Reviews for Web Design with XML: Generating Webpages with XML, CSS, XSLT and Formatting Objects

1. A good book, but what about the web-site?

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2003

   This is not a book for total new-comers to XML; readers should already have an outline idea of how XML works before buying it. However, if you already have the basic idea of XML and now want to publish XML content as HTML then this could be the book for you. XML is a complex topic, but this book covers most aspects in just over 220 pages. The topics are covered clearly using a well thought out example which runs through the book.

   I had one disappointment which may put off for some potential buyers. The back cover claims that "All the examples are available for download on the accompanying web site and can easily be be used for server-side web page generation as well as client-side rendering". Not so! The web-site is in German language, so this reviewer struggled to find the examples. When you do find them, they are also in German. I emailed the publishers asking where I could obtain the English examples that are used in the book, but I received no reply.

   The original German edition is evident in some sections of the book where the English translation is rather odd. I can imagine that the German edition would have rated 5 stars, but this edition gets only 3 stars.