Overview
- Updated and better than ever, this more focused revision provides comprehensive coverage of XML to anyone with a basic understanding of HTML and Web servers
- Featuring all-new examples, this book contains everything readers need to know to incorporate XML in their Web site plans, designs, and implementations
- Continues expert Elliotte Rusty Harold's well-known track record for delivering the best XML guidance available
- Includes coverage of the most recent XML 1.1 specification and the latest trends in XML Web publishing
- Companion Web site includes additional examples and reference material found in previous editions that readers may find useful
Synopsis
If XML can do it, you can do it too ...
If you’re a Web developer, you’ve seen XML rocket to first place as the preferred data format for everything from stock trades to graphic design. In this tightly focused, fully updated guidebook, a top XML authority gives you a complete education in the technology. You’ll learn to write documents in XML, validate them against DTDs and schemas, format them with CSS and XSL style sheets, and take advantage of their versatility. This book helps you to create top-flight Web sites without becoming a professional programmer.
Inside, you’ll find complete coverage of XML
- Discover how semantic tagging makes XML documents easier to maintain and develop than their HTML counterparts
- Post XML documents on Web servers in a form all users can read
- Use style sheets to convert XML to HTML for legacy browsers
- Include international characters in your documents, and merge different XML vocabularies with namespaces
- Build large documents from smaller parts using entities and Xinclude, and connect documents with XLinks and XPointers
- Gain a complete understanding of both CSS and XSL and how each is used with XML
- Explore practical applications of XML in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XHTML, RDDL, and the new application developed for genealogical data
Electronic Review of Computer Books - Jack J. Woehr
XML Bible, by Elliotte Rusty Harold, is a readable and meaty introduction to practical XML. Harold states his case succinctly:
This books has one primary goal: to teach you to write XML for the Web. Fortunately, XML has a decidedly flat learning curve...As you learn a little, you can do a little.
XML Bible is, in form, at least, one of those rush-to-print wonders documenting standards that aren't yet adopted for languages that aren't yet finished so that the reader can use tools that aren't written to produce documents for browsers that aren't commonly available. Harold writes:
I've outlined a lot of exciting stuff in this chapter. However honesty compels me to tell you that...much of what I've described is the promise of XML rather than the current reality.
Yet it's a surprisingly well-assembled volume, nicely integrated with its CD-ROM and authored and edited by individuals who had some inkling of the difficulties the reader would encounter exercising the content. The author states:
In this book, I mostly assume you're using Windows 95 or NT 4.0 or later. As a longtime Mac and UNIX user, I somewhat regret this. Like Java, XML is supposed to be platform independent. Also, like Java, the reality is somewhat short of the hype.
Harold visits quite a range of specialty markups, each effectively at this time in XML history more-or-less requiring a different browser to appreciate. W3C's Amaya for several platforms comes on the CD-ROM, as do Netscape 4.0.4 and IE5, both for Wintel. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that IE5, as of the cut, had an edge on generalized XML browsing. However, only Amaya knew how to render MathML. On Linux, I did best with a stable release of Mozilla, after upgrading one of my Linux 5.2 machines to Linux 6.x so it would run the latest. However, Mozilla stumbled on XSL formatting. And no browser freely available for any of the book's supported platforms handles exotica like VoxML (used for telephony).
Laying aside for now the absorbing minutiae of bleeding-edge geek tool frenzy that afforded us many hours of entertainment in the course of preparing this review, we should note that the bulk of the book focuses not on exotica, but on the nitty-gritty basics of XML and style markup. Document type definitions, cascading style sheets, XSL formatting, and VML are among the topics given extensive coverage.
To a certain extent, you can anticipate such flaws as this book possesses. Any computer book named "The [subject] Bible" is probably going to merit the subtitle "A little too much about [subject]," and this toe-breaker is no exception. The day is coming when computer book publishers are going to stop trying to snow readers with avoirdupois weight and abandon printing the long code listings in favor of pointing the reader to the CD-ROM content (all sample code is indeed included on XML Bible's disk).
The CD-ROM contains, in addition to browsers and source from the book, an XML parser written in Java, various utilities, and some standard and specification documents.
Harold is a talented technical writer with a lively style well suited to his audience. The book is reasonably well edited and the production values are high. While (despite cover blurbs) neither comprehensive nor authoritative, it is broad, energetic, helpful, and alert. For the working web author needing a boosterized ramp-up to productivity in XML, XML Bible is more than adequate, it's also quite useful and entertaining.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewThere are plenty of excellent XML books out there. But if you want a great XML book focused specifically on web and content development, not programming, get XML Bible, Third Edition.
We’ve long admired Elliotte Rusty Harold’s clarity. This edition’s more concise, and even more polished. Harold’s dropped coverage of failed technologies (like WML), making room for stuff that really matters (schemas, XInclude, SVG, XML Base, and RDDL, for instance).
The goal hasn’t changed: to help you use XML, style sheets, and cheap tools to do things that would otherwise cost a fortune, or require heavy-duty programming. At that goal, XML Bible succeeds better than ever. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2003 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.
Jack J. Woehr
XML Bible, by Elliotte Rusty Harold, is a readable and meaty introduction to practical XML. Harold states his case succinctly:
This books has one primary goal: to teach you to write XML for the Web. Fortunately, XML has a decidedly flat learning curve...As you learn a little, you can do a little.
XML Bible is, in form, at least, one of those rush-to-print wonders documenting standards that aren't yet adopted for languages that aren't yet finished so that the reader can use tools that aren't written to produce documents for browsers that aren't commonly available. Harold writes:
I've outlined a lot of exciting stuff in this chapter. However honesty compels me to tell you that...much of what I've described is the promise of XML rather than the current reality.
Yet it's a surprisingly well-assembled volume, nicely integrated with its CD-ROM and authored and edited by individuals who had some inkling of the difficulties the reader would encounter exercising the content. The author states:
In this book, I mostly assume you're using Windows 95 or NT 4.0 or later. As a longtime Mac and UNIX user, I somewhat regret this. Like Java, XML is supposed to be platform independent. Also, like Java, the reality is somewhat short of the hype.
Harold visits quite a range of specialty markups, each effectively at this time in XML history more-or-less requiring a different browser to appreciate. W3C's Amaya for several platforms comes on the CD-ROM, as do Netscape 4.0.4 and IE5, both for Wintel. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that IE5, as of the cut, had an edge on generalized XML browsing. However, only Amaya knew how to render MathML. On Linux, I did best with a stable release of Mozilla, after upgrading one of my Linux 5.2 machines to Linux 6.x so it would run the latest. However, Mozilla stumbled on XSL formatting. And no browser freely available for any of the book's supported platforms handles exotica like VoxML (used for telephony).
Laying aside for now the absorbing minutiae of bleeding-edge geek tool frenzy that afforded us many hours of entertainment in the course of preparing this review, we should note that the bulk of the book focuses not on exotica, but on the nitty-gritty basics of XML and style markup. Document type definitions, cascading style sheets, XSL formatting, and VML are among the topics given extensive coverage.
To a certain extent, you can anticipate such flaws as this book possesses. Any computer book named "The [subject] Bible" is probably going to merit the subtitle "A little too much about [subject]," and this toe-breaker is no exception. The day is coming when computer book publishers are going to stop trying to snow readers with avoirdupois weight and abandon printing the long code listings in favor of pointing the reader to the CD-ROM content (all sample code is indeed included on XML Bible's disk).
The CD-ROM contains, in addition to browsers and source from the book, an XML parser written in Java, various utilities, and some standard and specification documents.
Harold is a talented technical writer with a lively style well suited to his audience. The book is reasonably well edited and the production values are high. While (despite cover blurbs) neither comprehensive nor authoritative, it is broad, energetic, helpful, and alert. For the working web author needing a boosterized ramp-up to productivity in XML, XML Bible is more than adequate, it's also quite useful and entertaining.
— Electronic Review of Computer Books