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. |
Cold Fusion MX: Web Application Construction Kit (5th Ed) Macromedia Press, 2002
The Web Application Construction Kit - or WACK as it's popularly known - tackles such issues in a simple, but effective way. The SQL Query Tool on the accompanying CD-ROM teaches the main principles of SQL quickly and easily through hands-on experience. This approach is ideal for beginners, although readers with experience of other dynamic technologies, such as ASP or PHP, may find the early chapters cover material that's already well known to them. Even so, Ben Forta never talks down to you, so experienced programmers should be able to whisk through the first sections bringing themselves quickly up to speed with the CF way of doing things such as conditional loops, database access, and so on, before settling down to the more advanced stuff. Dreamweaver MX takes a lot of the hard work out of dynamic web site construction with ColdFusion, facilitating rapid application development. Ben Forta acknowledges that Dreamweaver MX's automatic code generation is excellent for rapid prototyping, but he stresses the importance of both understanding the underlying coding and being able to generate it yourself. That's why WACK weighs in at nearly 1,500 pages. The copious appendices include full listings and descriptions of CF tags and functions, grouped both alphabetically and by purpose. ColdFusion is regarded by many as the easiest programming language to learn how to create dynamic web sites. WACK does its best to make the learning curve as gentle as possible. It's both a tutorial and a reference work you'll rely on for a long time. |
Inside Dreamweaver MX New Riders, 2002
What's particularly impressive about this book is that it's not just a comprehensive guide to using Dreamweaver MX, the authors have made a conscious effort to educate readers about the principles of good web design. This approach succeeds because there is no attempt to talk down or to preach. Considerable emphasis is placed on the future direction of the web - CSS, positioned layers, and the move to stricter coding standards. At the same time, the authors remain firmly rooted in the real world. There's full coverage of table layout and inline formatting with font tags, etc. Should appeal to beginners and expert users alike. |
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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.
The verdict is virtually unanimous - if you want to learn how to create dynamic web sites with ColdFusion MX, there's only one book you need, and this is it. It's easy to see why. Ben Forta's crystal clear explanations make light work of setting up ColdFusion MX on your local machine and creating your first dynamic pages. Careful attention is also paid to laying the groundwork for a proper understanding of the underlying complexities of dynamic web sites - database structure, SQL (the language for querying databases), and at least a basic grasp of programming concepts.
A monster of a book, weighing in at 1,300 pages. It covers every aspect of Dreamweaver MX from setting up the Workspace, through simple page creation, to creating dynamic websites, and writing your own extensions to Dreamweaver. Nearly 200 pages are devoted to MX's new integration with the main server technologies, including chapters on setting up basic sites with ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, and ColdFusion.