XML Web Documents From Scratch (From Scratch)

Rating:
Summary: Scratch This One from Your List!
Review: I bought the book, and can't escape giving it 2 thumbs down. The reasons: First, it was difficult to follow because Liberty didn't give any overview of why he was doing the material in the book, iu.e., the particular software. He just takes advantage of built-in features of ie5 to convert between xhtml and xml, etc. There is no larger picture, no understanding, conveyed. All we know is that Jesse Libeerty wants to put this book on the web and here is the way to do it. Avoid this one and get XML Bible instead with your hard-earned money.

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!
Review: I give this book an incredible 2 thumbs down. ... I'm a web developer using technologies other than those discussed in the book, but have used ASP, VB, and SQL Server before. I bought this book because I thought it would help me build an XML application. However, what it does it show you how to use the "poorly" written application the author provides.

The book refers to source code on the "CD", but no CD was ever published with the book... you are required to download the source code from his web site and try and use an extremely bad readme to help get the application set up. Within the book, the author deals with subjects is a somewhat disjointed manner and the book is cluttered with so many sidenotes and "excursions" that I wasn't sure what piece of code I was actually referring to.

The author states several times "don't worry if you're not familiar with" a technology (VB, ASP, or SQL)... "I'll explain all the important stuff later"... but never does!!

The application requires the existance of a SQL database from Chapter 2 on, but the setup of that database isn't discussed until Chapter 6??? Once I did get the application and database setup and running, I could not get past the first conversion of html to xhtml, because there were errors reported in the VB classes provided by the author.

I think the concept of the book was great, but I wish the author had taken more time to develop a worthwhile and useful manuscript that actually dealt with the process of putting together the entire application FROM SCRATCH, in an understandable and sequential process.

I'm not sure what the other five star reviewers were reading, but I strongly do not recommend this book -- unless you are specifically looking to use his application to create a web based (XML) application from converted word documents. And even then, good luck on getting it to work!!

Rating:
Summary: Great book for learning how to publish documents to the web!
Review: If you've ever had to complete a project that requires you to publish a Word document to the web, you'll fully appreciate the content in this book. Like Jesse states in his own review, most technical books usually give you all of the terms, definitions, and explanations up front and then try to follow that up with a useful example (in most cases, these are not practical examples and don't really help you to learn the material). I particularly like the way this book dives right into a specific problem and forces you to learn everything as the project progresses. One of our current projects requires us to publish a fairly lengthy document to the web. Although our client currently is not requiring us to move the document to XML, we have a feeling that this may someday be a requirement and are approaching this project exactly like the one given in this book. Even if you are not currently involved in a similar project, the benefits of seeing how XML and XSL can be applied in a real-world project are huge!

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!
Review: Jesse Liberty and Mike Kraley's XML Web Documents from Scratch(QUE Books) is a high-quality XML book for both beginning and advanceddevelopers. By using a practical web application, Liberty and Kraley describe the ins and outs of XML. I have read many other XML guidebooks/manuals, but none of them compare to XML Web Documents from Scratch. The only flaw I found in the book is that the authors refer to a CD that is supposed to be included, but it did not come with the first printing of the book...