Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver 3 Hands-on-Training (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dreamweaver 3 is the industrial strength tool to easily build web sites - period. Lynda Weinman and Garo Green have developed a wonderfully crafted tool that will teach beginners how to build and manage websites using Dreamweaver 3. Dreamweaver 3 H.O.T. is straightforward, packed with knowledge and learn-by-example exercises in a well thought out design. The supplemental materials on the CD-ROM include demos of Macromedia Dreamweaver 3, Fireworks 3, and, more importantly, QuickTime movie clips of Garo demonstrating Dreamweaver concepts. The book addresses the key methods of learning: auditory, visual and learn-by-example.

This is definitely one of the best "self-training" books I have ever purchased and I highly recommend it for the beginner who wants to learn how to build web sites with Dreamweaver 3.

It is important to note that the fundamentals of web site design, graphics design, web application development and web animation are not addressed in this book. To get these - study books on web design (Lynda Weinman as a highly rated book available on Amazon for web design) and books on Fireworks, Flash, XML, ASP, JAVA, and SQL databases.

This will be the benchmark by which I compare all other software tutorials. I first bought the Dreamweaver 3 Bible and struggled with it for about a week. It is a very in-depth reference work, and I'll keep it for that purpose, but it's not a beginner's tutorial. This one is. Most software books that I've bought with CD-ROM's should have left them out because you can usually download the most up to date demos from the web. But this book's CD has over 100M of very good Quicktime movies, and tutorial files for every chapter. I hope they write another book like this for Fireworks 3.

Lynda puts out the best books on web graphics, hands down. I muddled through on my own learning Dreamweaver and found the manual cumbersome at best. When I got this book, I learned easily all of the features I never bothered to figure out on my own. I appreciate Dreamweaver much more now that I've read her book and done the exercises in it. The QuickTime movies in the CD are also an excellent addition. I can't wait to what she does with Flash 4.0/5.0.

While recently searching for a good textbook to use in the practicum class I'm teaching this Spring at American University, I looked through almost all of current offerings on the market and finally decided on using Dreamweaver 3 Hands-on-Training.

The book offers a logical trek through the essentials of using Dreamweaver for web design. I particularly enjoyed its lengthy discussion of the site manager and how it is central to using Dreamweaver effectively (something I found lacking in most other books.) The structure of the book happened to coincide with what I believe is the best route to take when learning Dreamweaver and web design issues and fit in perfectly with the way I had planned my course. I've actually gone through the book, chapter-by-chapter and worked out all the examples and exercises and everything works as it should. Perhaps at times the instructions are overly repetitive but this is something that the more advanced students can skip over while those struggling with the material will no doubt appreciate.

I have read in other reviews that the book has at times been deemed "for beginners". I would have to disagree and say rather that designers of all levels have something to gain from this book. I'm sure that web designers working with version 2.0 of Dreamweaver will love it for the version 3.0 tips alone. I, for one, found out that I wasn't making use of the History function as well as the custom commands -- two things that have helped to speed up my development time enormously.

Highly recommended!

I got a lot out of this book. It's comprehensive, easy to understand, and the authors do a good job accommodating both Windows and Mac users.

The one drawback I had with it is that it would have been nice to have exercises/files at the end of each chapter (or possibly a mini-project at the end of every few chapters) to reinforce what was covered. Don't get me wrong, the exercises that are provided while working through each chapter are great in introducing the learning objectives, but it's difficult to know if you understand it when a recipe type format of "click here/select this" is given that walks you through it. For example, by the end of Chapter 5 the authors could provide a few basic "completed" web pages along with the corresponding files that were used to create them. The reader could then attempt to re-create the pages from scratch by using the files with the goal of ending up with a similar page. Having taught for 5 years I think these types of open-ended exercises are important for reinforcing the learning process. Otherwise it's difficult to gauge if the reader understands the objectives of each chapter.

I took a look at this book, at the request of one of my students, to determine whether or not this was a good book for a new web designer.

After looking through this book I feel you get exactly what the title says, a book on how to use Dreamweaver 3, that's it. If you are a new web designer and you are absolutely sure you will be using Dreamweaver 3.0, then buy this book. It will teach you what you need to know in order to do basic web design with Dreamweaver.

This book is not a good HTML reference book. If you are looking for a book to teach you HTML, keep looking. Dreamweaver concept is built around designing web pages by typing minimal code. If you want to design web pages without knowing what is happening in the background Dreamweaver and this book are for you.

This book is great for Dreamweaver beginners. It uses a good teaching method (allowing the student to actually use the features he/she is learning). The book is fairly well organized and the exercises are decent.

My only complaint is that the book uses too many pages reiterating simple features of the program. I believe the space would have been better used for a couple of chapters helping the student with the strategies and planning of a web site. Even though the exercises are all for the same hypothetical web site, the book doesn't do a good job of pulling it all together.

All in all, if you are a beginner with Dreamweaver this is a great book to learn the features of the program.

This is the perfect book for the beginner in web design or if you just want to do a page for yourself! Its easy to follow and understand, though, on the other hand, the examples are not TOO simple--in fact they provide a pretty in-depth look at Dreamweaver's finest features. It has great tips and shortcuts for the expert user too. You don't have to be HTML savvy (or know it at all ^_~) to get started with Dreamweaver and this is the book to guide you through it. Thanks Lynda!!! You're my hero!

I was looking for a tutorial on Dreamweaver 3.0 when I came across Ms. Lynda Weinman and Mr. Garo Green's book "Dreamweaver 3 H.O.T. Hands on Training". I sat down ready to devel into the knowledge contained in this tome with CD in drive. I started to copy the files to the hard drive in Windows NT 4.0 only to have it abort an number of times with an invalid path for a file entitled "ourrooms_p.gif". Being of a curious nature I openned the up the cd files on my desktop and found the file resident in the exercise files for Chapters 3,5,13, and 14. I searched for the file and found it in all the chapters mentioned. I openned up Adobe Photoshop and pathed my way to the file and tried to open it, Adobe gave me an unreconized file format error. I attempted to open it again, this time it aborted Adobe with an memory error. I tried with PhotoImpact, it couldn't reconize the file format. I emailed Lynda.com/books about the problem asking them to send me the file via email, a new CD, or tell me where I could download it from the net, and went through a tedious procedure to copy the files to the hard drive to proceed with the training.

I found the book excellent, wonderful, insightful and discovered I didn't need the "ourrooms_p.gif" file at all, there was just a nasty hole in the lessions where the file should be. The lessions were well planned and layed out. I went from page 1 to page 221 before I before I put the book aside. This morning while going through my email I received a note from Lynda.com/books about my problem with file "ourrooms_p.gif" explaining that lynda.com/books was a small company and did not offer tech support for my problem, and that I should bring the problem up in a discussion group on their web site, and the writer hoped that this reply helped,(someone there is one fry short of a happy meal) to which I replied, "huh, what's there to discuss? The file is bad on the cd, short sweet and to the point, replace the file.

In their movies on the CD Lynda and Garo talk about another CD they produced for DreamWeaver 3.0, hummm? do I order it, or not?

There is, indeed, duplicate material but that is to be expected with nature of the application upgrade. Some may not find this worth while if they have Dreamweaver 2.0 HOT. I, however, did not. I have been limping along with only the software manual to guide me anxiously awaiting the publishing of this book. Lynda Weinman is what I consider the Web Graphic Goddess. I was not disappointed that half the book I could breeze through because I had taught myself because then the other half became challenging and fresh. Worth going through every bit of the tutorial. I did not tire or get bored with it. This is an excellent training device. I feel I got my money's worth.