| Average Rating: |
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| Sales Rank: | 1085372 (lower is better) |
| Price as of: | 11/19/2008 9:11:54 AM MST |
| Price Used: | $0.51 |
| Shipping: | Free Shipping on most orders over $25* |
| Availability: | Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks |
| Label: | New Riders Press |
| UPC: | 752064713784 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Publication Date: | 2003-12-29 |
| Published By: | New Riders Press |
| ASIN: | 0735713782 |
| Category: | Book |
As a serious Web designer or developer, you'll want to do one thing and one thing only when you lay your hands on the latest version of Dreamweaver: Start tinkering with all its new features. Problem is that's hard to do on someone else's dime. With Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic, you don't have to! In these pages, Dreamweaver wizards Mossimo Foti, Angela C. Buraglia, and Daniel Short and several other experts draw on their own professional experience to offer 12 real-world projects that let you explore Dreamweaver MX 2004 at your leisure. With a focus on areas that can be troublesome for professional users-whether because they present thorny issues or because they draw on completely new features-each lesson provides need-to-know tips, proven techniques, and best practices. By working through the step-by-step tutorials (whose project files and code you'll find on the accompanying CD), you soon will be finding your way around all of Dreamweaver MX 2004's new features: dynamic cross-browser validation, improved CSS support, built-in graphics editing, and more. In addition to the code listings and exercise files on the CD-ROM, you¿ll find videos that clearly demonstrate step by step all the procedures you need to complete in order to create the projects.
There is nothing in this book that is not available in free tutorials at various prominent sites such as macromedia.com; alistapart.com; projectseven.com; and others.
Foti's project had potential but was not developed nearly as much or to the extent it should have been to be really usable.
Buraglia's menu is very poor. In this day and age of standards and accessibility, she does a menu that is invisible to non-javascript browsers. Moreover, it's invisible in Dreamweaver and requires a convoluted dreamweaver workaround and extra style sheet that is not even explained.
The CSS switcher is not bad if you care to use server technology. But the technique does not seem sufficiently efficient from similar techniques I've seen in online tutorials and the there are no engaging samples of what one could actually do with it. Actually, the page designs used throughout the entire book are not very engaging or inspiring at all.
The CSS styling chapter rehashes information that can be found in dozens of free tutorials. There is nothing special about it and this disappointed me the most. I really enjoy CSS and from the promotional information was looking forward to this being the centerpiece of the book - something new and stimulating. The author did not at all seem comfortable with the subject.
While there may be some material that would appeal to beginners, I cannot recommend this book to anyone but a beginner. It's a Mulligan stew of disparate thoughts and techniques.
New Riders: You're killing what should have been a great series
I think it's also worth mentioning that in addition to giving the reader all the how-to information, the book does a great job of demonstrating 'effecient workflow' in Dreamweaver which can sometimes be the most difficult thing to grasp - especially if you are just starting out. That said in addition to teaching the reader how to build better web sites, this book may just make the process for doing that seem a whole lot easier, too.
Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic is a great book with great ideas from great people. These are stepping off points--ideas to get you going that should help you teach yourself more. There's a CD-ROM, too, that does what it says it will--walk you through each of the projects.
This book is about empowering you to work the magic of which DW is capable. I'm not a big fan of the cookie-cutter, packaged up "put this on your site" approach that many Web sites use to deliver the bells and whistles folks expect of a modern Web site. What I do like is a book like this that teaches people how to create their own bells and whistles...stimulates the creativity to make something new. This book has interesting material for the newbie and for the pro...it's worth a look.
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