web programming

As others have mentioned, this is a reference. XLST is much like awk and sed type scripting languages where { FS = ",[ \t]*|[ \t]+" } actually means something. Make no mistake, this is a "disciplined" read. But, the effort is well worth it since you learn it all. There are plenty of examples to demonstrate each command/expression. My only wish was that Kay included a section on performance. After reading the book I was up and running with XLST programming, but noted some real performance issues. Also, *definately* get a XSLT tool such as eXcelon Stylus to speed up showing you the results of your code. You will save much, much time this way. Regarding time saved, its the difference between gdb (night) and dev studio (day) when debugging c++ app's. This programming book covering a tedious scripting language, so most web designers will not find it useful. They will need tools to write this stuff for them, and a "light-weight" version of this reference.

Okay, now that you know about having your data into XML, what do you do with it? And since browser compatibility with XML is somewhat limited and not really available to the general public (too much beta), you have to look at a more extensive way to show your XML than straight CSS.

This book is the one I've read that contains the BEST reference about XSLT. I've read a lot of book that covers only a little bit for each functions. This book does contain a lot of explanation to it.

This book is NOT MEANT as a way to LEARN XML/XSL but rather a way to BETTER PROGRAM/UNDERSTAND XSL once you know XML. That's what a Programmer's Reference is for.

If you are looking for a book to tell you what is XSLT, get the Beginning XML or Professional XML, depending on your XML level. Once you have mastered that, you'll be ready for this book.

XSLT is almost the official programming language of XML - in fact, it uses XML as its representation. Given the importance of XML, XSLT is going to be a critical tool at anyone's workbench sooner or later.

XSLT is also a hard language to work with. That's where this book comes in. When I needed to write an XML-based application of my own - one involving DocBook, HTML, and XSLT itself - XSLT was the natural choice, though a daunting one. Using only this book, I managed to pick up the XSLT programming model (hint: there is almost no such thing as flow of control) and get the job done. Kay's discussions of XML name spaces and other basics were part of what got the job done right.

This book should be on the shelf of every serious XML programmer. I don't know whether a programming beginner would get the full value from it, but experienced readers will find it dense, well-organized, and above all helpful.