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Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual |
| As the Web's popularity continues to soar, so does that of Macromedia Dreamweaver, one of the most elegant and powerful web-page creation programs you can buy. Dreamweaver deploys a rich, well-designed, WYSIWYG environment for building cross-platform, cross-browser web sites; but unlike most visual editors, it doesn't clutter up the underlying HTML code by inserting unnecessary tags that make large web sites difficult to manage. Dreamweaver is a favorite of multimedia designers, thanks to its smooth integration with other Macromedia applications like Flash and Shockwave. Dreamweaver 4 extends Macromedia's lead in the web-design market. The new, more sophisticated Version 4 incorporates the latest developments in browser technologies--and the best way to get the full advantage of these improved features is with Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual, the ideal companion to this complex software. Under the guidance of Missing Manual series editor David Pogue, author Dave McFarland brings Dreamweaver 4 to life with clarity, authority, and good humor. After orienting you with an anatomical tour of a web page, the book walks you through the entire process of creating and designing a complete web site. Along the way, a unique "live examples" approach lets you see and test, on the actual Internet, real web pages that follow the development progress of the book's chapters. Armed with this book, both first-time and experienced web designers can easily use Dreamweaver to bring stunning, interactive web sites to life.
Macromedia Dreamweaver ranks among the most popular tools for developing and managing Web sites, but because it's different from the ordinary office productivity software with which we're all familiar, there's a need for an explanatory book on the program. Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual takes that role, showing its readers how to build and modify everything from tables to basic Flash animations. To the credit of author David McFarland, the book usually manages to carry out its instructive role while neither confusing nor patronizing its readers. There's enough detail in these pages to guarantee they'll remain useful for a long time, and enough patient text and graphics (mostly small, detailed screen shots) to help users up the steepest parts of the Dreamweaver learning curve. As is the case with all of the Missing Manual books, this one uses an excellent style for its procedures. Rather than treating procedures as sequences of inflexible directives, as do many user-lever books, this book allows for the fact that the person reading the procedures has a brain and may want to do something that deviates from the example. For that reason, McFarland explains the options that appear at each point along the way as he details a procedure, and explains why you might want to take alternative actions. He's also good about explaining HTML conventions, like the supremacy of specified table width over specified column widths. One might wish for more coverage of the server-side routines to which forms submit their contents, but what's here is excellent. --David Wall Topics covered: How to use Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 to create and maintain Web sites. Billing itself as "the book that should have been in the box," this volume explains text formatting, hyperlinking, tables, frames, forms, and other aspects of site design and management via the Dreamweaver interface.
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Publisher:
O'Reilly
Author:
David Sawyer McFarland
Release Date: 2001-10-15
ISBN/EAN: 0596000979 / 9780596000974
New Price: $0.30 /
Used Price: $0.01 /
Collectible Price: n.a.
Buy
it Now!
Average Rating: 4.5
Number of
Reviews: 9 |
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| Good, but not very deep | Rating:  | | This is an excellent book if you have no experience with Dreamweaver. Takes you through everything step by step, and that is both a strength and a weakness. If you already know HTML and perhaps have worked with a package like FrontPage, alot of this book will be too basic and you will just skim. Then, when you want the real nitty gritty inside tips, you may have to go to a diffent source. This is a great manual, especially if you did a web purchase of Dreamweaver and didn't get a manual, but it doesn't go much beyond that. | | Total Votes: 7, Helpful Votes: 7, Date: 2002-04-26 | | | | Great for the novice and the pro | Rating: | | Other reviewers seem to think this book is fabulous, too, but only for beginners. Yet within the first two chapters, I found two tips that will save me far more than the purchase price. As a designer of online training courses, I became a fan of Dreamweaver years ago, when Macromedia added Coursebuilder, which makes it easy to add tests to your website. So I was among the first to upgrade to version 4.0. While there is much to love in the upgrade, one frustration was the handy little button on the Object panel that inserted Break tags -- HTML coding that skips you to the next line without leaving a blank line in between. I remember wasting an hour under deadline looking for it, finally settling for the keyboard shortcut. But there in McFarland's book, not only do I find out where it is hidden, but I learn about other goodies I had never spotted before. Yes, indeed, I want more about SSI -- but that's why I hope McFarland write's a follow-up. And, yes, there are things like the DW FTP function that are awful -- but that's Macromedia's fault, not the author's. If all the other books in the Missing Manual series are as good as this, I will need to add a new bookshelf. | | Total Votes: 11, Helpful Votes: 11, Date: 2002-03-10 | | | | THE BEST EVER | Rating: | | I have never been tempted to take the time to write one of these online reviews until I read this book. It's been so helpful to me in my work and has saved me so many hours of unnecessary labor that I thought I ought to tell people about it. I've got lots of these kinds of books - from the dummy books to the huge bibles - but Dreamweaver:The Missing Manual is leagues better than any of them! By the first few pages, I knew that this book would be fabulous, and it is. I like it because it is written for an intelligent reader, yet it uses non-techy language. Plus, there are lots of humorous references, which makes reading it fun. Importantly, it doesn't assume technical knowledge on the part of the reader. It explains the whys along with the hows. This is of utmost value to me - I find the "whys" missing in many books. Often, a tutorial will say, "Do this. Then do this. Then do this." Well, any monkey can follow 1,2,3 instructions, but if you don't know WHY you're doing something, you won't be able to apply it to something else later on. I am constantly frustrated by that. I wanted more than a beginner's book, but I wanted the complex stuff explained in simple language. This book does that. I started to bookmark the pages where I learned something valuable and realized I was marking the whole damned book - that's the type of book this is. | | Total Votes: 36, Helpful Votes: 35, Date: 2001-11-02 | | | | The Missing Manual Misses.. | Rating: | | As a HTML/CSS freak that had enough of FP and migrated to DW, this book provided plenty assistance, and I would recommend it to other novice users that are willing to learn DW. However I must point out my dissapointment that there was no coverage of SSI(server side includes) what so all, and it's misleading concept of the Library/Template function. Yes, the "update library items" updates your site in one click indeed---the local site, that is. Considering the uploading one has to deal with(not to mention the dreadful DW FTP) AFTER the local site is fully effected, this is definetly not what I could 'sit back and smile' at. Otherwise, nice book. | | Total Votes: 24, Helpful Votes: 9, Date: 2001-08-28 | | | | Excellent Guide | Rating: | | DreamWeaver 4: The Missing Manual is a book that is easy to follow and gives many great examples of how to perform various tasks using DreamWeaver (DW). As a novice DW user (but not at web design), I found the tutorials to be very helpful in learning more about this complex product. Among the topics covered? Basics like text fomatting, adding links, and images. The book's second part goes into more advanced subjects like Tables, Frames, and Cascading Style Sheets. It also explains forms and inserting JavaScript into your code, as well as incorporating other types of media (like Flash & ShockWave) into your file. There were certain items I'd seen in web site code done in DW that I'd never understood and thanks to this book, I certainly do now. If you're a novice (like me) or even an intermediate DW user, this book is well worth having not only to learn more but to keep as a handy reference. | | Total Votes: 12, Helpful Votes: 11, Date: 2001-08-22 | | | | Good, but not very deep | Rating: | | This is an excellent book if you have no experience with Dreamweaver. Takes you through everything step by step, and that is both a strength and a weakness. If you already know HTML and perhaps have worked with a package like FrontPage, alot of this book will be too basic and you will just skim. Then, when you want the real nitty gritty inside tips, you may have to go to a diffent source. This is a great manual, especially if you did a web purchase of Dreamweaver and didn't get a manual, but it doesn't go much beyond that. | | Total Votes: 7, Helpful Votes: 7, Date: 2002-04-26 | | | | Great for the novice and the pro | Rating: | | Other reviewers seem to think this book is fabulous, too, but only for beginners. Yet within the first two chapters, I found two tips that will save me far more than the purchase price. As a designer of online training courses, I became a fan of Dreamweaver years ago, when Macromedia added Coursebuilder, which makes it easy to add tests to your website. So I was among the first to upgrade to version 4.0. While there is much to love in the upgrade, one frustration was the handy little button on the Object panel that inserted Break tags -- HTML coding that skips you to the next line without leaving a blank line in between. I remember wasting an hour under deadline looking for it, finally settling for the keyboard shortcut. But there in McFarland's book, not only do I find out where it is hidden, but I learn about other goodies I had never spotted before. Yes, indeed, I want more about SSI -- but that's why I hope McFarland write's a follow-up. And, yes, there are things like the DW FTP function that are awful -- but that's Macromedia's fault, not the author's. If all the other books in the Missing Manual series are as good as this, I will need to add a new bookshelf. | | Total Votes: 11, Helpful Votes: 11, Date: 2002-03-10 | | | | THE BEST EVER | Rating: | | I have never been tempted to take the time to write one of these online reviews until I read this book. It's been so helpful to me in my work and has saved me so many hours of unnecessary labor that I thought I ought to tell people about it. I've got lots of these kinds of books - from the dummy books to the huge bibles - but Dreamweaver:The Missing Manual is leagues better than any of them! By the first few pages, I knew that this book would be fabulous, and it is. I like it because it is written for an intelligent reader, yet it uses non-techy language. Plus, there are lots of humorous references, which makes reading it fun. Importantly, it doesn't assume technical knowledge on the part of the reader. It explains the whys along with the hows. This is of utmost value to me - I find the "whys" missing in many books. Often, a tutorial will say, "Do this. Then do this. Then do this." Well, any monkey can follow 1,2,3 instructions, but if you don't know WHY you're doing something, you won't be able to apply it to something else later on. I am constantly frustrated by that. I wanted more than a beginner's book, but I wanted the complex stuff explained in simple language. This book does that. I started to bookmark the pages where I learned something valuable and realized I was marking the whole damned book - that's the type of book this is. | | Total Votes: 36, Helpful Votes: 35, Date: 2001-11-02 | | | | The Missing Manual Misses.. | Rating: | | As a HTML/CSS freak that had enough of FP and migrated to DW, this book provided plenty assistance, and I would recommend it to other novice users that are willing to learn DW. However I must point out my dissapointment that there was no coverage of SSI(server side includes) what so all, and it's misleading concept of the Library/Template function. Yes, the "update library items" updates your site in one click indeed---the local site, that is. Considering the uploading one has to deal with(not to mention the dreadful DW FTP) AFTER the local site is fully effected, this is definetly not what I could 'sit back and smile' at. Otherwise, nice book. | | Total Votes: 24, Helpful Votes: 9, Date: 2001-08-28 | | | | Excellent Guide | Rating: | | DreamWeaver 4: The Missing Manual is a book that is easy to follow and gives many great examples of how to perform various tasks using DreamWeaver (DW). As a novice DW user (but not at web design), I found the tutorials to be very helpful in learning more about this complex product. Among the topics covered? Basics like text fomatting, adding links, and images. The book's second part goes into more advanced subjects like Tables, Frames, and Cascading Style Sheets. It also explains forms and inserting JavaScript into your code, as well as incorporating other types of media (like Flash & ShockWave) into your file. There were certain items I'd seen in web site code done in DW that I'd never understood and thanks to this book, I certainly do now. If you're a novice (like me) or even an intermediate DW user, this book is well worth having not only to learn more but to keep as a handy reference. | | Total Votes: 12, Helpful Votes: 11, Date: 2001-08-22 | | |
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