Microsoft Expression Web by Nolan Hester
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Book Reviews of Microsoft Expression Web
Book Review: Gives you a good feel for the program, but ultimately is a let down
Summary: 3 Stars
You ever played a video game where you it just whisks you along for a while and you're enjoying it. And then you get to a boss and you spend hours of frustration trying to surmise how to beat him. This book is the written equivalent to that frustrating video game.
It sets the stage nicely for the absolute beginner. Detailing every click, laying out every way to move toolbars and every minute detail of the interface. Then holding your hand as you see the very basics of links, pictures, and text. Which is great a beginner books needs all of this done in a comprehensive and non-threatening way.
Where this book falls down is it uses the same linear approach to vastly more complex subjects like CSS authority and floats as it did to detailing the options of a box designed to set font type.
Sometimes in a book simplicity is the key and sometimes simplicity when dealing with complex issues is deadly.
This book gets tunnel vision when it deals with the complex issue of CSS and doesnt give an adequate broad picture of the concepts and how they will relate to your website. It doesnt detail any of the common pitfalls to CSS. It doesnt have really good follow along examples.
The whole book is a bit odd frankly it is so meticulous and comprehensive on relatively easy subjects and then covers vastly more complex issues in a few pages with limited examples and little indepth discussion.
CSS is this books amped up boss and it is something you will have to learn to 'beat' on your own.
Book Review: Quick-start: But not good for the Long Haul
Summary: 3 Stars
This book was s disappointment. The only reason I gave it 3 stars is because it did have some useful information. However, if you entered text into your website the way it is described in this book, you will have a mess on your hands. You really need to use the "New Styles" button to style everthing, not just a few things, including text. Expression WEb is very touchy and is based on cascading style sheets. When the CSS meets conflict, you lose total control over your site and your styles. This is why you need to creat styles for everything. Until I learned how to check for the conflict, I was utterly clueless. It is not intuitive at all.
This book, not unlike many others, fails to discuss this issue. EW is not to be used like a word processor. YOU Must Create styles.
I have found a huge lacking in tutorials and books that are helpful. So I mention right now that I am writing a book for the Newbie, an Expression Web 101 book for beginners. I also have a website I am starting for tutorials. www.expression-web-tutorial.com It is not ready just yet, but in a few weeks, check it out.
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Book Review: One Part Of Expression Web Library
Summary: 3 Stars
Like other visual quickstart guides this one is well designed, put together in a concise, logical fashion and well written but it hardly did the trick for me - someone's who's very new to this field. One of the more difficult parts of CSS is learning how to do page layout but the explanations on this critical aspect are brief and not particularly helpful. The authors boast a online answer service but my question - a very basic one concerning a problem I had early on - went unanswered. To answer that question I turned to Expression Web for Dummies - and got it quickly answered. I found that text more much helpful for me at this stage. In truth this stuff is so difficult for me that I require several books - this is one, Expression Web For Dummies is another (and I'm looking for another) as well as using tutorials. I have yet to find a single book that's satisfactory. As I learn more and more I appreciate this book more and more but as an introduction it faltered in some areas I needed.Book Review: Precise but incomplete
Summary: 3 Stars
I wanted to move from Frontpage to Expression Web so I bought the Visual Quickstart guide which in the past have been excellent manuals to get started. This one by Nolan Hester is no exception. It is precise and well cross-referenced, with excellent annotated graphics, tight wording and a good index (try and find say "container" or "class" which is under "CSS class" etc.
It is described as being for beginning to intermediate use, I hope therefore that the next edition will be much enlarged in keeping with their normally complete guides. I had to buy the Que series to fill the gaps.
A good comprehensive guide that with some tidying up will easily become 5 stars.
Book Review: Good Reference Book
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a good desk reference for Microsoft Expression Web. Much of the content was information I already knew, or could find out easily enough by clicking around in the program, but it's handy to pull out now and again when I am wondering how to do something new. Not very comprehensive, but does have easy to follow instructions and (as the title would suggest) lots of easy to understand photos accompanying the text.