The Ultimate HTML Reference
Intent and Audience
The Ultimate HTML Reference is intended for a very broad audience. Whether you are just getting started with HTML or whether you are a seasoned professional, this book is meant for you.
Relevance of Material
The intent of the book is to give comprehensive coverage of HTML and it definitely reaches this goal. The material is very focused and never stears away from it’s goal, making the material in this book very relevant.
Bottom Line
The Ultimate HTML Reference should be on the desk of each and every web developer and designer. You never again have to wonder whether a browser supports a specific element or attribute, just page to the element, check the browser support stats, read the “fine print” and carry on with the job at hand. Not sure what the most appropriate element is to mark up a specific part of your page? Simple, the book is organized by groups of relevant elements such as Structural Elements, List Elements, Text Formatting etc.
Find the group of elements that suits your needs, find an element that looks to be the one you want to use and simply read the “Use this for…” description. This book is so easy to use, a pleasure to read and a definite must have.
Read the complete review of The Ultimate HTML Reference at the IT Book Zone.
XSLT, 2nd Edition
Intent and Audience
This book takes on a massive task, covering XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 and (to a lesser but still necessarily significant extent) all the specifications that support them. Naturally, the result, at nearly 1,000 pages, is pretty much as massive as the task. About one-third of the pages constitute introductory and tutorial material; the remainder is reference material in the many appendices.
While technically the book covers things from the ground up, enabling users to use this as a one-stop shop from first “Hello World!” example to mind-boggling expertise, the non-reference material is a bit dense and hard to read. (A proviso, however: XSLT does a lot and covers a lot; to make it a more hand-holding intro might easily have double the book’s size.)
This book is of course perfect for those who already have some expertise in XSLT 1.0 and want to familiarize themselves with the many useful changes in XSLT 2.0 and its related specifications. For those just starting out in XSLT, this might well be a terrific second book, the reference you need having gotten a good start elsewhere. For those in between, there’s far more here than just reference; give it a try and, really, you’ll never be sorry you bought the book. It will grace your bookshelf for many a year to come.
Relevance of Material
The coverage of the topic is admirably thorough and accurate. The reference appendices are superb, in particular Appendix G, “XSLT 2.0 Migration Guide”. A careful perusal of that one will be good input to the decision whether or not you need to upgrade your XSLT processor and stylesheets to make use of the new technologies.
The glossary at the end of the text is a must-have for those who only touch upon XSLT from time to time and need a quick refresher on what’s what. The various specifications often use similar words with slightly (but importantly) different meanings; this sorts most of them out. Like much of the rest of the book, it details new terms in XSLT 2.0 with a “[2.0]” annotation, so they stand out and can be easily consulted.
Bottom Line
A terrific effort that might not be an “I’ve never done this before” introduction, but will certainly have a place on your bookshelf if you work with XSLT with any regularity!
Read the complete review of XSLT, 2nd Edition at the IT Book Zone.
jQuery in Action
Intent and Audience
The purpose of this book is to introduce the jQuery library and to encourage its use as an extremely useful addition to the web developer’s toolkit. Best practices for using and extending jQuery are discussed and amply illustrated.
Its audience is developers who employ JavaScript and are looking for ways of simplifying their code, making it more maintainable, and easing the pain of dealing with cross-browser behavior. And who, exactly, isn’t looking for that?
Relevance of Material
The material presented here is well illustrated and right on target with respect to the books intent and intended audience. Especially valuable are the Labs that are available with the code downloads for the book. These provide the user practical web pages upon which the features of the jQuery library can be explored without having to spend an immense amount of time writing code to try things out. They’re great!
Bottom Line
This is an excellent work, a worthy successor to others in Manning’s “in Action” series. It is highly readable and chock-full of working code. The Lab pages are a marvellous way to explore this library, which should become an important part of every web developer’s arsenal. Five stars all ’round!
Read the complete interview of jQuery in Action on the IT Book Zone.
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