In the crowd of XML books, this book stands out, with its specific focus on the needs of Web-page authors. Elliotte Harold handles the technical details and programming aspects as briefly as possible in order to concentrate on the pragmatic issues of producing efficient Web sites. / Harold divides the 11 chapters of the book into three parts. The first part covers the basics of XML, providing enough information to start creating XML Web pages. This section includes information on the philosophy behind XML, how XML uses extensibility in place of a multitude of tags, how to render XML documents into HTML, how to get pages onto the Web, and how to use Extensible Style Language (XSL) style sheets. / The second part discusses more advanced issues, such as document type definitions, how to assemble documents from a variety of sources, how to use attributes to describe elements, and how to use Xlinks and Xpointers to provide greater functionality than HTML's hyperlinks and anchors. Each chapter builds upon the preceding ones so by the time you get to part 3, "Practical XML," you're able to follow right along as Harold demonstrates XML in action. In this section, Harold uses XML to build a push technology site and then a genealogy site, element by element. An enclosed CD-ROM contains the source code for all the book's examples. --Elizabeth