Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual
by David Sawyer McFarland
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Book Reviews of Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual
Book Review: A great book for beginning to intermediate Dreamweaver CS3 users.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've found this book to be a fantastic learning tool for anyone who has interest in beginning to learn Dreamweaver CS3, or those of you like myself who have used past Dreamweaver versions and wanted to get up to speed on the latest and greatest. I was somewhat schooled in Dreameaver MX, back when CSS was beginning to be integrated into the software. Now that Adobe has ahold of the software, it's become much more complex with increased usability and features.
I originally wanted to start teaching myself CSS. I'm not a web professional by any means, I only do it as a hobby for my own personal site that is visited by a select few. As I was looking at CSS books at the local bookstore, I ran across this Dreamweaver CS3 book, looked through a few others, and decided that I needed to get back into the basics of my chosen web page editor before learning CSS. What a great decision this was.
I hadn't used Dreamweaver in a couple of years, so this book really helped me get back into the flow of things. It was easy to read without having to be in front of a computer at all times. I loved the layout of the lessons, it felt like a natural progression of what you'd want to do. You would be taught the basic layout options, then a chapter about basic CSS would come along to show you how to implement everything you've already learned. You would then be shown some more advanced features of Dreamweaver, then some advanced CSS. These CSS chapters have really helped me get a basic understanding of what CSS is, why it exists, and how it's used. It gives me a huge step up to learning CSS a bit more indepth instead of going into it blindly.
The tool tips scattered throughout the book are awesome additions to the material at hand, and gives you nice extra info that otherwise didn't fit in the instruction. Snapshots of the program are available all throughout the book, and provide a great visual so you don't have to try and decode what small button the text is trying to describe. The extra chapter on the new Spry java features is a welcome addition to understanding this great set of tools added to CS3. I appreciated the addition of chapters towards the end on dynamic webpages, but they seemed to be a bit beyond the scope of the book. However, Dreamweaver CS3 includes what looks to be great tools to work with these types of sites, so he has to cover them regardless.
Overall, great, great book. It's highly recommended from a novice such as myself. I've just ordered the CSS Missing Manual to go along with this book. I purchased this Dreamweaver CS3 book on a Tuesday, and I had my new site up and running, complete with external style sheets, on the following Friday. Not too shabby for a man who works full time during the week.
Book Review: Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual
Summary: 4 Stars
All right I admit it, I have been known to resist change. But it appears that Dreamweaver is rising higher and higher in the sky as the star called Adobe GoLive nears the western horizon. As one who derives at least some income from web site design and maintenance I understand the need to start the process of migrating to the new mainstream product. The question then becomes, "What do I use to help me ascend the learning curve?" Time and budget constraints preclude formal classes, workshops or personal trainers.
Enter "Dreamweaver CS3" from the highly acclaimed "Missing Manual" series. The Missing Manuals have long been a regular part of my computer reference library. Helping me, time and again answer not only my own questions but those of my clients as well.
Mr. McFarland presents the material in a well organized, clearly written, easy to understand format. The illustrations are a mixed bag of PC and Mac screen shots so no one feels excluded or exclusive. But for me the most valuable parts of the book are the lessons. These lessons are stored on a related web site not on a CD stuck in the back of the book. This virtual CD can't get lost, bent, scratched or broken. It can also be easily updated if an error is detected. What a great and simple idea! That being said it is the lessons themselves that teach me the most about Dreamweaver. Common scenarios are played out in a way that allow me to apply much of what I already know to the Dreamweaver experience. I find myself virtually slapping my virtual forehead and saying, "Oh, that's how you do that! It is starting to make sense now." Furthermore, the lessons gave me new insights into basics (CSS for example) that I didn't understand previously and have been able to apply when using my old software of choice.
This book is an excellent self tutoring guide opening much of the common, real world web design experience to the Dreamweaver novice. It is what I need at this time. The only way that I could fault the work is, I wish it were a little more "Reference Manual" to go along with the valuable textbook. There have been times where I wanted to know how to do something in Dreamweaver that is comfortable for me in GoLive and I am unable to find the Missing Manual reference. Perhaps I am looking for expanded indexes or additional Appendixes. Maybe I want David Sawyer McFarland to be sitting next to me when I have a question. Perhaps this is expecting too much for my $45. Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual will find a spot close at hand on my reference shelf even if it is not constantly on the desk absorbing spilled coffee and dispensing answers to every question.
Book Review: A HUGE help!
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, this is a huge volume - as are most software "how-to" and other reference books - but this is one you'll definitely want to tackle if you're interested in building your skills with Dreamweaver CS3. To say there's a ton of good information goes without saying. Any good manual of this type can dish out the factoids, charts and examples in mass quantities, and "The Missing Manual" for Dreamweaver is no exception. To their credit, the authors still manage to present all that information with a good amount of humor and enough real-world examples to make it easy to digest and understand.
Especially useful are the "hands-on" projects and lessons contained in each chapter. You get a taste of topics such as text formatting, page layout, creating / modifying CSS rules and lots, lots more. Each lesson is simple and direct - click here, type this, etc. Step by step. Many of the lessons build on each other, so you can see a complete web page come together with more and more features and complexity. All of the lesson and example files are downloadable from the book's online companion site, so there's no need to find (and store and protect) a CD that might have been included in the book. The site also gives updated information and provides links to more help... very useful.
You probably won't read this book all at once - not unless you're an absolute newcomer to web design and Dreamweaver. If that's the case, you can work through all of the lessons, and come away with a very good understanding of the program's main functions and features. The discussion (and lessons) on CSS alone are well worth the read. Even though the authors say this book is not intended to provide a complete reference for CSS, the material presented greatly increased my knowledge and confidence in using this particularly useful bit of web-design magic.
In short: a very useful, very reader-friendly book that can help any new- to moderately-skilled Dreamweaver user. Advanced users probably know all this stuff already, but for the rest of us, "The Missing Manual" is a great addition to a personal software reference library. Highly recommended.
Bill Sklodowski
Author of the forthcoming book: "PC Smarts for Small Business"
Personal & Small Business Coaching
Digital Marketing / Creative Services
www.PcTechandTraining.com
Book Review: Review by a novice to Dreamweaver & CS3
Summary: 5 Stars
I needed to program my first web site using Dreamweaver CS3. I had designed the web site and programmed it in a higher level language which didn't give me access to the html code. I needed this access capability for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. Although I had programming experience, I didn't know html or cascading style sheets and had never used Dreamweaver. I spent a considerable amount of time searching for the best manual for me. I selected two manuals-McFarland's Dreamweaver CS3 as my primary manual and Master Visually Dreamweaver CS3 and Flash CS3 Professional by Gunter & Valade for its outline by function.
Now, six months later, I have completed the web site ([...] if you wish to see its complexity) and will give you my opinions. Contrary to what some say about the verbosity of McFarland's book, with my lack of experience, I found the detail explanations most helpful. As it turned out, even though I liked the Master Visually manual, I seldom needed to use it. I did about half of the exercises in the McFarland book, and didn't find the few errors in the examples disruptive. But I didn't have the patience to go through the rest of the examples. I found very few errors in the manual itself which is important when you are working in unchartered waters. I really liked the McFarland book and I also liked how it would cross reference the same topic elsewhere in the manual. One area I was really concerned with was what I would use for a menu structure. I decided on the Spy menus and was very happy with how well they worked as well as their appearance using CS3. Using FcFarland's manual and Dreamweaver I made two master templates. This was well worth the extra work in learning. One master template fixed the header, sidebar menu and the footer. The net result is that a menu change takes only seconds to propagate through the entire system saving a lot of time. The second master template is designed for those times I used images to fill the content area. This saved some work and insured consistency. Probably the most difficult area with Dreamweaver is to get a handle on its complex interface. But once learned, you can appreciate how so much info that is needed is available on your screen. I guess my best recommendation for McFarland's Dreamweaver CS3 is that I was able to use it to program my website in Dreamweaver CS3.
Book Review: Complete, accurate, but just too wordy!
Summary: 4 Stars
I like this book and the tutorials, and I'm glad I bought it, BUT it gets annoying after a while with how verbose it is. For instance, the author even says at one point in the first chapter,
'"Enough already! I want to build a web page," you're probably saying.'
Yes, you're right! That IS what I was saying!
He then takes p.44-64, (20 pages!) to walk you through importing a graphic, copying a text file, adding a background, and centering the page in the browser. When you list on a piece of paper the steps that you just did and repeat it, it can be carried out within maybe 90 seconds.
I started to think that this book is like friends you may have that are really nice, they're smart, and you like them, but they just can't give you the short version of a story! I find myself jotting in the margin the one thing from the whole page to remember.
This is a book for absolute beginners, not only to Dreamweaver but to web pages in general. If you've been writing web pages in a text editor and just want to see how Dreamweaver can make everything easier, this book makes you want to pull your hair out! For instance, three leading paragraphs in Chapter 2 on adding text to your pages that can be summed up as, "Text is still the most important thing on the web". WE ALL KNOW THAT! Don't make me read a whole page for that!!
I buy a new computer book about once a week, and this book does what so many are guilty of - sidebars to the point of distraction. There is a sidebar topic, hint, etc. on virtually every page of this book, which, along with the wordiness, adds to the "Let's get this done!" frustration you start to feel.
If you're already familiar with html and web pages and aren't real patient with people that take forever to tell you something, get a different book.
As another reviewer said, this book could be 1/4 its size and would be SO MUCH better!