Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: pretty good introduction to dreamweaver
Comment: This is not a reference manual type of book. It is an instructional manual for following page by page with instructions, to make various pages. This book includes exercise files to follow along.
Basically, it is a nice introductory text book for Dreamweaver beginners. And if you familiar with other books in "Hands On Training" series, you'll know what I mean. It's nice series, and this particular book is nice too.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not a book for Beginners
Comment: This is a very thorough book, covering almost all aspects of Dreamweaver. However the author assumes that the reader already has a pretty good understanding of computer programs and web design. This book was assigned to me as the textbook for a Dreamweaver course at a local college. Most of the students, including me, had a very hard time understanding much of the terms used in this book, even in the first chapter.
Just so you know what I'm talking about, here are some quotes from the FIRST chapter. "Sure, you could use other technologies such as Java Script and CSS and server-side languages such as ASP, JSP, Adobe ColdFusion and such." "DHTML uses a combination of XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, and the DOM." "Web applications have also been referred to as data-driven, database-driven, and dynamic sites. In almost all cases, a Web application involves a database and server-side scripting, such as ASP, Adobe ColdFusion, PHP, and so on." I don't know about you, but I have no idea what the author is talking about.
I think that if you are pretty savvy about computer programming in general, or have worked with HTML before, or if you know other Adobe programs such as Photoshop, then you are probably at a level where you can take advantage of the information in this book. If, however, you are new to web design and HTML like I am, then there must be other books that explain Dreamweaver in a more simplistic way for beginners.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dreamweaver Tutorial
Comment: Great book and DVD. Easy to follow. I would highly recommend this as a training tool.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ugh! 3 stars
Comment: this book is fine for learning the material, but it's weaknesses are sooo annoying that i had to detract 2 stars from my rating. here's why:
1/2 star deduction - this book gushes about dreamweaver. you enjoy his enthusiasm in the first 4 chapters. you're just rolling your eyes after that.
1/2 star deduction - this book gives you one way of doing things for windows, and in the same sentence the equivalent way of doing it for the mac.
1/2 star deduction - the book is so repetitive with its 'helpful' hints. for example, "you should still have the draft.html file from the previous exercise open. if not, complete exercise 3, and then return to this exercise".
1/2 star deduction - this book treats you like a 5 year old. he tells you to "remember" that you were styling text before (as in the directly preceding exercise), but you'll now be styling an image. DUH!
any one of these things isn't so bad in itself. but when he does ALL THESE THINGS ALL THE TIME THROUGHOUT THE BOOK NONSTOP, it gets VERY irritating! plus, these weaknesses made performing a tedious task (reading a TRAINING book) unnecessarily more tiresome!
like i said, you do end up learning dreamweaver. but i would venture to suggest that you could have done it in (dare i say it?) 1/2 the time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Classroom Tool
Comment: This book was used as a hands-on lab boook in a course about using databases on the web. DW is a good tool in for working with web DB's, this step by step book was a good help for working on setting up the site. There are some unclear passages that can lead to confusing results because not all the graphics match up, but nothing too hard to overcome. Best of all is the Amazon price, which is well below retail.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source is a good follow-on book for working with server side technology such as database handling.
Both books have CD's included.
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