Rating:  - 4th edition is vastly updated - May 2007
Any review prior to May 2007 has to refer to one of the 3 older editions. The 4th edition adds a new chapter on Ajax, simplifies some of the examples to focus the learning more on the concept and less on the example data itself, and is rearranged for some better flow. There were also fewer working authors on this edition for better cohesion from chapter to chapter.
Rating:  - Not bad, but dated now
This book isn't all that bad, especially if you don't intend to read it cover to cover. There are portions of the XML tutorials that are very informative and to the point. Some of the examples are also well thought out and educational. Its weak point lies in its structure and its overall focus. It seems to bounce around a bit, and I can see how some readers might lose their way or get confused.
The best way to use this book is as a reference guide. Look up what you need from the index, and read up on it. For a more thorough approach to learning about the entire world of XML, though, there are better titles available.
Also, having said all that, this book is a bit dated by now. Any current book on XML would introduce you to some of the newer XML standards that have emerged.
Rating: - A pleasant introduction, yet many shenanigans
This book introduces XML concepts at an easy to understand level. The chapter I enjoyed the least was the SAX chapter, mostly because the writer had such an outrageously different style than the rest of the book, and tried a little bit too hard to be entertaining. I understand the third edition will be out soon, so I highly recommend that one. A lot of the material here is very outdated...I think the original publishing date was 2001 for the 2nd edition.
Rating:  - This book Stinks
I can understand why WROX went out of business.
This is just about the worst programming book I have ever read. The auther goes on & on with intructions, only to tell you "this is NOT the way to do it" and so on...
Maybe the author should consider writting about what to do, instead of concentrating on the reverse.
Rating: - Good for the very beginner, but quite technical
(This is a review of the 1st edition of this book.) My title to this review may be contradictory, but what I mean is, this is a good book for someone with absolutely no background in XML, as long as that person has some technical background in a related field, like HTML, Javascript, Java, etc. If this is the first book or experience you've had with any web-related technology, then you'll be hard-pressed to keep up.
Hunter does a good job explaining each item and I really like the way he branches into many related technologies, instead of just plain XML. Those related technologies include XSLT and XPath, DOM, SAX, DTDs and schemas. Some of these things, such as schemas and DTDs are essential for learning XML, so I'm glad they are covered.
At the beginning of the book, I thought that Hunter was another Microsoft lemming, just following the Microsoft trends and technologies. But it soon became apparent that he uses MS products where they make sense, but is quick to point out their drawbacks. It irks me to no end how the entire world chooses an internationally-accepted standard, then MS decides to come up with their own. Hunter does a good job of pointing that out.
One complaint is that this book doesn't do much in helping the Macintosh user that's starting into the XML field. That may have been remedied in the 2nd edition, and to be fair, there weren't a lot of tools available for the Mac user when this was written. I did find some Mac tools and found it humorous how the Windows, Java and Unix tools require extensive use of the command line, altering class paths, etc, while the Mac version was "drag the file onto the icon" to accomplish the exact same thing. But that's how the Mac world works.
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