The Web has revolutionised the way the world accesses and shares information and in this introduction, the authors decipher the complex area of Web technologies. They describe and compare the technical features of each technology and then demonstrate how they can be applied in different scenarios.
This book is the worst book I've read. The author explains things in a complected and misleading way. Sometimes the explanations are just wrong. Some of the answers of the questions are wrong too.
This book presents a very hands on approach for learning XML and related web technologies. Sadly there are some shortcomings which make this book hard to read. Some examples and exercises require extra (web) research and some of the used technologies are not widely used.
The Good - Hands on - Well defined journey throughout the book
The Bad - Sometimes obscure technologies used - Not all tasks can be completed without extra research
Conclusion This is not a bad book. However, it suffers from continuous switching between very basic themes to very specific details. It can be hard to follow the authors when the leap into details after just describing the broad concepts. "Obvious" implementation details might not be known by the reader, thus making it hard to read.
I was assigned about half of this book by my mentor at work. I've read a lot of computer books, and this may just be the worst-written, most confusing computer book I've ever read. For most of the exercises at the end of each chapter, I had to do a lot of googling and stackoverflow searching just to understand the questions. I'm so glad to be done with it.