Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver CS3 in Easy Steps: For Windows and Mac

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

 

 

This book is absolutely fantastic for one reason in particular: It will dispel your fear of Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a mother of a program to learn, yet this book makes it all look pretty easy and manageable. It is short, at less than 200 pages. There are lots of beautiful illustrations to make learning easier and Heaven forbid, FUN! There are also lots of screen shots in color. The writing is excellent. And there is absolutely no geek-speak in this book.

The book takes a highly visual approach to learning Dreamweaver. Imagine how hard it would be to learn to drive from a rather dry 700 page textbook. Then compare that to having a good friend show you how to drive out in a large wide open space. That's the difference between this book and many other books on the market.

Does this book have everything the 700 page books have? No! But it should take your from novice-level to intermediate without missing too many tricks in between!

What do you do when you're a slow reader who has to learn as much about Dreamweaver as possible within the next couple of days? You don't go and buy a 600 page book, no matter how many stars it's got. So, browsing through the shelves at Borders, I hesitantly picked up only the two sub-200pp. DW CS3 books on offer and chose the "in easy steps" option because, well, the other option (name escapes me) had an entire chapter on creating image maps. Blech!

Pro:
==> At page 68, I'm essentially already 1/3rd done...wahoo!
==> Based on a count of the dog-eared pages so far, I've read about 8 things that I consider worth learning.
==> < $20 USD (and under $20 Canadian, too!)

Con:
==> Too much real estate devoted to "Don't Forget," "Hot Tip," and, "Beware" sidebars.
==> Said sidebars are either useful (5%), Mostly Harmless (75%), and Patronizing (15%), or Incorrect (5%)*.
==> As of page 68, I still don't know how to make design changes in the mess of nested tables left to me by my CSS-phobic predecessor.

Bottom Line: Unless you're desperate, spend some extra money and time on Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual or Dreamweaver CS3 Bible.

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*Examples: "[An image] reference is denoted by the <src> tag." "...does not have a closing tag."

OK, so I'm nit-picking with the second example. My personal bias is that it's bad form not to encourage XHTML habits. Point being, I've been trying to forget nearly as much of what I read here as what I'm trying to remember.