Special Edition Using XHTML

Rating:
Summary: Not particularly good at all, actually
Review: A search-and-replace edition of "Special Edition Using HTML," this book is rife with grammar errors, typos, and content that has nothing to do with XHTML (approx. half of the book).

If I were to guess at an audience, it would be web designers with a vague curiosity about what makes a web page go.

Clearly NOT destined to be a classic tome on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Not particularly good at all, actually
Review: A search-and-replace edition of "Special Edition Using HTML," this book is rife with grammar errors, typos, and content that has nothing to do with XHTML (approx. half of the book).

If I were to guess at an audience, it would be web designers with a vague curiosity about what makes a web page go.

Clearly NOT destined to be a classic tome on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Great resource for creating Web standards Web sites
Review: I admit I judged the book by the cover and thought it would focus solely on XHTML. Not so. There are references to SMIL, multimedia, visual design, style sheets, and scripting.

Author Molly E. Holzschlag explains, "The best way to read the book will be determined by you!" Each chapter stands alone. It is organized to be a resource for you to pick and choose what you need. Special Edition Using XHTML begins with the basics of what is XHTML and how it came to be. Moving deeper into the book, Holzschlag guides you from creating Web pages with XHTML to adding scripts and style to XHTML documents.

Books, especially those of a technical nature, written with a personal touch are easier to read and understand. Here, Holzschlag hits the bullseye.

Although the book qualifies as a genuine doorstop with 900 plus pages, you'll find it easy to use. Holzschlag makes sure she covers everything. While reading a section about formatting XHTML, I briefly disagreed with a statement. Less than a page later, she explained why the statement is not entirely true.

She is honest in her commentary about HTML and design issues. If you want to know why you should bother moving from HTML to XHTML, she tells you. Or why HTML is still going strong and why XHTML has not killed it. Yep, it's there, too.

She provides details on XHTML modularization and DTDs (Document Type Definition). There are plenty of examples, screen shots, and step-by-step instructions to help you. If you're like me and forget a few things about writing code, she is there to gently refreshen your memory. Finding specific topics is not a chore with the book's thorough index as well as its single page of the table of contents next to the cover of the book.

This book targets intermediate readers, but readers who are learning HTML will be able to use this book. Holzschlag covers all the basics of file naming conventions, clean coding, and wireless programming to name a few. In other words, she gives you much more than you ask for when you pick up this book. Special Edition Using XHTML is a welcome addition to a budding Web development library.

Rating:
Summary: The info is here, but it's too long and has too many errors
Review: I was a bit surprised to find this book on sale, since it was only a year old and seemed to cover material that remains relevant.

I discovered why soon after, and was glad I hadn't paid the full cover price. While Que Special Edition: Using XHTML by Molly E. Holzschlag contains almost everything I wanted to know about XHTML at this point (i.e. how to add the slashes and quotes in the right places), it's nearly 1000 pages, or at least 700 pages too long.

The book:

* is poorly organized.

* contains numerous typos and other mistakes (in both body text and, more unforgivably, in code examples).

* includes several entire chapters that actively flout the very standards XHTML is supposed to enforce.

* features randomly-interspersed chapters from other authors that are poorly integrated with Holzschlag's main text (although they are generally better written than her material).

* often mentions an accompanying CD-ROM that isn't included with the Special Edition, since that's for more-special Premium Editions.

* could easily have been edited down by at least 30% by simply trimming Holzschlag's bloated sentence constructions and repetitive code examples.

Ms. Holzschlag knows what she's talking about, for the most part. The problem is the way she talks about it. To be fair, publishing pressures meant that this new book is really a poorly-updated revision of her HTML 4 book, which itself probably comprises cobbled-together sections of her previous work.

In a way, though, the existence of Using XHTML is encouraging -- I could quite possibly have written a more useful book on the topic myself, and could certainly have helped edit the existing one into a much better (and shorter!) document. Pity that computer books are so often sold by bulk, not quality.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best
Review: This is an outstanding book on XHTML. It provide simply, easy-to-understand, in depth, and extremely powerful instruction on XHTML. There are plenty of excellent examples, which are clearly explained. It not only shows how, but explains why, all in a extremely clear, understandable and interesting manner.

The book explains the basics, and is great for a beginner, but also deals with integrating XHTML with some other very useful technology, including CSS, XML, XSL, JavaScript, Macromedia Flash, WML and alternative devices (Cell Phones, PDAs, Mobile Computers, Smart Pagers and Phones, etc.), SMIL, downloadable and streaming multimedia (including Real), SVG, and more. It also has useful advice for effective page design, color concepts, graphics, including optimization, splicing, and covers tools from companies like Adobe (PhotoShop, Illustrator, ImageReady, LiveMotion, etc) Corel (CorelDRAW, PHOTO-PAINT), Microsoft, ULEAD, Jasc, and Macromedia. I can't say enough good things about it.

Rating:
Summary: New cover, old book
Review: Unfortunately, this book is really just another HTML book with a new cover and an "X" at the beginning.

It has some valid stuff in it, but like so many computer books aimed at a non-technical audience, it is basically sold by weight not by content. It seeks to fill pages with lots and lots of airy stuff. It really could be rendered down to something a quarter the size, but then who would buy such a humble-looking tome.

One thing I thought was particularly bad was that it had quite a lot of stuff that was not even valid XHTML. For example, the book encourages you to use things which do not validate with the W3C's specification. XHTML isn't ubiquitous yet so there may have to be some compromises, but a book like this should start from a position of purity and demonstrate valid work-arounds. It should not be adding stuff from exactly the old versions of hacked HTML which XHTML is seeking to make obsolete.

If you want to learn HTML, you could buy this book. If you want to know XHTML, try something else with viewer pages.