Building Websites with XML
ISBN: 0-13-086601-6
Pages: 418 + CD-Rom
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Author: Michael Floyd
Intended Audience:Building
Web Sites with
XML
was designed to
serve as a practical guide to Web
designers, Web application developers, and
Webmasters who want to use XML to enhance
the look, feel, interoperability,
operation, and maintenance of their Web
sites. This book aims to address the
needs of a wide variety of Web developers
-- from those who are comfortable with
HTML to application developers using more sophisticated
languages such as Java and C++.
Other stated goals of the author include a
pledge to platform neutrality and to cover
all the technologies and tools that a
developer will need to develop real-world
XML applications.
Summary:
Building Web Sites with XML is divided into four parts. The
author advises us to read the book from cover to cover and then use specific
parts and chapters as a reference while we build our XML Web site.
Part one of Building Web Sites with XML, provides a background in the
new Web standards and vocabularies that form the basis for XML Web site design.
In this part, the author introduces XML in terms of what it is and what the Web
developer can do with it. A bit of history of the Web and why XML evolved
sets the stage for this part of the book. XSL is also introduced briefly
in part one, and the relationship among XML, HTML, and XSL is explained.
This book makes no attempt to provide an XML tutorial. Rather, it refers
to reader to other books in the Goldfarb Series for XML tutorials. Instead
this first part of the book focuses on working with XML and the differences
between working with XML and working with its predecessor, HTML. Lots of
code examples are used so that a developer can clearly see and understand the
differences between these two Web languages. In following the "how it
works" philosophy of the book, XSL transformations are highlighted.
Again code samples show how XSLT works and why a developer would use it.
Part 2 of Building Web Sites with XML focuses on client-side XML.
In this part of the book, the XML interface known as DOM (Document Object Model)
is introduced. Two chapters are dedicated to exploring how Internet Explorer can
be used on the client with XML (at the time of writing, IE5 is the only
commercial browser that supports XML presentation). Chapter 8 provides
different approaches to presenting XML in a browser and compares the benefits
and drawbacks of each.
Part 3 of Building Web Sites with XML focuses on server-side XML.
This part focuses on the idea of storing documents in XML on the server and
using a series of style sheets to serve the XML as HTML for a specific browser
type on the client. This involves the creation of a "gateway
program" to detect the client-side browser and select the appropriate style
sheet for that browser. In this part of the book, options for handling
server-side XML, including CGI, Perl, Java and Active Server Pages are outlined
and code samples provided.
Part 4 of Building Web Sites with XML focuses on advanced XML topics.
In this part of the book XML forms and the XML schema definition language are
presented. Th final chapter provides a summary of all the concepts
presented in the book and shows the reader how to build an XML Web site.
The accompanying CD-ROM provides this XML Web site on the CD-ROM, complete with
source code for all the programs that support the site.
I found this to be a great "how to" book for Web developers that
want to quickly make the transition to XML. It provides the kind of
"step-by-step" direction that a developer needs to get started.
The wealth of examples and the provision of a working XML Web site that can be
used as a template for my own site are extremely useful.
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