me when it's over.
Review: NO, not as great as most are saying. It's a horribly long read. By cutting the useless prattle from this book he could have probably shaved off a good couple hundred pages. I'm kicking myself for not buying o'reilly from the start. The fluff used to pad the chapters should be made into it's own bookInisde Fluff by Steven Holzner You know the technique you used in high school for that essay that was short a couple pages? Well that skill apparently comes in handy in the real world. Although apparently Steven wasn't allowed to double space and use 15pt fonts.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm not quite as excited as everyone else about this book
Review: Ok, this book is *very* comprehensive, and easy to read. It also have information about a wide range of topics. However, I found that it didn't go into a whole lot of depth about any of the topics. The book is incredibly long because of verbose examples, and chapters I could have done without (for example, there's a chapter describing Java. I doubt anyone is learning java from this book). Given the length, I would have preferred more advanced examples. Most examples of parsing XML just did something simple like walk the XML printing everything out. Also, it did not include any C++ XML parsing, just javascript and java. And, even though the book is so new, it is becoming out of date already. For example, there are only a few sentences about SOAP, which is becoming one of the hottest topics around, especially with .NET. I would have liked to see some more discussion of SOAP, and some real world sample code. Still, this is one of the better XML books around.
Rating:
Summary: Among one of the Best XML books around
Review: One of the best XML books I have read in the last few months. The explanation of the beginning and advanced topics is very clearly setup and will help you understand the topics covered in the books no matter if you are a beginner or more advanced programmer. The first chapters of this book are a great introduction from XML validators and other resources to well formed documents DTD's and Schemas, this will give you a understanding of the fundamentals of XML and now you can get more aquainted with all the other parts of XML development explained in the rest of the book. Now that you know the fundamentals of XML you can start with the more advanced topics like eg SAX and the DOM to manipulate you data. In order to use these however you need to step beyond the scope of pure XML and dive into programming or scripting languages. The author choose to use Javascript and Java in this book. However you can argue if the chapters about "getting into Javascript" and "Getting into Java" are at place in a book about XML I personally feel that it was a good choice and I enjoyed reading the "Getting into Java" chapter before getting my hands dirty with Java and XML. And if you know these topics allready you can just skip these chapters. And if this is not enough the following chapters will give you basic understanding of topics like using XML together with CSS, XHTML, WML, JSP, ASP and pearl. It also gives you an introduction of a new method of using XML as a description of Graphics and animation. This books mentions a few thing about SVG (scalable vector graphics), but goes into VML (vector markup language) in a lot more detail. My personal opinion is that this was a wrong choice because as things are now much more effort goes into SVG than VML. This also shows about the amount of resources there are on the web for SVG compared to VML. Some other nice feautures of this book is the more than usual coverage of the JAVA XML coverage and the 100s of examples spread throughout the book, altho it would be nice if the samples could be downloaded from the web or were available on an accompanying CD. In conclusion: This is a very well written book that is aimed to both the beginning as advanced developers, a few things that I missed in this book were a more detailed coverage of SOAP, there was only a slight mentioning in the whole book annd SOAP is becoming so popular that it deserver more detailed coverage. Info about C++ XML parsing, the JAVA and Javascript chapters were a GEM, but a bit info about C++ JAVA parsing would have made the book more complete. We all know that nothing gets more out of date than books about programming, that is also the cause of some of the lesser points I described above. But this is easily fixed, just get a book that explains the subject of your choice in more detail, for myself I am eagerly awaiting the JAVA XML and C++ XML books announced from New Riders. All in all, its hard to find a better XML book than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Only first few chapters are good
Review: Only very few reviewers had criticized this book. Let me join their side. First 4 chapters are good. All the core XML concepts are covered in these chapters itself. Rest of book is either vague or out-of-date. XML schema chapter is very vague and confusing. Better look at MSDN for this topic. One full chapter is dedicated to the basics of JavaScript. Next chapter instructs how to call Microsoft DOM parser, from JavaScript. The author should have stayed more generic as there are several other scripting/PL options to invoke a COM object. Similarly, there is another Java tutorial chapter, followed by couple of examples, on how call IBM xerces parser from Java. Nothing is covered in detail.
Rating:
Summary: Most intelligent book on XML
Review: The most intelligent and easy-to-follow guide to XML standards. This book gives you what you need to know to be productive with existing XML tools right now. Many books give you the basics; this one explains the conventions of designing XML document types in detail. After several chapters of in-depth material on how to design XML documents, the book turns to using XML in actual browsers (both in Netscape and Internet Explorer). That is must since both combined control over 92% of the browser market. Excellent sections covering XML standards, like XLinks and Xpointers. You'll learn how to use Java with XML, including navigating the XML Document Object Model using IBM's XML for Java. The book also covers displaying XML with several existing standards, including XHTML, VML and the Resource Description Framework for allowing XML-based content searching. Final sections look at combining XML with Perl and Java and give a glimpse at wireless content created with the Wireless Markup Language. The book is a excellent intro for any developer or IT manager who needs to understand and use XML and what its related technologies can do.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of XML
Review: This book contains excellent coverage of XML and many of the several XML applications in widespread use today. Written as a tutorial, it is suitable for anyone new to XML, and is handy as a reference thereafter. Particular attention is paid to W3C recommendations. Brief but sufficient coverage of XSL is presented here, as it is a topic that fills a book of its own. If you are already familiar with XML and want more in-depth coverage of XSL, then get the book 'Inside XSLT' by the same author, written as a companion to this book.
Rating:
Summary: Exhaustive XML Reference
Review: This book covers XML in as much depth as any other book on any other subject. If you want to know everything there is to know about XML then this is the book for you. Inside XML starts with the basics and covers EVERYTHING that is XML. I would consider this a complete reference and not a "Step by Step how-to book". There are many code samples and these are great. You won't see any step by step "Tutorial's". But when you need some explanation or guidance on any xml subject this book is where to find it.
| 
