Just speaking from one who does not build websites for a living. I purchased Dreamweaver to build our own company websites. We have used primarily Frontpage in the past for our basic websites, despite it's obvious limitations. So obviously there is a steep learning curve towards learning Dreamweaver. We are fairly competent with computers, but the biggest problem we have with this book is that it is so wordy. This book is over one thousand pages long, and the first one hundred pages do little more than describe Dreamweaver's features and attributes, without getting into any of the meat of how to actually run the software. Time is a limited commodity for us, and we don't need to wade through a thousand page book to find our answers.
I would agree that this is an excellent reference book, and I would recomend purchasing it to improve your web design capabilities, once you're already familiar with Dreamweaver. But I would prefer to see the big picture first. That is, I would rather learn the basics first, on how to run Dreamweaver, then learn about all of it's intricacies later.
So I would recomend this book as the second Dreamweaver book to read, if you are new to Dreamweaver. The first one should be more basic and more to the point.

This book, while daunting in size, is very accessible and contains everything you need to know about Dreamweaver CS3. I'm a designer, comfortable coding CSS/HTML but pretty green when it comes to things like XML and Spry. Other Dreamweaver books I looked at didn't have anything I didn't already know...so I knew they were lacking in a big way. This book takes you through every nook and cranny and when compared to others its astounding how glaring their shortcomings are and much more is in here. While you probably won't lay in bed reading this giant book it is by far the best and only book to consider for Dreamweaver. For me its serving as a springboard to learn other technologies/languages, so I'd have to say you'll learn a lot even beyond Dreamweaver. Covers the subject matter thoroughly and teaches you so much more...they didn't have to bother writing any other Dreamweaver books. This is the one.

I started CS3 using the all-in-one CS3 book for Dummies. It was a very good overview of the entire suite that helped get me going, but it wasn't long before I needed more detail. That's where this Bible comes in. I haven't read it cover-to-cover yet, but the individual sections provide the additional detail to take the frustration out of new tasks. I find this much more useful than the on-line Adobe articles. It would be nicer if the illustrations were in color, but that would also make the book much more expensive, so it's not a bad tradeoff.

I ordered this book for it's coverage of the new Spry Ajax features of Dreamweaver CS3. Having used the three previous versions of DW for nearly 10 years, I was not looking for an introduction to DW, but more for an encyclopedic reference to look up and deal with specific situations and coverage of new features. So far I have found the Bible to be very good for these purposes. Subjects are easy to find using the table of contents and index and, once found, topic coverage is clear and full of usage/code examples.

As I said, I am far from being a DW newbie who needs introduction to the basics of the software so I have not spent much time in the introductory chapters of the book. I have, however, loaned the book to a co-worker who is new to the product. She indicated that the Bible author's writing style and liberal use of figures and examples made the content easy to understand and she feels that her DW expertise has been pumped up dramatically by her exposure to this book.

This is a good, well-organized resource both for the experienced developer and the web development novice.

I've had several "graphic bibles" in my career. Most of them have been OK, with only a few disappointments. I don't know if it's the software enhancements or the book itself, but this one delivers much more than I expected. The examples are concise and detailed. If you are new to web design though, you may want to start with some basic books on the subject, but for a designer who is familiar with Dreamweaver, Joe did a great job.

I purchased this book to assist me in the switch from GoLive to Dreamweaver CS3. While the book contains a lot of information, much of what it contains is inaccurate. I have now come across several occurances where the book is explaining a technique, and the menu items that you are told to select are either completely mislabeled, or just not contained in the menu at all. I have found myself using the applications built-in help more than this book. Unfortunately the quantity of words is not a substitute for quality.

As a newbee in designing web sites with Dreamweaver I purchased quite a few books on how to get the best out Dreamweaver. This is by far the best. For any problem that accured, it was a great referance. If you are already building your sites in dreamweaver you can skip the first 2 or 300 pages, which still leaves you with hundreds of pages. Like all the "bibles" its over 1000 pages and even the CD is working (in a lot of "bibles" the cd is unusable). Until now I found the solution for every unclear Dreamweaver behavior in the book. It has a lot more information than I propaby ever need, but still, it ist good having it.

This book does what no other book can do; teach you everything you need to know about DW CS3 and how to utilize all of its significant features. Want to learn how to master the css panel to streamline your css processing without having to stare at code all day? check. Want to learn how to incorporate complex javascript behaviors without having to learn how to handcode js? check. Want to learn how to incorporate the holy grain of future web applications, ajax, with simplicity and ease? check.

If you're going to spend money on resources this book is a must have. It's easy to understand, well-laid out, and an easy reference guide. This book is so good and so much in line with dw cs3 that adobe should make it part of their cs package! A must have, no question about it.

Not only is this a fantastic reference, it also serves as my idea generator.
I use the book to refine techniques as well as get new ideas on how to better the content I've already created. I'm old fashioned enough to need a manual in my hand while creating with Dreamweaver. The book helps me get the most out of the software.