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XML Programming with VB and ASP
by Mark Wilson, Tracey Wilson
List Price: $34.95
Our Price: $24.47
ISBN: 1884777872
Publisher: Manning Publications Company (15 December, 1999)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 22,657
Average Customer Rating: 3.39 out of 5
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Rating: 3 out of 5
Loosing stars by the minute - missing bits of code maybe
I had high expectations for this book after reading the reviews, and it seemed to be just what I was looking for. Practical examples of how to use it with ASP. Well, I must admit, the style of writing is far less dry than other XML books. But...the typos, and missing details are driving me nuts! In trying to type in the example code I'm getting *very* frustrated. In working through chapter 4, I just can't get the example of standalone data islands to work. The section labeled 'full source code' can't possibly be. I need the source code for the data island AND the html file. There isn't enough detail to make it work. So, figuring I'd skip that and move on, well now just a short bit latter 4.4.11, I've typed the code in exactly, and checked it mulitple times, but my button bar keeps ending up in the wrong place. NEXT to the table rather than under it! I try putting in the standard HTML tags to fix it (p, br, etc) and none of it works. Why? I consider myself to be pretty good with HTML, and intermediate in ASP (2 years or so) yet just can't get these things working. The book web site has nothing under the errata section either! I'm going to keep plugging at it, but this book is loosing stars by the minute.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Who's definition of "in-depth" are we using?
After a mere twenty-two pages into the book, I was starting to doubt the usefulness of this book. The very top of page 22 talks about "examples above" on handling special characters. Flip back to page 21, however, go to the bottom of the page and read about examples that "are described below". I give up, are the examples on the magical page 21 1/2?While other reviewers seem willing to let slide the number of typos, omitions and code examples that simply don't work, I am less forgiving. I got this book on the assumption that I would be able to learn how to integrate XML with my knowledge of ASP. Most examples in this book, however, are for Visual Basic, and while that only requires little to moderate tweaking, the pure ASP examples in this book are almost non-existant. Add in the fact that the book constantly interrupts a lesson to add new concepts we're supposed to either immediately understand, or bookmark and thumb through the book hoping they remembered to include the examples, makes this a frustrating book to learn from. Doing a quick search on Google for "XML help basics" gave me more insight into XML in just a few minutes than reading this book for a few hours did.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Close....but yet so frustrating
I agree with a number of other reviewers, skip this book. It is more frustrating than it's worth. Shame too, cause it starts out strong and then just fades away.Code Examples are REDUNDANT.
Code Examples are INCOMPLETE in the book. (Even the "Complete" examples. Had to download the source code and go line by line to figure out what was "missing". VERY FRUSTRATING. Book skips arround quite a bit and is confusing at times. The Summary Case (3 tier architecture) which I was looking forward to was pretty much......um USELESS. Oh well, I didn't listen to the others, maybe you will listen to me. Take a pen, paper and write down the 3 useful pages in this book and save your money.
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