I have read this book cover to cover. You can read it in front of your computer and perform the tutorials or you can simple read an look at the illustrations. Both provide you with a very accurate experience. The online web site allows you to download all of the necessary files to perform your labs if you desire. It is simple, elegant, and well thought out book. You can't walk away from this book and not say that you did not truely learn to use Dreamweaver MX 2004. I struggled to learn this program, after reading the book, I have built several complex websites, complete with dynamic database integration. This book is that good!

I admit I'm biased because I've had Dave as a teacher and he's a great one, but his book is like his teaching -- clear, comprehensible, practical and most importantly, funny. Who wouldn't want to work on the National Exasperator pages? His tutorials are excellent, easy to use and fun.

Having created a website using Dreamweaver MX 2004 using just the included Help, I was frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to create specific aspects that I knew were possible. Accordingly, I jumped into the middle of the "Missing Manual" and was able to find explanations for the designs that I wished to implement. I found the chapter on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) particularly helpful and easy to follow. I purchased Head First HTML at the same time and found both books useful. If I could only afford one, I would choose the Missing Manual.

You will not be disappointed with this book. I have read about 12 different Dreamweaver books over the past 4 years, and so far this is the best I have seen.

After reading this book, I sat wondering why other software books are not written nearly as well. This book is chuck full of so much important, useful, interesting and inspiring information that I will be looking for other books in this series as well as keeping an eye out for other books authored by McFarland.

One of the great things with this book is that it is meat, but with a great flow to each of the areas covered - its not just information, but extremely well put together and well written. There is an intro to each section that is not overly wordy. There are many sections where there are step by step instructions. A number of the chapters have a tutorial toward the end (over 130 pages - the cover says) for the reader to practice what they have just learned directly with Dreamweaver.

Another extremely helpful aspect to this book that I rarely if ever find in others is that almost ever 3rd or 4th page has a box with some very cool "Boy am I glad you told me about that" info. They are entitled "Power Users; Clinic" and "Workaround Workshop". The book would be worth it just for the gold mine of very rich bits and pieces of powerful tips and tricks to use. A great deal of thought went into each one of these blocks of info, as has the entire book.

The screen prints are not overly used, but when they are they are very relavent. I have been content to read most of the book without even turning on my computer, because of the fine job of ample description and images.

If you are going to be waiting around to find something related to Studio 8, keep this book in mind when they update it for that version.

OK, I'm a graphic artist. But before buying this book I knew absolutely nothing about HTML and web page design. Within a week I had a professional looking website up and running. I'm starting a new business and I'm beginning to even think about on-line shopping (which is also covered in the book). The book has given me the confidence to take on anything web-related.

If you're hesitating, don't. This book is the panacea.

I have found this book useful... the tutorials are pretty good and there is alot of information, but like someone else here has said, it is a little wordy. I think that this book would have been better if there were more tutorials and less description as I tend to fall asleep after a page or two of descriptive text (web design jargon has the ability to make my mind wander to beaches with girls in high cut bikini's etc etc).

Maybe I am being critical because I have tried to read this book from start to finish, and failed miserably. As a reference guide this is great though, and like I said before the tutorials are very useful (just wish there were more of them as I learn more through practical usage).

I'm new to Dreamweaver, infact I'm new to the whole web creation thing. I am a graphic designer, I have experience with Adobe software & QuarkXpress just to name a few. but until now I've never used any web creation programs.
I chose this book because it discussed things in the way that I understood, and it maded learning the program fun. I also noticed that it had the O'Reilly logo which also appears on the Dreamweaver packaging, I figured, same company must mean that they knew exactly what they were talking about.
You will have to download a tutorial from the web (it's free) that goes with the book. The tutorial is a must if you are a beginner, and it is very in depth. However, If your not computer literate, then you may want to check out other books before purchasing. Or buy this one with an easier book. I can't imagine why anyone would need anything else. This one is the bomb!

This is really a great book for learning DW. I was especially impressed with the last 150 pages or so that explained, using good tutorials, how to create dynamic sites that use live data from databases.

The only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is that the author did not mention 3 things that are essential to getting your dynamic site to work well, or even at all.

1) You must make sure that you have assigned Internet Guest Account rights to the database file and folder in which it resides (\IUSR_).
2) You should use a DSN-less connection to your database. It is *much* more stable and reliable. Basically, you create a custom connection using a string that you can find by a Google search and forget the DSN stuff.
3) Be sure that your database does not contain any field names that are "restricted." I had a field called YEAR and it prevented me from adding or updating information. Again, a Google search will give you list of these names.

If I had known these three things in advance, it would have saved me hours.

This book gives step-by-step tutorials (comes with a CD) that walk you through everything from some basic HTML to database interfacing and CSS. This is a great all-in-one book if you only want to buy one book to learn DW. I bought it for use in a class and found that I learned MUCH more from the book than I did in lecture! If you want to learn how to use Dreamweaver, buy this book.

I'm learning Dreamweaver MX 2004, and I find this book really helpful. It has a lot of information and tutorials. It's a great book to learn the basics from, and then use as a reference guide, to look things up when you need to. Now I'm an unofficial back-up editor for this site:
http://sandiegopchelp.com/

Trying to figure out how to work my Captain Video decoder ring is as close to programming as I'd ever gotten. (Dates me, I know.) So I figured I was relegated to "The Cosmically Clueless Fool's Guide to Dreamweaver MX". Until I found out about this "Missing Manual" series. Since most software manuals seem to be written by idiot savants for whom English is only marginally considered to be a functional language, I was amazed when I started with this thing. It is totally engaging, terrifically well written, very easy to follow, as logical as Spock, and comprehensive without descending into the anesthetizing world of Geekdom. In a word, it is... fun! It seems that every nuance of DWMX is touched on with patience, a total concern for reader understanding, and quite frequently with humor. The tutorials are excellent - everything laid out carefully and clearly step-by-step. I cannot imagine a manual of such breadth being more user-friendly for the rank amateur as well as for the, well.... rank professional. A total delight! My advice to anyone contemplating Dreamweaver or this manual - don't be intimidated. This is a manual written and designed the way manuals should be. Kudos to Mr. McFarland and Pogue!

I am almost done with David McFarland's book. I have read through it sequentially (and done each tutorial). It is easily one of the best software "how-to" manuals I've read. I've tried a few Dreamweaver sources (Lowery's Bible is also very good) and I do agree with another reviewer that Lynda.com has a great book and online movie tutorial, also. McFarland provides, for me, the ideal mix of discussion/reference and tutorial. For example, "forms" and "templates" are really boring if you just try to read about them - but his brief tutorials really work to get you through the basics. He gives broad coverage of Dreamweaver MX 2004; unlike some other books in this category that are really about Studio, this is limited to Dreamweaver with about one chapter on Flash integration.

The book is static HTML (more or less) until the last 150 pages or so, when he introduces dynamic databased connections - an area that I would NEVER understand with the Macromedia online help alone. I just finished the first couple of tutorials on dynamic database, and I am really impressed - I got through with no problems and a really good understanding. They have given the steps a real attention to detail here, little things, like noting a minor dialog glitch that might throw users off. Another great little innovation. At the end of each step, he explains what he's going to do next - a little thing that makes a big difference. Highly recommended!

Possibly the best introductory tutorial I've ever read, and one that now serves as an invaluable reference for some of the tougher areas. It takes you step-by-step but doesn't insult your intelligence. Dreamweaver is *deep* and I was aghast at the idea of reading an 800-page book to learn how to work what I originally asssumed was a glorified text editor (silly me), but the book really opened my eyes. Dreamweaver MX 2004 is a breathtaking product and you need this book to make it go.

This is the second book I buy from the "Missing Manual" series (the first one being "Mac OSX: The Missing Manual"), and I keep buying them for a good reason: They're written in such a way that they make even hard or boring concepts easy to understand.
Armed with this book you will be able to start building web pages and entire sites with pictures, links, interactive forms, CSS, JavaScript Behaviors and, most important, clean HTML and XHTML.
The only thing to keep in mind is that in order to work through the tutorials you need an Internet connection. However, once you're online downloading the files is REALLY easy and the files are so small that you can store in floppy disks! (if you want to).
If you want to enjoy learning Dreamweaver MX'04, get this book.

I have bought Missing Manuals before, and have been very pleased with them, but I think that their motto "The book that should've been in the box" has caught up with them. This is because it is my experience that if a piece of software does come with a manual, no matter how big it is, it usually doesn't include what you want to know, or, if it does, it's not easy to find. Sadly, I feel that this is the case with DREAMWEAVER MX 2004: THE MISSING MANUAL. I am an experienced webmaster, so I am looking to Dreamweaver MX 2004 to help enhance the skills I already have. In turn, I looked to the Missing Manual to help me unlock the things that I wanted to do with MX. With books such as these, you should be able to skip around by looking in the index and find what you want to do, which in my case was to do an image rollover using an image map. The book, looking at the listings that were in the index, was no help. Maybe if I read the book cover to cover I'd figure out what I needed to know by the time that the Red Sox won another World Series (oh let that be next year!). By contrast, I looked on the website for the Hands On Training H-O-T books (lynda.com) and they actually had a free sample chapter on image rollovers. The chapter didn't cover exactly what I wanted to do, but it did give me enough instructiion that I was able to figure everything out within 10 minutes. I have bought the H-O-T book, and suggest that before you buy this Missing Manual that you look at, and consider, the H-O-T book. You may be better off.

You can't ask for more out of a software manual than this book gives. Easy to follow, as a reference or a start-to-finish guide, and amusing at times. I would highly recommend this book for any novice or experienced Dreamweaver user.

Out of every self-learning book I have ever read concerning any program I have ever wanted to learn, this book is by far the best. Just buy it and you will see what I mean.

I totally recommend this book. It is chuck full of information. If you are trying to learn dreamweaver and are trying to figure out what book to get.. this is all you need!! I've been treating the book like a class going through a chapter a day and it is just awesome!! I recommend going through cover to cover. If you think you know everything about the chapter go thru it anyway because otherwise you might miss a helpful little tidbit of info that you didn't know. I am in the last section now and I definately got my moneys worth, (unlike a lot of college classes that were a waste of time and money). This is the book to get!!!

I love the Missing Manual series of books and this is one of the best. I'm an avid Dreamweaver user, and The Missing Manual has made me much better with it. Although this book can be a little wordy it's worth reading every word from beginning to end...it's packed with great info!

I'm half-way through this book, and so far, it's been a blessing. The author has structured this text in a way that allows a reader to get started using the software, and create web pages. He explains things thoughtfully and speaks to the beginner. With this book I also purchased Firework MX Bible--a big mistake. That book is thick, filled with copius descriptions of every possible tool, but teaches you nothing about actually using the software to create web objects.

I've been designing web sites for a number of years now and my program of choice was Adobe GoLive. However, I recently decided to switch to Dreamweaver MX 2004 because I wanted to take advantage of the program's advanced CSS and CSS-P capabilities. But I waited to make the switch until I knew this "Missing Manual" was available. I'd heard it was going to be released, and because I already own some other "Missing" titles, I instinctively knew this would be the book to get.

I wasn't disappointed. This book is EXCELLENT, both for newcomers to web design with Dreamweaver, but also for "switchers" like myself, who have experience with web design, but not with Dreamweaver. The book takes a step by step approach.

Some of Dreamweaver's features overlap with GoLive's, and some are common to all visual web editors; but that doesn't matter. You'll still enjoy reading this book, and you'll pick up lots of useful tips along the way.

The tutorials are PRICELESS. You simply download the files from the book's web site, and work through them, step by step, with the author holding your hand all the way. I really like the approach: learn the features, then learn to use them in a tutorial.

One very small caveat is that if you are looking for EXTENSIVE coverage on CSS layouts (without tables), you won't find it here. Yes, there is a chapter on how to lay out pages with nothing but CSS positioning, and there is a tutorial, which are a wonderful start to the subject. But you'll need something like "Eric Meyer on CSS" in order to take your CSS layout skills to the max.

This book easily deserves the 5 stars I gave it.

The Dreamweaver MX 2004 book is, as its series title says, the "missing manual." The Missing Manual series is a highly respected and popular technological series, edited and managed by David Pogue, and published by Pogue Press in cooperation with O'Reilly & Associates, Incorporated. This book was written by David Sawyer McFarland.

The Dreamweaver MX 2004 book is targeted at beginners--or people with just a little experience--and even web design experts. "The Missing Manual" series of books has never failed to be good, even great, so I was looking forward to reviewing this book.

Out of the starting gate, organization is a key factor in the book's layout. A clear, easy-to-follow table of contents provides a quick reference to parts of the book the reader may or may not want to jump right into or skip completely, depending, of course, on the reader's experience level. This table of contents is followed by a short introduction chapter which tells what's new in Dreamweaver, describes differences, or parallels, between HTML and XHTML, and explains a little bit about cascading style sheets (CSS).

Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual continues this great organization by separating the book into six distinct sections: Part 1, Building a Web Page; Part 2, Building a Better Web Page; Part 3, Bringing Your Pages to Life; Part 4, Building a Web Site; Part 5, Dreamweaver Power, and finally, Part 6, Dynamic Dreamweaver. The progression from Part 1 to Part 4 is a great help to beginners, and the final two parts provide much assistance to beginners moving into the expert zone of webmastering.

What I found to be the best feature of the book was the supplemental material and resources offered by the author. They are available at the author's website in the form of downloadable files, tutorials, and several links to other websites for even more help and answers. However, the feature that is perhaps the most useful is the capability to link to a working example of the web pages you are supposed to build and actually see a live model in action as comparison.

The fonts used, Formata and Minion, and the layout of Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual were very easy to read and follow--easy on the eyes, at least to mine. There is one thing, though. In future editions, I would like to see spiral binding so that the book could lay open when using it at the computer, especially when referring back and forth from the book to my computer screen. I had to apply different methods of holding the book open, i.e., cordless phones, clipping heavy pens to the pages, etc., and this was just inconvenient.

Bottom line: Does the book live up to its title? Yes. Do I recommend Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual? Yes.

The slogan of the Missing Manual series is "The book that should have been in the box" and Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual lives up to the series' reputation. Macromedia wouldn't want to ship this book with the software because it's a doorstop at 800 pages. Imagine what it would do to the packaging and the pricing of the already expensive software.

One itsy bitsy negative, but this book is not the only one avoiding it. Dreamweaver's help file doesn't cover it and neither does the forum on Macromedia's Web site. There is a feature called download stats listing the size of the file and the time it would take to download it. At what speed? 56k? T1? What? I would assume 56k, but assumptions are not reliable.

At 800 pages, you can expect all the features to be covered through step-by-step instructions, notes, and screen shots. The hard core stuff like building dynamic Web pages, working with databases, and using server programming within Dreamweaver are all there for those ready for a challenge.

McFarland goes the extra mile to note differences between computer systems (Mac vs. PCs) and browsers (compatibility). Looking at the table of contents is proof of the book's completeness and all I need to do is attest to its readability. First timers to creating a Web site or to Dreamweaver as well as owners of earlier versions will gain plenty of knowledge from this one.

I received my copy yesterday morning and David has another winner with this updated book for Dreamweaver MX 2004. It definitely is the book that 'should have shipped with the program' and I would recommend it to everyone - even those Dreamweaver users who've been using this product through its many incarnations.

The writing style coupled with the good solid information here will be the book I keep next to my work station. Just like his previous book on Dreamweaver MX.

First of all let me tell that 2 weeks ago I had no idea what Dreamweaver MX 2004 was.

After read the first 3 chapters I was very impressed with the quality and guidance of the author. However, after read the chapters about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) I was convinced that this is THE BOOK to read if you really want to master Dreamweaver.

Congratulations David, you did a very nice job.

One thing I have learned over the passed 15 years is that very few software packages ever come with user guides that are useful. Working with any application is always a challenge and the right help makes everything goes so much easier. The "Missing Manuals" series has provided some of the best reference manuals out there today and this book is another example of the quality work released by O'Reilly press.

The author has proven to be very knowledgeable in the DreamWeaver application arena. I found the book to be easy to read and follow along with and the material fills in the gaps left out by the user manual. The instruction is written to all levels making sure that everyone can use this book and the figures included give a visual learning environment. Now in the updates if color was included this would enhance the learning process.

There are a number of step-by-step instructions to follow along with, giving you the opportunity to practice what you read. I think that a there could be more exercises included in the next edition, but what you have is certainly enough to get by.

There seems to be coverage of all aspects of DreamWeaver MX 2004 in this book, from the web page to the web site and everything in between. I was able to find answers to several questions I had with the software and I know of several people who have benefited from the book already.

Overall this is one great book and for those who need to use the software or those who want to get better you should be reading this.