Customer Reviews

Adobe PageMill 3 f/x and Design: Everything You Need to Know about Designing and Maintaining a Dynamic Web Site

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a computer teacher who thrives on well written resource books (allowing me to better understand my subject prior to teaching it to my students), I wholeheartedly recommend Adobe PageMill 3 F/X and Design. In my opinion, it is clearly geared towards the intermediate (skill) user who has some working knowledge of PageMill 3. The CD has great resources. Similarly, Daniel's accompanying web site for the book at geekbooks.com is extremely helpful. Thanks for a producing a clearly written book that I have found very helpful.

-Themis Drakos

I'll be the first to admit that PageMill 3 f/x and design has its flaws. It was published in late spring 1998--more than half a year before the next PageMill 3 book hit the shelves.

I invite you to go to the bookstore and take a look at both my book and Maria Langer's PageMill 3 book. We both take a different approach. She does some cool stuff. I do some cool stuff. They're different books.

Sometimes, it's better to browse for yourself, in a real world bookstore, rather than just relying upon online reviews.

If you've purchased my book, and something's not working for you, please email me (dan@geekbooks.com). We'll work through any difficulties you may be experiencing.

I am committed to helping my readers. To me, this about more than just selling books.

This book is definitely worth it if you are just starting out with Pagemill 3 as the online instructions for the program are not great.

For me however I'm glad I purchased it as it is a great refernece, but having been using Pagemill 3 for two months,I have been left with more questions than ever.

I am a graphic designer who has "converted" to the web and thus my design skills are good but how does one learn to convert everything to HTML? This is a good basic start.

This book has helped in certain areas, and I would recommend it for most web learners.

I thought I was going to love this book. It started out just great. I was doing the tutorials and happy as a lark. Then came importing bar.gif's and assigning them individual URL's and putting a label on the hotspot--which it showed me how to do but--It leaves out instructions on how to label a hot spot so the person cruising the web will have an idea of what the link leads to. In fact, he may not know there is a link at all since the bar.gif appears to be blank until you hold the cursor over it to get the underlying link.

Too much of this to be helpful to either newcomers or intermediate (it did not give you a html alternative in the "link to" area to do the link while showing the label.

The book was ok but not great. There were places that were extremely hard to follow. I believe that the witer made the classic mistakes of assuming that the reader already knew something in the writers head. I did learn how to design a page with Page Mill but there was much that was not clear at all as it was full of jargon.

I found this book to be very well written. The examples are clear and do a good job of demonstrating the principles of Web design. I purchased this book because I purchased an iMac that came with Page Mill 3.0. The accompanying CD is helpful and contains very useful routines that can be used in your Web pages. This is a no nonsense book that get's you designing web pages quickly. It also serves as an excellent reference. Both Windows and Macintosh versions are described clearly without distracting the reader from the goal of using Page Mill 3.0. If you want to get up and running with Page Mill 3.0 in short order, buy this book.

I remember months ago when I downloaded the trial version of PageMill 3. I was lost. The only thing I actually did with that trial was view my Microsoft Publisher made website. So, when I decided that PageMill 3 was the one I really wanted, I searched for books about it. I found this one. It's unbelievable. Yes, there are a lot of instructions that get a little boring, but the book does include "projects" that allow you to make sample pages using what you have learned. Great idea. And I really like the use of pictures in the book, it made the text a whole lot easier to understand. Thanks Mr. Gray!!!

Daniel Gray has produced a winner that is easy to read, especially for us newcomers. Mr. Gray is not your boring run of the mill computer geek. He livens the text with humor and wit.

The book is logically written and organized, and makes great use of sidebar commentaries. The CD that comes with the book is worth the price of admission! You get working versions of popular software, along with enough graphics to stock your library.

My only gripe with the book is that it doesn't explain Java scripting clearly enough for the newcomer, and this is picky, but the demo version of Jamba needs a serial number to run, while not provided. Otherwise, a must get book for Pagemill 3.0.

Although the author, Daniel Gray, took pains to declare otherwise, I am finding this volume, like almost all other programming tutorial texts I've purchased and tried to use, falls woefully short in the area of providing lucid and error free text in its examples. Try to do the exercise he includes in Chapter 3, Project SOHO SHED, on a PC running Windows and you will see what I mean. In defense of the book, I learned enough about creating web pages from it before I got to Project SOHO SHED that I was able to immediately discern the errors and work around them.

Dan is a rare exception in the world of people who write about software. He's entertaining, informative, and easy to understand. This is not a step by step manual. In many instances, Dan demonstrates concepts, and follows with an exercise to demonstrate what he's just explained. This is an excellent teaching method, and one I use in my classes in both web design and in PageMill. Too many times an author gets stuck on the what, instead of on the why. Then the student gets stuck when the time comes to exercise a value judgement. Believe me, you won't have that problem if you get Dan's PageMill in Depth. I use it in my classes, and recommend it to my students, something I don't do lightly. PageMill in Depth is an excellent treatment of a superior product.