Inside XSLT

By Steven Holzner

Inside XSLT is designed to be a companion guide to Inside XML . This example oriented book covers XML to HTML, XML to Music, XML with Java, style sheet creation and usage, nodes and attributes,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735711364
• ISBN13: 9780735711365
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: New Riders Pub
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.5" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

One of the first Ajax books

This book is one of the first books mentioning MSXML and the XmlHttpRequest object. I am happy that I bought this book in 2003. I wrote stunning web controls with MSXML for MS IE. I am proud of myself because I started using Ajax 2 years before Jesse James Garrett published his Ajax article. The book is great with lots of examples.

Exactly what I needed

This book proved to be just what I needed, and then some. This is the companion volume to 'Inside XML' by the same author. Having read that book first, I was familiar with the author's style. The author starts with a simple example, then explains each new topic by building around that same example. The companion volume provides (in addition to complete coverage of XML) an introduction to XSLT, and this book drills down to the details. I learned more about XSLT than I thought possible. Thanks for a great book.

Really, really helpful!

The previous two reviews cover the detail...I will only add to them. I've looked through several XSLT books at length, and this one is by far the best. One of the aspects I like about the book is that it uses the same XML document throught. Various XSLT Transforms are preformed on the document and they systematically build in complexity and scope of features. The transforms start out very simple and progress at a comfortable pace. I'm very happy with it. Steven Holzner has become one of my favorite authors overnight.

<text> A Gem That Has No Equal </text>

I am looking at the three XSLT books I have read over the past few months, Wrox's Professional XSL, Addison Wesley's The XSL Companion, and New Rider's Inside XSLT, and have comments about each. Why 10 Authors? Everyone knows book quality at Wrox's has gone down as sales quantity has gone up. Why do they need 10 Authors to write a single book on XSL? Think about it? The Authors are probably not too comfortable with XML/XSL topics in a "real working environmment". But, if 10 authors can agree on something then it must add some credibility, right? Wrong! 10 Authors does not translate into 10 experts or even 1 in this case.Wrox added the extra 9 Authors to Professional XSL for page filler. How many readers really care about SVG in an XSL book any way? This one section adds another buck to the price book. Thankfully, the classic cheap trick of appending a 500 page "case study" to the end of the book is skipped. (A sure sign there is nothing left for the Author(s) to discuss, while the buyer still has money left in his pocket.) Although some of the book's content is useful, overall the book it is not unified and is unfocused. It is also terribly guilty of improperly weighting important versus non-important material. This is a big "no-no" in the XML/XSL world since the subject has so many different topics. The short commings of the book can be attributed to the 10 Author approach. Each author is assigned a two chapter contribution - no matter how relevant the subject may be. Unfortunately, Wrox, doesn't mind this presentation style and doesn't think you will either! The XSL companion represents on of the first XML/XSL book that prove an author can get the job done correctly. This is a pretty good book on XML/XSL. Unfortunately it is way too small and more examples are needed to support the topics. Too bad the Author did not add few hundred more pages. I am absolutely convinced the author of Inside XSLT, Steve Holzner, understood from the onset that XML/XSL was a difficult topic to cover correctly within one book without losing focus.Amazingly, Steve Holner has succeeded where other XMl/XSL author's have failed. He has delivered the first logical XML/XSLT text that explains the power and usefulness of XML/XSLT to the reader.The easy-to-read style mixes XML/XSLT topics with the right amount of supporting examples. In fact, a single XMl text file is modified through out the entire text. This simple, yet effective technique creates a consistency that adds to the readers understanding of each new XML/XSL topic. Everything you expected from XML/XSLT is delivered in this book. The text will surely keep you far ahead of your peers and should be mandatory reading for any XML/XSL developer. Maybe XML/XSL is to young to actually have true experts in the field. But Inside XML will get you closer to being an XML/XSL expert, in faster amount of time than any other XMl/XSL book in print. Excellent Job Steven!(Newbies: To make things easy, download an XML IDE such a

Another great XML book by Steve Holzner

Coming from the writer of my all time favorite XML book I expected a lot from this one and I was not let down. Another very clearly written book. Great XSLT information and samples for the beginning users to the advanced.The first chapter of this book are a great introduction from XSLT essentials like basic XML, introduction to XSL transformations, a basic intro to XSL Formatting objects (which will be discussed in much more details in the chapters later in the book.The next few chapters dive deeper in the matter of XSLT with subjects like trees and nodes, elements, templates etc. The chapter "Creating match patterns" is a treat on its own. If I had this book when I started my XML development over a year ago this would have saved me a lot of trial an error.The book then continues with explaining how to make choices and sort the data in your XML document and transform between them. A treat in these chapters is the enormous amount of samples, some of them not even found in other XSLT books on the market.The book continues with lots more advanced XSLT information, but you cannot develop with XML and XSLT alone. This book discusses using JAVA, JSP, and servlets with XSLT. If you want to know how to use XSLT with the development with the language of your choice there are lots of other books and resources to check out.And last but not least the book ends with a few chapters about XSL formatting objects. In my point of view a subject that is lacking in lots of other XSLT books. I myself found these chapters very clear and helped me on the way with a new project I am working on that involves lot of XSL-FO. After reading this I would not mind a complete book about XSL-FO, only the basics are touched in this book.Yet another book of Steve Holzner that made my top XML list.