repetitive, disorganized, badly proofread

Although Holzner's previous XML book, "Inside XML" is my favorite book on XML, I found this effort to be substandard at best. The presentation is unclear and disorganized, and Holzner repeats himself incessantly, frequently on consecutive pages and sometimes even in consecutive paragraphs! For example, on p. 128 he explains that template conflict resolution is based on select specificity and then repeats this on p. 131 using almost exactly the same words but in a manner indicating that this is some new piece of information. Clearly this book wasn't proofread at all, by either the author or the reviewers. Finally, the lack of inclusion of a summary description of XSLT elements is unforgiveable. In summary, the book is too disorganized to be a reference and too confusing to be a tutorial. It has the feel of a book rushed into publication so that New Riders could add an XSLT title to its library. Michael Kay's book is a better reference and Bob DuCharme's book is a better tutorial.

Other Reviews

• One of the first Ajax books
• Good to start with..
• lacks real examples
• repetitive, disorganized, badly proofread