Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver 4 Hands-On Training

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In my review for <Creative HTML Design.2> I admitted to being a Lynda convert, and so I am. I am a freelance web weaver, and Dreamweaver is my HTML editor of choice. I also teach web design and development in Southern California, so I am always looking for good references to use in class or tell my students about.

Like other books by Lynda Weinman, the Dreamweaver 4 Hands-On Training is well written and comprehensive. My one and only complaint is that her HOT books are targeted mainly for folks who are new to web design, so some of the in-depth, nitty-gritty details I might be looking to add to my arsenal (I've been building web pages since 1994) are sometimes lacking. This book is no exception to the rule.

This particular text has several advantages over other Dreamweaver references for several reasons:

1) It's written in English, not "geek".

2) It includes tons of screen captures (mostly grey-scale), step-by-step instructions, AND a CD-ROM with lesson files. This allows you to follow along with the book and do EXACTLY what is shown in the text.

3) It contains practical tips on typography, image optimization, and cross-browser compatibility.

4) You don't need a crane to pick it up. ;-)

Unfortunately the book glosses over some of the fine points about using frames, tables and layers in web designs, but these points are minor when compared to the strengths of the book overall.

If you are just starting to learn Dreamweaver, or if you are an intermediate user who is looking for an easy to use reference, I highly recommend adding this to your library!

BKA

Outstanding... You can tell the authors of this book are teachers and not just writers. This is evident in the step-by-step, clear and concise instruction they give us on how to accomplish each objective in the book. I'm a software instructor at a business school in PA. I teach ages from 18 to 78 in my classes. I know so well that people just don't "get it" if they can't follow along and work the problems with the instructor.

There is a place out there for reference books, you know the ones... they regurgitate all the information that comes with the user manual for the software, but I don't find these very helpful when learning a new program. This is defiantly not one of those books. The authors don't hedge on the advanced stuff either. There are a few chapters near the end of the book that require some conceptual thinking (working with timelines comes to mind), but here again, the reader is in good hands all the way. And for those really difficult concepts there are Quick Time movies that demonstrate exactly how it's supposed to be done.

There are aprox. 630 pages of instruction in the book, and I chewed it all up in a couple days. Do I remember everything I read? Heck no! But I understand what I read, and now I can go back and start applying the lessons to my own website. Even if I don't remember each step exactly, I comprehend the concepts and can always use the book to look the steps up again if I need to. Oh, and by the way... I just read another person's review of the Dreamweaver 4 Bible. The reviewer observed that the author of that book, while very long on explanations of HOW to do things, was very short on suggestions on WHEN to do things. This is one of the things I appreciated most about Garo and Weinman's teaching style. They are always quick to point out the pros and cons of nearly everything (Using frames for instance). They tell you when something will work in IE but not in Netscape. They tell you when some DW4 feature is not supported in an earlier version of either browser... and then give their opinion on whether or not it's worth putting in your website. I find this to be extremely helpful.

I am brand new to DW (although I have about a zillion hours in working with FrontPage 2000), so I can't speak to those of you who are wondering if the advanced topics are meaty enough for you, but for you beginners out there here are some words of advice: Buy this book. You will take weeks off your learning curve if you just start here and ignore all the other books on the shelf clamoring for your money. My only regret is that there is not a serious advanced DW4 HOT book.

It reminded me of Adobe's 'classroom in a book' books. The lessons are well thought out and advance the reader from basic concepts to intermediate, and some advanced concepts. I liked this book over a lot of reference-type books in that it forced me to press the buttons and understand the concepts by doing them ("Learning by doing" -quote from back cover of book)

There was a chapter on HTML which isn't a prerequiste for learning dreamweaver, but useful. There's also chapters on javascript behaviours, layout, typography, and using GeoCity to put a website online. The book is a decent reference, although its strength is in its tutorials, and as reference it is unable to cover all of Dreamweaver's features. It also only covers the standard version of Dreamweaver, and not UltraDev. Overall, the book is a good purchase if you need to learn dreamweaver 4 and plan to actually read it through.

I already knew HTML before I bought Dreamweaver. However, I still didn't have a clue how to use Dreamweaver. I have never used an HTML generator before. The manual that came with Dreamweaver is very comprehensive, but the tutorial was boring and I still wasn't learning Dreamweaver.

After I got this book, I was a bit intimidated by the number of pages. Once I started the lessons I quickly started understanding Dreamweaver. One reviewer commented that there are "missing steps". I didn't have any trouble following along and noticed nothing missing. That reviewer also found it difficult to remove the lessons from their hard drive. I'm not exactly sure what is so hard about right-clicking and delete. Yes, the program warns you just as Windows warns you before you delete a file.

I find that this book compliments the manufacturer's manual. There are a few obscure things that I wanted to do that weren't covered in the book, however the manual's index pointed me in the right direction and made sense since I now knew how to work Dreamweaver.

I'm sure knowing HTML first helps, but is not necessary. It is amazing that you can build an entire page without writing a single line of code. As a matter of fact, if you want to learn HTML, you could do so after learning Dreamweaver. It allows you to view the code that you just created.

I think that the book assumes you already know how to build a web page. If you don't, you might think there are "missing steps" because the book does not explain how to create and manipulate images. However, that's not the function of this book. It teaches you Dreamweaver and it does a very good job of it. Dreamweaver will not make you a webmaster any more than a hammer and saw will make you a carpenter. It's a tool you need to learn how to use to do a job you already know.

This book is really good for new users of Dreamweaver. I have hand-coded HTML for a couple years, and have used (that other web design program ... shudder), Frontpage, too. I liked Frontpage for it's server extensions, and how easy the program made some kinds of tasks, but of course Dreamweaver is the Cadillac to the Frontpage Pinto.

Anyway, Lynda's book is great! I started with no knowledge of Dreamweaver and ended with a feeling of confidence enough to explore the function of the program on my own, but also a sense that I knew enough about Dreamweaver to really design web pages with it.

If you do buy this book, don't skip any chapters. The page after page of hands-on exercises this book contains will guide you comfortably through material that out of another book would fill you with insecurity. Really, the "Dreamweaver 4 Hand On Training" book makes learning the intimidating comfortable.

I've coded HTML and designed webpages from scratch for years. I have no belief in the whining complaint that "stuff for newbies" is not what you should find in an introductory book. A "newbie" is some kind of less-than-equal to a normal person, I guess. But if your only problem is that you don't have a lot of trust in your ability to get yourself through learning Dreamweaver 4 at top speed while you're using Dreamweaver 4 to design websites for real clients ... then buy Lynda's book.

And if you fear being associated with newbies, and you have lots of patience, then why don't you buy the "Dreamweaver 4 Ultra-reference" and learn the basics of Dreamweaver from a 1000 page tome with all the reference information you'll ever need.

I can't recommend Lynda's book more highly. Buy "H.O.T. Dreamweaver 4" to learn Dreamweaver 4 effectively. Do it for yourself, and ignore any threatening feelings of "newbieness".

This book will not teach you much about HTML, coding, or other intracicies of hardcore Internet creations.
What it will teach you, though, is as the title is named. It's a great book to learn Dreamweaver, be it 4 or MX.
I'm an experienced Web designer, and I've been around (please don't date me!) since the only HTML program available was Notepad. This is a good book to learn Dreamweaver. It's very concise and easy to understand. I only gave it 4 stars because it could have gone just a bit further without giving anything up. It is a fantastic book for beginners, and a great book for intermediates. For the advanced, it's a reference on how to do it the "Dreamweaver" style.

In my humble opinion, a well-written book is tantamount to a good teacher. And they are rare! This book surpasses many 3-day seminars that I have attended on other programs for a lot more money. I purchased Dreamweaver version 3 when it was released, and dug into the accompanying manual and exercises. I got absolutely nowhere and concluded that I just must think differently than the designers of the program. I ran off to Adobe Go Live, and Netobjects, but still knew that Dreamweaver was the one to master. This time around, after purchasing the version 4 update, I came here to see what people had written and chose this book. This book - and only this book - completely swung me around. I have read every word in it and have 3 empty highliters to prove it. The exercises and the explanation of same are concise and have a way of sticking in your brain when you return to the program. The chapters are broken down logically, and are not so long to where you can't complete them and find yourself looking forward to the next one (in my case, the following day). I have never written any opinion on any book or program, but in this case, I felt compelled to take the time to let others know that this book is an absolute must. If Macromedia wanted to increase their marketshare, they would include a copy (hard bound) with every program. Thanks Lynda and Garo.

Green and Weinman set out to put a basic process together to give you the understanding of the scope of Dreamweaver 4 and how to go about using it in a very broad way. I think they achieve this... anyone can follow this book... (it's not very technical so don't fear it's size.) It is a little repetitive to help drive the point home (and probably make it look alot more informative than it really is by excessive pictures, I think the publisher said "fill it out some more") I think this can be misleading to the layman picking flipping through this book in a book shop expecting it to be a fountain of knowledge. It's not.

But it will help put you in the right mindset to use Dreamweaver 4. Learning HTML and Javascript, and CSS is upto the bazillian other books already written on those topics.

So don't expect too much in technical detail because that's not the objective. They state in their intro "... What we saw missing from the bookshelves was a process-oriented tutorial that taught readers core principles, techniques, and tips in a hands-on training format.".

This was their objective and I think they achieved that. So you can use this book as an introduction to the practical implementation of web design. But don't expect much more than that. It won't change your life but it will point you in a good direction. The CD is pretty good because the samples do work and the exercises seem to have been tested reasonably well, unlike alot of other tech books. Even so I consider still consider this CD's standard to be fairly high.

I liked it and for $30-something bucks it will save you $400 on a course. Within a week I was hammering out my own pages. I would probably look at some of their other books to get into some of the other Macromedia products.

If you are thinking about designing web sites, I highly recommend you use Dreamweaver.

To learn Dreamweaver I highly recommend this book. It is an easy to follow step-by-step tutorial. Very comprehensive and well written. Unlike someother books I've read in this one the instructions are always correct and work.

My only complaint is the book doesn't have a lot of information on planning a website. (Pulling together all of the information in this book and putting it to use). I think this is the equivalent of teaching someone write paragraphs but not teaching them anything about putting those paragraphs together to form an essay. All of the exercises are for one website but are very segmented. (this is the only reason the I didn't rate the book 5 stars)

Don't let my last paragraph discourage you...this is still a great book...but to design websites you will need more information.

I have read all the reviews before I bought this book from Amazon. I was fairly confident this would be a good book to start learning dreamweaver. I have a fair amount of html and javascript knowledge along with graphics programs but have never used dreamweaver before. I actually took the book with me on a trip out of town. I didn't have a computer to see the examples off of the CD or to test the theories mentioned in the book. This was not a problem! If you're like me you learn visually rather than just reading a lot of words. This book has many screen shots that are very helpful in reinforcing the topic (especially if you're not at a computer). It also has a classroom feel to it but the chapters don't feel like they go on forever. It covers subject by subject, step by step, using screen shots in the book and a lot of examples off of the CD (if you're at a computer). It's pretty comprehensive in covering the capabilities of dreamweaver, it just doesn't go in depth to an advanced level. This book is definitely for beginners. You will probably be disappointed if you want an intermediate to advanced book. I think this is more of a beginners to an intermediate book. In conclusion, when I returned from my trip I was able to do all the things I learned in the book and I feel I'm at an intermediate level now. I'm looking for my next dreamweaver book and hope to find one that is layed out as well as this one.