XML, HTML, XHTML Magic

It kicks off with a brief survey of where HTML and XML are up to at the moment. This includes the need for cascading style sheets. There then follows a series of applied case studies. Each chapter deals with a separate 'project' - a series of web sites with different purposes.



These range from personal sites and blogs to weekly news sites, community sites with feedback, and even information sites driven from databases. This is what I would call an intermediate level book. It assumes you already know HTML, and is introducing you to the next stage of style sheets and XHTML.

It certainly shows you the important coding details. That's to the book's credit. The opening example of setting up a daily news site is an excellent tutorial in creating a multi-column table.

The contributors also show how to design pages which combine XHTML and Javascripts, how to control text within table cells, and how to produce printer-friendly versions of pages.

They also show how to combine static and dynamic elements within the same table - allowing it to flow and expand to fit the screen. Clever stuff.

This book might have been called 'Designing with Style Sheets' - because that's where most of its emphasis lies. In fact there is very little on XML. But then XML is the easy part: it's controlling the appearance of what appears on screen that's difficult.

This book will appeal to people who are comfortable with HTML basics, but who want to go further and explore what XHTML has to offer. The structure of offering eleven tutorials gives you the opportunity to either select one similar to your own web project, or to work your way through from beginning to end.