Customer Reviews

ColdFusion MX with Dreamweaver MX

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The best computer book I have every used. While that in itself is barely a compliment I have found this book incredibly useful and easy to understand.

I almost never read computer books cover to cover but use them as a reference. While this book is a tutorial best followed front to back I find it easy to use as a reference. It is not hard to jump in right in the middle of chapter and pick up what is being taught. I bought the book sight unseen in the hopes of learning 6 specific things. In only a week I have found that everything I wanted is either covered or provides enough background to use more advanced texts.

Not an advanced book but for those that learn like me (jump in, start writing code and figure it out as you go) this book is fantastic.

If you are a beginner at ColdFusion, this is not necessarily the best book to buy. There are a number of typos and errors that can make it very difficult to follow along with the examples, both within the code and text. For example, in one exercise, you are instructed to open and update the wrong file. In another place, the code example refers to a .htm file when it should refer to a .cfm file. These are just a couple of examples. Since I have some familiarity with ColdFusion code, I was able to catch these errors for the most part and make the examples work. I think it would be very frustrating situation if you have no familiarity with CFML. On the bright side, I do feel I have gleaned some good information in terms of how to use the Dreamweaver MX environment to implement ColdFusion applications. Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX Dynamic Applications -advanced training from the source - is probably a better place to start if you like a tutorial-based learning source. Also, Macromedia ColdFusion MX Development with Dreamweaver MX Visual QuickPro Guide is pretty good for learning the ColdFusion features available in Dreamweaver MX.

As a designer that's learned to program, this book is fantastic. It explains CF in a simple, straightforward manner without all the extraneous techie-lingo that makes reading IT books such a headache. We all know databases are boring, so what I really like about this book is that it cuts right to the point with useful examples. It just makes sense.

A great book for reference and anyone who is learning cold fusion and or Dreamweaver MX. Since Dreamweaver MX is also the new defacto Cold Fusion studio, this book is a good cost effective way to learn the nuances of Dreamweaver MX and also have a reference book for Cold Fusion MX.

If you are unfamiliar with either Cold Fusion or Dreamweaver MX, this book is a must have. It brings you up to speed on the new features in Dreamweaver and gives a great overview and reference guide for Cold Fusion. Being that Dreamweaver MX is now the defacto "studio" product for Cold Fusion, this book is a vital purchase for all skill levels.

I'm giving this book 4 stars because it does a pretty good job of showing the reader how to develop CF in Dreamweaver using mostly point-and-click methods. After reading it you will no longer wonder what all those random menu items do.

However, I bought this book hoping to really learn CF from it. At that, it is really quite bad. Most of the content is extremely shallow, with no real explaination for how the underlying script works. If you are at all familiar with other web programming languages such as PHP, you can probably get all you need out of this book by skimming through it in the bookstore. There is an ok tag reference at the end, but it is probably straight from the DW help files.

So, if you are looking to really learn enough CF to do anything beyond the rudimentary, look elsewhere. If you want a deeper understanding of Dreamweaver's abilities when it comes to dynamic pages, you will probably see some value in this book.

Prior to purchasing this book, I had gone through Macromedia's ColdFusion tutorials, WebMonkey.com's tutorials, and had gone through a short SQL tutorial at w3schools.com. The first four sections (13 chapters), chapter 14, and chapter 17 were encompassed by the free tutorials I had already taken. The next chapters are very good if you are want to customize Dreamweaver to increase your productivity. Instead of spending the [$$], you would be much better off taking the tutorials I mentioned and searching for a book a litle more advanced so that you don't have to read through the things you already learned in the tutorials.