Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland
|
List Price: Our Price: $12.80 You Save: $32.19 (72%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.05 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual
Book Review: A great book for beginning to intermediate Dreamweaver CS3 users.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've found this book to be a fantastic learning tool for anyone who has interest in beginning to learn Dreamweaver CS3, or those of you like myself who have used past Dreamweaver versions and wanted to get up to speed on the latest and greatest. I was somewhat schooled in Dreameaver MX, back when CSS was beginning to be integrated into the software. Now that Adobe has ahold of the software, it's become much more complex with increased usability and features.
I originally wanted to start teaching myself CSS. I'm not a web professional by any means, I only do it as a hobby for my own personal site that is visited by a select few. As I was looking at CSS books at the local bookstore, I ran across this Dreamweaver CS3 book, looked through a few others, and decided that I needed to get back into the basics of my chosen web page editor before learning CSS. What a great decision this was.
I hadn't used Dreamweaver in a couple of years, so this book really helped me get back into the flow of things. It was easy to read without having to be in front of a computer at all times. I loved the layout of the lessons, it felt like a natural progression of what you'd want to do. You would be taught the basic layout options, then a chapter about basic CSS would come along to show you how to implement everything you've already learned. You would then be shown some more advanced features of Dreamweaver, then some advanced CSS. These CSS chapters have really helped me get a basic understanding of what CSS is, why it exists, and how it's used. It gives me a huge step up to learning CSS a bit more indepth instead of going into it blindly.
The tool tips scattered throughout the book are awesome additions to the material at hand, and gives you nice extra info that otherwise didn't fit in the instruction. Snapshots of the program are available all throughout the book, and provide a great visual so you don't have to try and decode what small button the text is trying to describe. The extra chapter on the new Spry java features is a welcome addition to understanding this great set of tools added to CS3. I appreciated the addition of chapters towards the end on dynamic webpages, but they seemed to be a bit beyond the scope of the book. However, Dreamweaver CS3 includes what looks to be great tools to work with these types of sites, so he has to cover them regardless.
Overall, great, great book. It's highly recommended from a novice such as myself. I've just ordered the CSS Missing Manual to go along with this book. I purchased this Dreamweaver CS3 book on a Tuesday, and I had my new site up and running, complete with external style sheets, on the following Friday. Not too shabby for a man who works full time during the week.
Book Review: A HUGE help!
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, this is a huge volume - as are most software "how-to" and other reference books - but this is one you'll definitely want to tackle if you're interested in building your skills with Dreamweaver CS3. To say there's a ton of good information goes without saying. Any good manual of this type can dish out the factoids, charts and examples in mass quantities, and "The Missing Manual" for Dreamweaver is no exception. To their credit, the authors still manage to present all that information with a good amount of humor and enough real-world examples to make it easy to digest and understand.
Especially useful are the "hands-on" projects and lessons contained in each chapter. You get a taste of topics such as text formatting, page layout, creating / modifying CSS rules and lots, lots more. Each lesson is simple and direct - click here, type this, etc. Step by step. Many of the lessons build on each other, so you can see a complete web page come together with more and more features and complexity. All of the lesson and example files are downloadable from the book's online companion site, so there's no need to find (and store and protect) a CD that might have been included in the book. The site also gives updated information and provides links to more help... very useful.
You probably won't read this book all at once - not unless you're an absolute newcomer to web design and Dreamweaver. If that's the case, you can work through all of the lessons, and come away with a very good understanding of the program's main functions and features. The discussion (and lessons) on CSS alone are well worth the read. Even though the authors say this book is not intended to provide a complete reference for CSS, the material presented greatly increased my knowledge and confidence in using this particularly useful bit of web-design magic.
In short: a very useful, very reader-friendly book that can help any new- to moderately-skilled Dreamweaver user. Advanced users probably know all this stuff already, but for the rest of us, "The Missing Manual" is a great addition to a personal software reference library. Highly recommended.
Bill Sklodowski
Author of the forthcoming book: "PC Smarts for Small Business"
Personal & Small Business Coaching
Digital Marketing / Creative Services
www.PcTechandTraining.com
Book Review: Review by a novice to Dreamweaver & CS3
Summary: 5 Stars
I needed to program my first web site using Dreamweaver CS3. I had designed the web site and programmed it in a higher level language which didn't give me access to the html code. I needed this access capability for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. Although I had programming experience, I didn't know html or cascading style sheets and had never used Dreamweaver. I spent a considerable amount of time searching for the best manual for me. I selected two manuals-McFarland's Dreamweaver CS3 as my primary manual and Master Visually Dreamweaver CS3 and Flash CS3 Professional by Gunter & Valade for its outline by function.
Now, six months later, I have completed the web site ([...] if you wish to see its complexity) and will give you my opinions. Contrary to what some say about the verbosity of McFarland's book, with my lack of experience, I found the detail explanations most helpful. As it turned out, even though I liked the Master Visually manual, I seldom needed to use it. I did about half of the exercises in the McFarland book, and didn't find the few errors in the examples disruptive. But I didn't have the patience to go through the rest of the examples. I found very few errors in the manual itself which is important when you are working in unchartered waters. I really liked the McFarland book and I also liked how it would cross reference the same topic elsewhere in the manual. One area I was really concerned with was what I would use for a menu structure. I decided on the Spy menus and was very happy with how well they worked as well as their appearance using CS3. Using FcFarland's manual and Dreamweaver I made two master templates. This was well worth the extra work in learning. One master template fixed the header, sidebar menu and the footer. The net result is that a menu change takes only seconds to propagate through the entire system saving a lot of time. The second master template is designed for those times I used images to fill the content area. This saved some work and insured consistency. Probably the most difficult area with Dreamweaver is to get a handle on its complex interface. But once learned, you can appreciate how so much info that is needed is available on your screen. I guess my best recommendation for McFarland's Dreamweaver CS3 is that I was able to use it to program my website in Dreamweaver CS3.
Book Review: FINALLY, SOMEONE GETS IT RIGHT - ALMOST (REVISED REVIEW)
Summary: 5 Stars
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I can't tell you how many books I've trudged through to "learn" innumerable new applications only to find out that the book or the tutorial CD has errors. I never knew if I was making the mistake, or if the book was wrong. It was incredibly frustrating to spend $50 on a book, only to find that it was useless because you couldn't depend on anything in the book but the page numbers.
FINALLY someone takes the time -- and has enough respect for his audience -- to get it right. I own 3 Dreamweaver CS3 books and this is, by far, the best, most comprehensive and most error-free. In fact, I haven't found a single error yet -- and, believe me, I've looked.
The great thing about this book is that all of the tutorials are online. So there's no CD to lose or scratch. You can download the tutorials as many times as you want, no password needed.
There are just enough tutorials in this book to give me the information I need, but not so many that it becomes a rote "how-to" book. There's real information here combined with real-world applications in the form of tutorials. I'm actually in the middle of one right now and I'm so impressed with this book, I just had to stop and write a review for it!
If you want to learn Dreamweaver CS3 -- and learn it RIGHT THE FIRST TIME -- buy this book. Or steal it. Just get it.
REVISED: After making my way through this book in its entirety, I did discover some fairly significant errors. McFarland does post some of the corrections on his website, but he also moved the website and it's a little difficult to find. All-in-all this is still the best of the books that are out there, but its star got a little tarneished the farther into the book I got.
Book Review: This Missing Manuals is a Winner
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading a few of the earlier glowing reviews here I felt comfortable purchasing the book. As a rank beginner and also while taking a class in web-page design at a local Adult school, I relied heavily on this book and actually able to stay ahead of many of my fellow students during the construction of each of our fantasy websites constructed for the class. Our instructor had previously viewed this book and thought the emphasis on CSS (cascade style sheets) would be too technical for his students. I disagree. I shared some of the book's CSS procedures with other students and found most to be impressed with how easy it was to integrate CSS into their own sites. I do agree that you have to wade through quite a bit of theory before getting into the meat of each chapter's project but it is written well with some welcome humor here and there and more importantly, very easy to read. The files needed to construct various websites are down-loadable and accompany the text allowing you to begin making a workable website early on. Great motivation to begin constructing a website. I suggested the purchase of this book to my fellow students, many have done so. You'll like the way the binding allows you to open to any page and it will stay open on that page until you turn it or a breeze does it for you. I think most if not all of the "Missing Manuals" books have this feature. It really helps to keep your place while working on one of the author's projects. It always helps to have some exposure to Dreamweaver whether by an acquaintance in the biz' or a beginning Adult class in web-page design as I did. With the help of this book though and following the author's expert advice you can put together a credible website your first time out, trust me. I did it!