SAMS Teach Yourself XML in 24 Hours

Rating:
Summary: Good with room for improvement, especially typos.
Review: After having bought a few of the 24 hours books I have learnt they are not all equal. This one I have found mostly easy to read, despite others comments. There are a number of typos, even in the code, which does cause some headaches. But smart reading will notice them, the code is pretty much repeated with minor changes in every chapter.

Probably the biggest problem I encountered was at first the book demonstrated a long and painful JavaScript way of making sure an XML file was loaded properly. I had to change this to accomodate a failure to retry rather than just fail first time. Thankfully my JavaScript knowledge is advanced, knowing some JavaScript is definitely needed with this book. Later in the book this is dropped as code but the easier option is never mentioned of using the simple line "DataSource.async = false". I found this myself on the net somewhere.

SAMS have no downloads for this book. All code must be typed in yourself. Searching on the ISBN results in nothing. Searching on the title results in only finding the second edition. And the downloaded files for this obviously don't even come close to matching.

Rating:
Summary: Avoid this book if you don't know JavaScript
Review: Great book and I too was looking for those listings.
Found them on sams webpage. Search for the author (ashbacher), you'll find one reference (to this book and its listings in the download section).

Rating:
Summary: Avoid this book if you don't know JavaScript
Review: I bought four books about XML. This was the worst book for "teaching yourself". The Introduction to the book says "If you're a programming novice and still want to learn XML, grab a good JavaScript reference and start reading."

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written and organized, a little good beginner info
Review: I bought this book hoping to have the foundation of XML explained in an wasy to understand fashion. The beginning chapters start off rather well, but then the book goes downhill. Unfortunately this book explains things only very briefly and then gives you pages and pages of XML code to read over. These long pages of code are confusing to someone who needs to learn XML in the first place. I would look elsewhere for a beginning book.

Rating:
Summary: Good book but you need more time to get the value out.
Review: I couldn't understand how a Sams Teach Yourself book could be rated 2, so I checked this one out of the Scottsdale library. Having written quite a bit of XML/XSL I was shocked when I tried to follow this book. There is really no written plan or set of objectives that make this approach to beginning XML/XSL sensible.

You have to love trying to interpret what program listing is used in what other program listing that is named as some other Listing n.n in the book. For starters I couldn't figure out why a source disk wasn't supplied. If it were, there book would be half as thick and maybe spend less time trying to tell you what listing to type and change and insert into this other listing. Here is a direct quote: Create the XML file shown in Listing 4.4 and save it as Listing4-4.xml. Go back to listing 4.2 and modify it to match Listing 4.5. The additions are marked in bold ((there were 2 1/2 pages of bold text that followed)).

Here is another: Listing 4.3 contains the XML data that you'll be importing. The filename for reference is listing4-3.xml. Go back to Listing 4.2 and modify the XML section to match the following: ----- The HTML file will now import the data in Listing 4.3, so that will be the output when it is viewed.

NO THANKS...I QUIT.

Rating:
Summary: Not very helpful - save your money.
Review: I got this book to learn some basics of XML. I've been working with HTML and JavaScript for a few years now, even doing some hand-coding now and then. However, this book was just about useless to me after the first chapter. What is most disheartening is that the author is assuming the reader will be using some flavor of the Windows operating system and nothing else! Many of the examples just don't work if you are a user of any other platform. That would have been all right with me if the author had offered alternative cross-platform examples. It would have been okay even if the author and/or the editor had simply bothered to put the platform requirements somewhere in its description or elsewhere so that an individual can make an informed choice. Although less convenient, I know that I can find useful cross-platform XML tutorials on the web, for nothing! I could have saved my money had I known more about what I was buying.

Rating:
Summary: CAUTION
Review: I just got this book because it met my need to learn XML. My review at the bookstore was confirmed as a purchase because the book seem easy to read and could get me through learning this application pretty smoothly. I've bought other Sam's Publishing Teach Yourself series and really enjoy them.

However, when I got home, I needed the source code to do my exercises which the book advises they are available online at Sam's and also provided the author's email address. For the publishing company, they no longer support this book and source is not available. For the author, his mailbox is full and I am sitting here dreading having to type all that source code.

So if you want it, good luck, but be aware of my own deliemma. If you've got it and have the source code, let me hear from you.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible number of typos...
Review: I know everyone who has rated this book had mentioned the typos. But, isn't this a major problem? This is a teaching book. If the examples won't work without the reader having to edit the copy as they are trying to learn, it seems to defeat the purpose of book.

Also, the exercises are a bit monotonous. How about some varied content with a wider range of examples. After a while, examples started bleeding together when I went back to review previous lessons.

I've purchased Sam's books in the past and been pleased. However, this one I should have skipped.

Rating:
Summary: Good with room for improvement, especially typos.
Review: Oh dear I wish I'd read these reviews before I bought this book; somehow I had the impression that the SAMs books where good introductions to subject.

Yes, there are typo's in the long sections of code that you have tp type in yourself - which is worrying.

Worse than that there would appear to be some major details missing from this book. I am stuck on chapter 2 now (I'm not a complete dimwit) as there would appear to be a major differenc between running xml files on your hard drive and running them online. The examples I am working do work when I test them on my pc - but when I uploa them to the web - nothing. I cannot even find the vaguest mention of any software/activeX controls I may need to install on my server to get the damn stuff to work.

Deeply infuriating - I'm going to take it back I think.