The Visual QuickStart Guide series from Peachpit Press is known for boiling topics down to the essentials, and presenting them in an engaging and efficient way, to get the reader up to speed quickly. In applying this model to XML, author Elizabeth Castro had her work cut out for her.

Fortunately for her readers, Castro has identified successfully the core components of XML, and presented them in a streamlined way. This book doesn't tackle any of the advanced elements of XML technology, such as SOAP, SAX, or integration with the Document Object Model (DOM). Instead, it focuses on teaching the basic nuts and bolts of creating XML documents, styling them, and defining their structure.

This book moves at a fast pace. Document Type Definitions (DTDs), for instance, get only 30 pages of coverage. This tight format comprises simple examples that illustrate commands and concepts, instead of pages of text. The pages are presented in a two-column format, so that code fragments can be placed (wisely) side by side with the step-by-step explanatory text. Each topic example is supplemented with one or more useful implementation tips.

For a true grasp of XML and all of its potential, you'll need to follow up this introductory tutorial with more reading on the applications of the technology and case studies. But this little book is a great way to learn the basics of XML in a weekend. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: XML documents Document Type Definitions (DTDs) Schemas Namespaces XSLT and XPath Cascading style sheets (CSS) XLink XPointer


Book Description
Web-maven Elizabeth Castro, who has penned Peachpit books on HTML, Perl and CGI, and Netscape, now tackles XML--an indispensable tool for creating personalized, updated content for each visitor on your site. Whether you build Web pages for a living or you're taking on a new hobby, XML for the World Wide Web contains everything you need to create dynamic Web sites by writing XML code, developing custom XML applications with DTDs and schemas, transforming XML into personalized Web content through XSLT-based transformations, and professionally formatting XML documents with Cascading Style Sheets. The real power of XML lies in combining information from various sources and generating personalized content for different visitors. Castro's easy-to-follow graphics show exactly what XML looks like, and her real-world examples explain how to transform and streamline your Web-site creation process by automatically updating content.


Book Info
(Peachpit Press) A beginner to intermediate level tutorial for using XML for the Internet, using pictures instead of verbal explanations to teach concepts. Designed to get the reader up and running quickly. Softcover.


From the Back Cover
Web-maven Elizabeth Castro, who has penned Peachpit books on HTML,Perl and CGI, and Netscape, now tackles XML--an indispensable toolfor creating personalized, updated content for each visitor on yoursite. Whether you build Web pages for a living or you're taking on anew hobby, XML for the World Wide Web contains everything you need tocreate dynamic Web sites by writing XML code, developing custom XMLapplications with DTDs and schemas, transforming XML intopersonalized Web content through XSLT-based transformations, andprofessionally formatting XML documents with Cascading Style Sheets.The real power of XML lies in combining information from varioussources and generating personalized content for different visitors.Castro's easy-to-follow graphics show exactly what XML looks like,and her real-world examples explain how to transform and streamlineyour Web-site creation process by automatically updating content.


About the Author
Elizabeth Castro is the author of the four best-selling editions of HTML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide. She also wrote the best-selling Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, and the Macintosh and Windows versions of Netscape Communicator 4: Visual QuickStart Guide. She was the technical editor for Peachpit's The Macintosh Bible, Fifth Edition, and she founded P‡gina Uno, a publishing house based in Barcelona, Spain.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Web-maven Elizabeth Castro, who has penned Peachpit books on HTML,Perl and CGI, and Netscape, now tackles XML--an indispensable toolfor creating personalized, updated content for each visitor on yoursite. Whether you build Web pages for a living or you're taking on anew hobby, XML for the World Wide Web contains everything you need tocreate dynamic Web sites by writing XML code, developing custom XMLapplications with DTDs and schemas, transforming XML intopersonalized Web content through XSLT-based transformations, andprofessionally formatting XML documents with Cascading Style Sheets.The real power of XML lies in combining information from varioussources and generating personalized content for different visitors.Castro's easy-to-follow graphics show exactly what XML looks like,and her real-world examples explain how to transform and streamlineyour Web-site creation process by automatically updating content.

SYNOPSIS

XML gives Web designers and developers the power to manage information on a grand scale-once they master its strict, even persnickety, rules. That's where XML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide comes in. Author Elizabeth Castro, who has taught hundreds of thousands of readers how to use HTML in four best-selling editions of HTML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, has now created a book on XML.

XML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide shows Web designers and developers how to use XML to customize and add interactivity to their Web sites. In typical VisualQuickStart Guide fashion, the book is packed with screenshots providing step-by-step visual instructions that let readers see exactly what they need to do. The handy tabbed format lets more advanced users skip straight to topics that interest them, while beginners will find that the thorough coverage provides a solid grounding in all the basics of XML.

In XML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, Castro starts with the basics: What is XML? What's a schema? What is a DTD? She then moves on to: Writing XML code Creating DTD's, including defining elements and attributes, and using entities and notations Defining simple and complex schemas Using namespaces, schemas, and validation Transforming XML with XSLT Styling XML with Cascading Style Sheets

FROM THE CRITICS

Internet Book Watch

Michael PastoreReviewer

HTML has enjoyed its five years and fifteen megabytes of fame, and these days the all the savvy computer bees are buzzing about the new language poised to rule the hive: XML. XML is as different from HTML as chess is from tick-tack-toe. Unlike HTML, XML —for people without programming experience — is a markup language that is flexible, unforgiving, and complex. It's easy to find articles and books about XML that leave you stranded in the 51st State — Confusion — almost immediately after they begin to ramble about schemas, namespaces, parsers, and DTDs.

In XML For The World Wide Web, Elizabeth Castro has solved the problem of how to teach a very difficult subject to a very boggleable beginner. How has she managed this? ... From her previous bestselling books, we already know that Castro is a clear and engaging writer. In this book, she succeeds for yet another reason: she has designed this book with the beginning student in mind. Castro writes: "You should know that this book is not—nor does it try to be—an exhaustive guide to XML. Instead, it is a beginner's guide to using XML for creating Web pages."

To work effectively with this book, all you'll need is a basic knowledge about HTML and a conscious brain. Castro calls her book a beginner's guide, but if you follow her lead to the last page, you'll be much more than a beginner in the kingdom of XML.

What will you know how to do when you've finished studying this book? You will be able to make XML-based Web pages. Your XML tags will have separated the structure from the style. And thanks to XML and your newly-won knowledge, the labeled information that you place into these Web pages will re-usable in many different contexts and on numerous hardware devices. Castro's book is divided into 6 parts: Writing XML; DTDs; XML Schema and Namespaces; XSLT and Xpath; Cascading Style Sheets; and Xlink and Xpointer. Each chapter is subdivided into miniature lessons, and in this way the complex material is made simpler and easier to understand. Every page of the book shows the code that you'll be making, so that you can see precisely how things get done in XML. Four helpful appendixes round out the book: about XHTML, XML Tools, Special Symbols, and Colors in Hex.

When you've finished reading the book you can do with it what you're probably doing with Castro's superb book about HTML: dip into it and use it as a handy reference. If you have questions that the book doesn't answer, and you need even more information, Castro still won't let you down. She has set up a Web site with these features: a FAQ, all the book's sample files, updates, and a question-and-answer board. I have used Castro's HTML board twice, and both times the answers to my questions arrived quickly and solved my coding problems straightaway.

There's one final touch which will be appreciated by everyone who cares about the environment. Every example in the book, text and pictures, focuses on some aspect of one of our world's most interesting endangered animals: the tiger. For years I have been writing that those of us involved in technology must remember first and foremost that Mother Earth sustains us all. Garbage in, the human species out. In XML For The World Wide Web, Elizabeth Castro has written a most outstanding introduction to XML. We should hope that this book — along with the world's precious tigers — will remain with us for a long time.