Dreamweaver 2 Bible [Paperback]

Joseph W. Lowery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0764533223 | ISBN-13: 978-0764533228

If Dreamweaver 2 can do it, you can do it too… With its groundbreaking page-layout capabilities, new Dream Templates and Commands, unique site-management functions, plus support for the latest Web technologies, Dreamweaver 2 brings you more control and more flexibility than ever before. Whether you're creating heavy-action sites packed with sound effects, Shockwave movies, sophisticated animations, or data-driven, interactive sites for e-commerce, you'll find all the information you need to speed construction, smooth maintenance, and power up your pages in Dreamweaver^™ 2 Bible. Inside, you'll find complete coverage of Dreamweaver 2

• Quickly build a site using Dreamweaver's windows, palettes, and inspectors
• Drop links, client-side image maps, and interactive forms into your site
• Manipulate elements online or offline using Cascading Style Sheets
• Set up frames easily with Dreamweaver's click-and-drag functionality
• Liven up HTML pages with CGI scripts, JavaScripts, applets, and controls
• Create Web pages with active content through Dreamweaver's new database connectivity partners
• Preview audio, video, and other active content at design stage
• Add a third dimension to your Web page with Dynamic HTML layers
• Explore Web-based learning opportunities with Dreamweaver 2 Attain
• Include the latest Web technologies such as XML and SMIL

Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash 3 demos on CD-ROM, plus nearly 300 Dreamweaver extensions, including:

• Behaviors
• Objects
• Commands
• Style sheets
• Browser profiles
• Inspectors
• Queries
• Beatnik Player
• A Web resource directory and all the sample code from the book

Shareware programs are fully functional, free trial versions of copyrighted programs. If you like particular programs, register with their authors for a nominal fee and receive licenses, enhanced versions, and technical support. Freeware programs are free, copyrighted games, applications, and utilities. You can copy them to as many PCs as you like—free—but they have no technical support. www.idgbooks.com System Requirements: Pentium 133 with VGA display card, or PowerPC processor or faster with System 7.x; 32MB RAM; 100MB hard disk space; CD-ROM drive

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This comprehensive guide to Macromedia Dreamweaver 2 for Mac and Windows serves as both an introductory aid for beginners and a useful reference tool for more experienced users. Lowery does it all: he explains features and technologies fully, throws in lots of usage tips and cross-references, and offers screen shots and step-by-step projects.

Lowery begins by explaining Dreamweaver, the current HTML standards, and new features such as dynamic styles and JavaScript behaviors. He provides a tour of the interface and helps you set your preferences, starting you off in the planning and creation of your first site. Later he goes into more detail about HTML, showing how to use Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs, plug-ins, ActiveX, Java applets and scripts, and VBScript. (DHTML gets its own section too.) There's a series of explanations on specific Dreamweaver capabilities, from creating objects to customizing behaviors and tags.

General interest Internet topics get their due, and the book covers multimedia elements, including how to add video, audio, and Shockwave movies to your Web page. For larger-scale Web sites, the sections on Cascading Style Sheets and XML will be useful, and information on dynamic databases and e-commerce issues wrap the book up nicely.

The appendices offer primers on the HTML editors BBEdit and HomeSite--advanced HTML editors for Mac and Windows users (respectively)--and on Dreamweaver Attain, a companion Dreamweaver program that helps you create instructional Web sites. The companion CD-ROM includes demos of Macromedia's Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash 3; sample code used in the book; and Dreamweaver behaviors, objects, commands, style sheets, and inspectors. --Kathleen Caster

About the Author

About the Author Joseph W. Lowery has been writing about computers and new technology since 1981. He is the author of the Dreamweaver Bible and Buying Online For Dummies (IDG Books Worldwide). He has also written books on using the Internet for business and HTML, and has contributed to several books on Microsoft Office. Joseph is currently Webmaster for a variety of sites, including the MCP Office 97 Resource Center; a managed health care organization; an international public relations school; and a bar. Joseph and his wife, dancer/choreographer Debra Wanner, have a daughter, Margot.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (May 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764533223
• ISBN-13: 978-0764533228
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,908,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joseph Lowery's books about the web and web-building tools are international bestsellers, having sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide in nine different languages. His most recent book is the Dreamweaver 8 Bible. Joseph is the author of the recently published CSS Hacks and Filters as well as the Dreamweaver Bible and Fireworks Bible series from Wiley Publishing. He also wrote Design and Deploy Web Sites with Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3 from Macromedia Press. In addition to co-authoring Dreamweaver 8 Recipes and Dreamweaver MX 2004 Web Application Recipes with Eric Ott as well as the Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips series with Angela Buraglia.

As a programmer, Joseph contributed two extensions to the latest release of Fireworks and many extensions available for Dreamweaver. He has presented at Seybold in both Boston and San Francisco, Macromedia conferences in the U.S. and Europe, ThunderLizard's Web World, and KW Media Group's Mac Design Conference. Joseph is currently the Director of Marketing for WebAssist.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book out there for Dreamweaver 2 February 4, 2000

By JRK

Format:Paperback

I have about 3-4 years of HTML experience but I wanted to improve the time it takes me to create pages, so I got into Dreamweaver. There are two important parts to Dreamweaver outside of knowing HTML, which are (1) working with the Graphical Interface (ie- where to click) and (2) working with the 'extras' such as DHTML and XML. This book does both. There are three chapters on how to add multimedia to your site with stuff like Shockwave and Flash. There are four chapters on DHTML stuff - layers, timelines, CSS. Another section which I didn't use but may be helpful to you out there is how to use Dreamweaver's web site management tools, like FTP and site map. No matter what kind of web publishing positioning you are in, if you want to know Dreamweaver, get this book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book December 4, 1999

By "bdunn"

Format:Paperback

This is one of the few books about Dreamweaver 2.0, but it's absolutely one of the two very best books available. If you are looking for a great reference that is structured in such as way that you'll actually learn the methods, then buy this book. I believe you will have a very hard time finding better reference material on Dreamweaver 2.0. Another consideration should be Dreamweaver 2.0 - Hands On Training, the other great Dreamweaver book oriented more towards a careful and thorough tutorial. Buy it - this one is a keeper!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shorten Your Learning Curve ! January 11, 2000

By Uncle Fester

Format:Paperback

I have read this book. This book will help you become a professional. It covers everything that you can imagine, after all Macromedia is great at delivering professional tools, but lacks comprehensive reference materials. If you purchased Dreamweaver, this Bible will take weeks off the learning curve. Finding what you need to get work your completed is made simple with the extensive cross-reference index. The CD was lacking as many different contributors addressed the same problems over and over, but for a beginner it's a great jumping off tool. This book reveals many secrets that will save you countless hours in understand why things work they way they do and provides many type along examples. But if your really clever go to the on line sites referenced and simply cut and paste. Soon you will have animated pages that play RMF (rich music formats by Beatnik) that load in less than 13 seconds and everyone will think you're a genius.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and well-written November 23, 1999

By monkuboy VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The user manual that ships with Dreamweaver is pretty basic and leaves something to be desired if you are seeking an elaboration of any of the great features this program possesses. If you're going to spend the bucks to acquire the excellent software, spend a little more to get this book, too- it is well worth it! This book puts pretty much everything you would want or need to know about Dreamweaver 2 in one place, written in a clear, organized manner. As an aside, I just purchased Mr. Lowery's book on Fireworks 2 after seeing how much more comprehensive and understandable it is than the user manual that comes with the Macromedia software.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good start, but has a way to go. October 6, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Good book for fundamentals such as style sheets and basic coding; however, the book leaves out a very good portion on one of the main reason a web developer would want to use dreamweaver, the templates function. I find this section of the book to be more of a joke than a section. Moreover, its lack of description on how to link template files to the site manager leaves much to be desired.

All in all, if you are a beginner to dreamweaver and web publishing, it wouldnt hurt to have the book on your desk. Just know that if you wish to do more of the complex things such as running your site off templates, you are in store for headache or two.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, comprehensive, a must have for DW users. November 18, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Want to learn all there is about DW? This is the book for you!Covers everything the program can do in easy to understand language,you don't have to know advanced HTML to use this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Novices and Beginners Take Heart! June 15, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I was thrown into handling our company's website after word got out that I had "web design experience". Laughable, considering I had only done a couple personal web pages that merely linked to other sites. After going through Dreamweaver's very brief manual, I realized that I needed something much more comprehensive. Armed with this book, determination, and a lot of experimenting, after two weeks I took over our web presence without too much difficulty. No mean feat considering we get several thousand hits per week.

Granted there are still chapters that I'm still working through after five months, but whether I'm learning something new or just re-visiting an old topic, this book has never let me down.

If you use Dreamweaver, you owe it to yourself to get this "must have".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you have ideas to carry out June 18, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I made coffee and opened the book knowing about eight lines of HTML code and unable to get anything at all seamless out of Dreamweaver, but determined to wade through it. Instead, the first lines of the preface seemed to talk right to me and sometime about midway through the paragraph, the concepts just sort of rose off the page and became as real as the web pages I've written with them. The book is concise, hits the mark almost without fail, and moves at a pace that can only be achieved by the ability to set technology to a a rhythm that all but rhymes, ah ha!