xsl

XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)
$39.99
I purchased this book primarily as a reference when I need a little more detail on a tag or function. The author has done what seems to be an entirely thorough job documenting each tag and function in a consistent and useful manner. Once I find it, the content is all I need. I have yet to read through the other chapters; I have a feeling they will provide useful insights.

Unfortunately, it is all but impossible to thumb through the book to find a specific tag. Because the tags and function names are all lowercase, they appear almost identical to the next-level headings which are mixed case. A rule under the paragraph or something would have helped a lot (I have been marking each with a highlighter). I'm not sure why they didn't maintain the boldface from the TOC (see below); that would have helped.

The headers and footers display nothing more than the chapter name/number and page number-- contrast this with a typical O'Reilly design (JavaScript 5th Edition) where the page headers in the Core JS Reference chapter show the first and last entries on the spread just like a (good) dictionary.

So, you can expect to have to refer to the Table of Contents often. Unfortunately, there is typically 4"+ (10-12cm) of blank space between an entry and its page number in the table of contents. This would be another usability disaster except that they at least boldface the tag and function names along with their page numbers. (Hint to designer: dot leaders have been around for a while now...)

I will avoid purchasing reference works from Wrox/Wiley in the future.

XSL Formatting Objects Developer's Handbook
$49.99
I have just started working with XSLT and XSL-FO. This is an excellent book that explains all of this stuff in a language that you can understand. I would definitely recommend this book if you are new at this stuff.

It also has an excellent appendixes with the listing of all of the objects and properties.

Professional Xsl (Programmer to programmer)
$49.99
I bought the book,but I can't download source code from www.wrox.com now ,anyone can help me? My email is alpliu@sina.com,can somebody email me the exmple source code?Thanks a lot!

XSL Essentials
$44.99
I might have been among the first hundreds people to own this book and I still have to use it; I even use it often now as XML-based applications are growing day by day. The book is an outstanding one when it comes to concision, to the fundamentals of XML/XSLT. The methOdology adopted is that of teaching by examples, going from simple examples progresssively through more complex examples that re-use the same simple examples but introduce new concepts that are to be explained within the new chapter. There is no comparable material in the litterature for the beginner and the intermediate learner of XSLT.

The physical weak point of the book is its bounding! The paste used to bind the book is wrong: a few pages were tore off from my book since the first week I started working with it; fortunately, I immediately get the book re-bounded by a professional. Otherwise, I might loose a few pages of a so excellent learning material: it used to be in my bookshelf for the last two years, but, since this year it is always on the top of my desk so that I thought I should write this review, my first at "Amazon.com".