Useful Books and Software

Not everyone has their very own online superstore. In fact, many people don't even know how to build a homepage from scratch. If you're new to Web design, or if you're simply new to Adobe GoLive 6, you'll want Adobe GoLive 6 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide by your side as you learn the ins and outs of this cutting-edge Web creation tool. Adobe GoLive offers visual design tools, dynamic HTML, flexible source code editors, and advanced site management capabilities, making it a favorite of many professional Web designers around the world. Adobe GoLive 6 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide teaches you this professional tool through step-by-step tasks illustrated with hundreds of screenshots, so you never get lost while learning. Before you know it, you'll be working the program's menus and palettes like a pro as you quickly master GoLive's powerful site management and collaboration capabilities, wireless authoring features, and dynamic database tools.

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New Price: $28.00 / Used Price: $18.50

This in-depth guide to creating Web sites (in Windows and Mac OS) begins with a thorough description of the GoLive interface--its dialogs, palettes, and tools. You'll learn how to create, edit, and manage your site, and get the most out of the more complex features, such as DHTML and scripting. You'll also find complete coverage of all that's new in GoLive 4.0, including tighter integration of XML and Microsoft Active Server Pages, advanced table-editing features, and the ability to edit QuickTime movies within GoLive.

Real World Adobe GoLive 4 is less like a step-by-step tutorial and more like a manual, but one that tells you how things do work, not necessarily how they should work. It fills in the areas where the official GoLive manual falls short; it's the stuff you need to know after you've become familiar with all the palettes and menus.

The book employs subtle if sardonic humor that helps lighten up the material. But users will find everything they need to know to effectively use GoLive: all the tools to create a page or a site; to manage the site; use tables, frames, plug-ins, JavaScript, cascading style sheets, dynamic HTML, and more. It's a comprehensive guide to GoLive and, since it was written from the point of view of experienced users familiar with every benefit, quirk, and downside of the application, it makes a great reference for troubleshooting.

Authors Fleishman and Carlson recommend not trying to read the book straight through. In the introduction, they outline which chapters are best for beginners, intermediate users (which they believed they were before writing the book), and advanced users (which they believe they are now). They suggest readers scan the book first, focusing on chapters that answer their most pressing questions, and then stay up all night reading the whole book. As they put it, they find learning easier if you "balance efficiency with learning curve ... learn a little and then sit down and produce." For an intermediate user, it's very gratifying to jump to the chapter on grids, for example, and finally realize why things didn't work exactly as expected.

One particularly useful chapter shows how to import, revise, and manage an existing Web site that may have been created by hand-coding or by another HTML editor. The book is loaded with tips and insights and, weighing in at around two and a half pounds, it's a heavyweight in more ways than one. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Basic to advanced features of Adobe GoLive 4, including all palette features; how to create a page and a Web site, manage it, format text and images, and specify color; use tables, frames, plug-ins, JavaScript, dynamic HTML, and cascading style sheets; appendices on issues specific to Macintosh platform and extensive browser compatibility for cascading style sheets.

Publisher: Peachpit Pr
Authors: Jeff Carlson, Glenn Fleishman, Neil Robertson, Agen Schmitz
Release Date: 1999-10
ISBN/EAN: 0201354748 / 9780201354744

New Price: $4.00 / Used Price: $0.27

The book starts out with the basics of using Adobe tools to create the most important elements of a Web site. Then it demonstrates how to use the newest features, including image compression, creating GIF animations, building dynamic Web content, designing navigational elements, managing Web-safe colors and more.

While it may not show 100 ways of creating buttons, or how to get slick chrome effects, Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Web Design does offer a thoughtful and image-packed look at using Photoshop to design for the Web.

The first of four sections gives an overview of Web basics--how all the elements work and what the main issues are (e.g., browser problems; Web palettes; the differences between image formats like GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs). The second section covers the basics of Photoshop with a focus on creating Web content (for example, fixing digital photos for Web display or making smooth GIF animations). There's also a section on when it might be better to use ImageReady. (This coverage has been beefed up since the previous edition.)

Anyone can make GIFs and JPEGs, but the real pros know how make images look good with not much bandwidth. So, the third section details optimizing image sizes, for which both Photoshop and ImageReady offer ample tools. The last section deals with basic GoLive tools--fitting the pieces together to create Web pages. Little tutorials appear throughout to walk readers through pivotal scenarios like "Creating Slices and Rollovers" and "HTML Authoring."

It's appropriate that this book, aimed at visually inclined designers, is filled with images: each page features full-color illustrations and screen shots--it's beautifully designed. The opening chapters make this an excellent choice for readers new to the topic (defining terms, exploring the design concepts behind planning a good site, and interviews with successful Web designers). Later sections, which discuss compression algorithms, cascading style sheets (CSS), and preparing and embedding video and audio, make this a good choice for intermediate users. But the main audience will be designers who have used Photoshop in their print work and now want to start designing Web sites.

Besides Photoshop, ImageReady, and GoLive, the book also touches on other useful applications, like Alien Skin's Xenofex and Eye Candy 4000; Apple's QuickTime VR and Final Cut Pro; RealProducer; and SoundJam. Here, as throughout, the author may not show all the details, but he does provide the fundamental principles that ensure a sound foundation of knowledge to build on. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Introduction to Web design using the tools of Adobe Photoshop 6, ImageReady 3, and GoLive 5, including

• An overview of Web design-related issues
• Creating images for the Web
• Working with layers, actions and filters
• Comparing image formats and discussing compression algorithms
• Optimizing file sizes
• Creating rollovers, animations, and background images
• Going from ImageReady to GoLive to assemble elements into a Web page

New Price: $9.62 / Used Price: $0.01

Sams Teach Yourself Adobe GoLive in 24 Hours follows the series' usual structure of 24 one-hour lessons and seeks to make the content manageable for readers who are new to Web publishing with GoLive.

The book teaches the reader how to use GoLive to do everything from designing a simple Web page, to plotting Web site navigation, to adding interactivity, to publishing and administering a completed site.

New Price: $15.00 / Used Price: $0.50

Odds are you already use Adobe's Creative Suite. Maybe you use some of its features all of the time, but you know it also includes other powerful tools you have yet to explore, because you just don't have the time. The irony is that the whole design of Creative Suite is intended to save you time--the applications and tools included in the product work together seamlessly, making it possible for designers like you to work incredibly efficiently, from file creation to distribution.

This book can help you quickly learn how to take advantage of all that CS2 has to offer. By following its concise explanations and step-by-step exercises, you'll soon learn core skills and techniques that will enable you to create an integrated workflow that will not only save you lots of time, but will also give you more flexibility to move between applications to make necessary tweaks, try out new ideas, and create portable files for review.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Workflow will help you:

• Master Version Cue and Bridge: the hub for Creative Suite 2
• Use CS2 more effectively everyday, on all kinds of projects
• Know which applications are best to use for specific tasks
• Learn how to combine applications for peak efficiency
• Answer the top 15 "How Do I?" questions for every CS2 application

With full-color examples and dozens of practical tips and tricks, this book is the working professional's guide to getting the most out of all of your CS2 tools.

New Price: $9.56 / Used Price: $0.99

Adobe's flagship products--Photoshop, Illustrator InDesign, Acrobat, and GoLive--offer a wealth of creative print and Web solutions when used separately. Use them together, and you're ready to conquer the world--at least if you have this guide! In this elegant yet affordable volume, highly regarded graphic designer Katrin Straub uses easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions and a wealth of full-color graphics to show you how to take advantage of Adobe's brand-new Creative Suite to take your design work to new creative heights. As you work through the lessons in this book/CD package you'll learn about print design basics (how to create CD labels, invitations, newsletters, and slide presentations), Web design essentials (roll-over buttons, banners, kiosks), and the various programs' common features. Just because you know one Adobe product doesn't mean you know them all -- or how to leverage their combined power: For the big picture (and the big productivity pay-off), you need this guide!

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Spanning four sections and 15 chapters, the book explores every aspect of GoLive--starting with a discussion of the application itself and how it works. Next are examples on using advanced features like forms, cascading style sheets, and animated graphics and DHTML. The book concludes with the construction of a site, from start to finish, using most of the advanced features that GoLive supports. At each point, the author offers explanations and background information, not only on the feature or function at hand, but also on how to approach some design issues, and how to plan ahead for the task at hand.

A highlight of the book is "The Creative Group Environment" section. Large, contemporary sites rarely are built by one person, but instead by a team of talented individuals. GoLive includes a number of features to facilitate this kind of team approach, and this section offers a clear explanation, as well as a tutorial on the approach of GoLive 5 to team Web development.

Although this book is oriented towards the new GoLive 5 user, there is information here that even intermediate to advanced users will make use of. The accompanying CD also includes handy bonus applications, as well as all of the project files and elements that are used throughout the book. Mac users will appreciate the copy of TextureMagic from Artisoft, for creating seamless tiled backgrounds, and Peak LE from Bias, a sound-editing tool.

Clean writing, clear explanations, and concise examples make this book a valuable addition to the GoLive 5 user's library. --Mike Caputo

Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Author: Richard Schrand
Release Date: 2000-11-22
ISBN/EAN: 1576107868 / 9781576107867

New Price: $1.10 / Used Price: $0.01

Through clear, direct text and a gorgeous four-color layout, this volume both instructs and inspires-Qin the process delivering all of the information you need to produce better-organized, faster-loading Web sites. As you follow along with best-selling author Michael Baumgardt, you'll learn how to create and optimize Web graphics, produce GIF animations, manage Web colors, and more. You'll also learn about all that's new in Photoshop 7: an enhanced Rollover palette to manage Web page rollovers, animations, and image maps more easily; Web output enhancements to easily apply transparency to Web page elements; and the new "selected" rollover state for creating more sophisticated Web site navigation bars without hand-coding--and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Whatever your level of experience, if you're ready to take on Web design with Photoshop 7, this is the book for you.

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