PHP Web Development with Dreamweaver MX 2004 Apress, 2004
Allan Kent kicks off the book with three chapters offering a broad overview of the three main technologies being used: PHP, MySQL and Dreamweaver MX 2004. Then Rachel Andrew of the Web Standards Project takes an in-depth look at designing with web standards, something made considerably easier by many of the improvements in the latest version of Dreamweaver. Using CSS and valid XHTML is not just a fad as far as dynamic websites are concerned; it's a necessity. Server-side languages like PHP are very fussy about correct coding. One comma or quote out of place, and your website can come crashing down like a pack of cards. Yes, you can build a PHP website without CSS or a valid doctype, but it makes your life a lot harder, and any time "saved" by using outdated methods is usually lost many times over in increased site maintenance. Then it's down to business, building database-driven pages. Allan looks at the various server behaviors built into Dreamweaver MX 2004 that make this process much simpler. I follow up with a detailed look at code reuse, utilizing Dreamweaver templates and library items, but most importantly building your own code library and creating your own custom-built functions in PHP. I take a hard look at the pros and cons of templates, and compare them with PHP includes, a subject that can be difficult for beginners to grasp, but which offers considerable benefits - and which Dreamweaver, incidentally, makes a lot easier to implement. Allan then offers advice on other Dreamweaver time-saving devices - extensions, telling you not only how to install those created by others, but also showing you how to build your own. It's not as difficult as it sounds! My second chapter deals with the less glamorous, but nevertheless essential subject of what to do when things go wrong - not only error detection and troubleshooting, but plenty of tips on how to avoid errors in the first place. Finally, the crowning glory of the book (well, I think so, because I wrote it!) - a really detailed case study, looking at how a real-life content management system is put together. It's a mini-book in itself (120 pages long), showing how to plan the database tables, and building the administrative back-end with solid procedures to ensure that only valid content is entered into the database. In the process, you build several new server behaviors that can be used again and again in different sites. When putting the front-end together, I look at some advanced SQL queries drawing information from four separate tables. The finished site could be used as the basis for a club, an online product catalogue, or a personal blog. |
Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004 Friends of ED, 2004
The friends of ED Foundation series takes a hands-on approach, and the book teaches you all the ins and outs of Dreamweaver MX 2004 through a case study that builds an online photo gallery. Although readers are expected to know the basics of web design, the book is aimed at the beginner to intermediate level. Even if you're completely new to Dreamweaver, you should have little difficulty in following the detailed instructions. If you're familiar with earlier versions of Dreamweaver, this book will quickly introduce you to the new features, particularly the way the program is now almost entirely CSS focused. I promise you - there's not a single font tag in the book, and tables make only a brief appearance. If that worries you, don't let it. We don't preach. We guide you through the steps, and help you feel just at home with CSS layout as you may have been with old-school designs. The second half of the book is devoted to the dynamic capabilities of Dreamweaver MX 2004. Rather than skirt over a little of each of the server-side technologies, we chose to concentrate on PHP and MySQL. There are full instructions for installing them on both the PC and Mac OS X (not difficult - honest). We also decided not to dive straight into MX 2004's automatic code generation. That approach may give you quick results, but leaves you banging your head on the keyboard because you don't understand what's happening behind the scenes. Instead, you learn all the basics of PHP through a series of practical examples. By the end of the book, the static website created in the first half is converted to a database-driven version. You will also have learned about sessions, user authentication and dynamic navigation bars. What's more, you'll be able to dig into MX 2004's code and tweak it to get things to work just the way you want. If you plan to buy online, support one of the authors by purchasing through this site. |
Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic New Riders, 2003
The biggest disappointment is that Massimo Foti, a brilliant creator of Dreamweaver extensions whose name appears as the lead contributor, seems to have been directly involved in only one of the 12 projects in the book. What's more, it's a project that works in ColdFusion and IE6 only. It may be brilliant, but I'll probably never find out because I have no plans to switch my server to ColdFusion. If it were just one project that had this problem, it might be acceptable, but of the five projects using server-side technology, only one has been designed to work with all three main ones, PHP, ASP and CF. Another works with ASP and CF, but the remaining three are single-technology projects - one each for ASP, ASP.NET and CF. It's no criticism of the individual authors that they have concentrated on what they know best, but New Riders has let both them and readers down. "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Web Application Recipes" by Joseph Lowery and Eric Ott came out a month earlier, and the entire book has been written so that everything works in ASP, PHP and ColdFusion. As a result, the book is bigger - and more expensive - but you get the impression the expense is more than justified. In spite of these serious criticisms, "Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic" does have some very strong points. Stephanie Sullivan kicks off with a tutorial on using CSS to position and style your pages. Anyone familiar with Stephanie's designs will appreciate that it's a winner, and there are some very useful tips you'll pick up from it. Brad Halstead and Murray Summers (authors of "Dreamweaver MX Templates") each present projects based on using templates for site navigation, again full of useful hints. Eduardo Zubler brings his love of Flash to a project called "Flashing Up Dreamweaver", which includes a very nifty extension called "Flash Date Picker". This, in fact, is one of the strong selling points of the book: the accompanying CD-ROM contains Dreamweaver extensions currently not available elsewhere. Eduardo's extension inserts a pop-up calendar that inserts dates in the correct American or European format into a form. Another feature that will appeal to anyone who finds difficulty following just written instructions is that every project is accompanied by a Quick Time movie showing you how to go through all the steps. Although useful, I would have preferred the authors themselves to talk you through the projects, and explain things that aren't in the text. For my money, at least, the Magic series, while still attractive, has begun to lose its original sparkle. |
The Dreamweaver Developer's Instant Troubleshooter Apress, 2003
What this book sets out to do - and to a large extent succeeds - is try to answer as many as possible of the questions that frequently frustrate users of Dreamweaver, particularly when making the transition to building dynamic websites. You could argue that you can get similar help by going to the Dreamweaver forum or by doing a Google search. You could, but would you get the answers from real experts - people like Rachel Andrew and Drew McLellan, both members of the Web Standards Project, or Gareth Downes-Powell, one of the most lucid writers on PHP and MySQL? Together with Nancy Gill and Kevin Marshall, they look at getting ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion and PHP up and running on both Windows and Linux machines. They walk you through the installation procedures for IIS, Apache and MySQL, catering for whatever your preferences or setup may be. And this is where the book really scores - they tell you what to do when things don't work the way you expected. They anticipate most of the common problems - and some not so common ones, too. With two of the authors active in promoting web standards, there's a strong emphasis on making the best use of Dreamweaver's improved CSS capabilities, and creating sites that are valid and flexible, including advice on how to switch to creating XHTML documents. Once you start creating dynamic websites, you'll find yourself turning to the later chapters, which offer a series of instant "recipes" for some of the most frequently asked questions about ASP, ASP.NET and PHP (but not ColdFusion, for some reason) - for example, how to create a random password in PHP, tables with striped rows in ASP, working with Server Control and Code-Behind in ASP.NET. If I have a serious criticism about this book, it's a pity that the final section was left to the individual authors' choice of questions. Although some issues (such as the notorious "Headers already sent" gotcha in PHP) are exclusive to a particular technology, it would have been nice to see answers to all the layout questions provided for each one. The user level is described on the back of the book as "Intermediate - Advanced". I would describe it as more "frustrated intermediate, aspiring to advanced". Everything is based on Dreamweaver MX, but is 99.9% applicable to MX 2004. |
Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips New Riders, 2003
The concept of "killer tips" is that it's a collection of all those sidebars you find in computer books, often with a lightbulb or wise old owl icon, that contain the really useful information that turns an average user into an expert. To be effective, they have to be short and to the point. So here we have a collection of nearly 300 such tips - all dedicated to Dreamweaver MX. Some are very simple - keyboard shortcuts that are listed in the official manual, but which you may never have tried simply because they're buried among so much other information. Thanks to Joe and Angela, F4 is going to become one of my most frequently used keystrokes in future. Others are the type of information that you can only get from someone who knows the workings of Dreamweaver inside out, and both authors certainly fall into that category. Subjects covered include customizing the MX interface, CSS, tables, browser compatibility, building dynamic sites, templates. The final two chapters get you deep into Code View, and even under the hood of Dreamweaver itself, introducing you to the world of customizing and extending MX. By their very nature, the tips are brief - never more than a page, and sometimes three of them to a page. Occasionally, I've found that irritating, wishing there was just a bit more detail. In general, though, this is a book for dipping into whenever you've got a spare moment. With no need to wade through pages of tutorials, the information can be put to use straight away without fuss, making your work more enjoyable - even if you groan at some of the jokes. (One of the authors assures me it's sparkling wit. Who knows? You may agree.) *BLT sandwich: normally Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato, but in the media world where I come from it has another meaning - Bright, Light & Trite. |
Dreamweaver MX: Advanced PHP Web Development Glasshaus, 2003
The book is written by the same team that produced "Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development" (also reviewed on this site - and recommended for beginners). Although it's a sequel, it avoids the annoying habit of some series of constantly referring you back to the other volume, so you don't have to have read it to get the most out of this one. The authors do use some of Dreamweaver MX's PHP functionality, but most of the book is pure PHP, so readers need to be prepared to dive in and get hand-coding. That's very much a plus, because to get the most out of any dynamic technology, not just PHP, hand-coding is essential. Dreamweaver's automatic code generation is great, but it can only get you so far. Subjects covered include graphics (particularly useful for creating bar and pie charts from dynamic data), file handling, e-mail, and a fascinating insight into working with XML. For me, though, the highlight of the book is the Content Management System case study by Gareth Downes-Powell. It not only brought alive for me the power of custom classes in PHP, it gave me the confidence to start creating my own. Even if the book were twice the price, it would be worth buying it for this case study alone. |
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This is my second foray into writing about creating database-driven websites using PHP/MySQL and Dreamweaver. Like my earlier book (Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004, published by friends of ED), this book assumes no previous knowledge of either PHP or MySQL. Where it differs is that we assume readers already know the basics of building a static website, so we can concentrate on the main subject - putting PHP to work.
As one of the authors of this book, you'll understand if my review is slightly partial, but I think Craig Grannell, George McLachlan and I have put together something really special. I wrote the second half of the book in conjunction with George, all about building dynamic websites with MX 2004 and PHP/MySQL. I also created some of the JavaScript for Craig's half of the book, which is a thoroughly enjoyable and in-depth tutorial on building a static website, using MX 2004's standards-compliant XHTML and CSS features.
New Riders released this book one week before Christmas, presumably in the hope of filling many Dreamweaver enthusiasts' Christmas stockings. Like a lot of things in Christmas stockings, it's attractive and there are some really good things inside, but there are also plenty of disappointments. The line-up of distinguished authors held the promise of some really good stuff, but I get the impression that the rush to get it out in time for Christmas meant they weren't given the opportunity to polish everything to perfection.
This is a book I never thought would see the light of day. It was just about to go to the printers when the original publisher, Glasshaus, collapsed. Apress came to the rescue, and now this book can come to the rescue of anyone struggling with Dreamweaver. First of all, a disclaimer, I'm partially biased about this book because you'll find my name among the credits as a technical reviewer.
This is a book you're either going to love or hate, and I have to admit I very nearly fell into the second category when I first picked it up. Two things annoyed me - the jokey tone and the fact that nothing is covered in any depth. To me, it was inconceivable someone of the stature of Joseph Lowery would put his name to a BLT sandwich*, so I put my reservations aside and began digging into the book. I'm glad I did.
Only recently started out with PHP? Don't be put off by the "advanced" in the title. You'll certainly be advanced by the time you finish, but you don't need to be a PHP guru before you start. Anyone with a basic or intermediate knowledge of PHP wanting to take their skills to a higher level will find this an invaluable book. I was one of the technical reviewers, and working through each chapter I found my skills improving by leaps and bounds. The authors take time to explain how a particular technique works, so that it becomes part of your own knowledge, enabling you to move on and apply it to projects of your own. Far better than simply copying a routine because "that's the way it's done".