Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver MX / Fireworks MX Savvy with CDROM

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

 

 

If you have a limited budget or are a beginner to Fireworks/Dreamweaver, don't waste your money on this book.

This is one of those books written by commmittee - a group of authors each doing separate chapters. Unfortunately it reads as if none of the authors ever coordinated with each other. One glaring example, most of the illustrations are B&W and the text keeps referring the reader to the see color examples in a later chapter. Unfortunately most of the examples the reader is sent to see are not in that chapter at all! Whilte there is a copy editor and a technical editor listed as part of this book's production team they don't appear to have done anything constructive.

I have been making notes in my copy as I find typos, grammatical errors and errors in the tutorials (either mistaken directions or missing directions or material missing from the included CD). Virtually every chapter has several errors of each kind.

The beginner will quickly become confused, or worse, give up on trying to learn.

There is a Yahoo group run by the lead author of the book where some of the errors were beign collected. A week or so ago the author noted that the book had gone into a 2nd printing. It is possible that some of the many errors in the first edition were caught and fixed. I certainly hope so. This book does real damage to the image of Sybex as a publisher of quality material.

Dreamweaver MX and Fireworks MX Savvy

By Christian Crumlish, with Joyce J Evans, Lucinda Dykes, Heather Williamson, Greg Holden, Guy Rish, Michelle Davis, Rita Lewis, and Rick Tracewell.

Overview.

I found this book to be very informative and readable. The use of a mixture of experts to contribute to a book is not new, but having as many as this is unusual.

There is no overt clash of authors as you read through, and as Dreamweaver is such a deep program, it seems best to have experts in different fields contribute what they do best.

The first thing that stood out about the book is the fact that it features two separate programs in the title. As you work through the book, the reasoning becomes apparent.

The book is laid out logically, starting, as you would, with page layout and setting up, and using templates, and getting all the pieces together.

At this stage, you leave Dreamweaver and go straight into using Fireworks. This is a logical progression, albeit an unusual concept. Fireworks fits seamlessly with Dreamweaver, and as they are both part of the MX Studio range, it is likely that the users of one program will have at least a passing knowledge of the other.

Finding a web image program into the middle of a web page program was a bit of a surprise. I expected to come across this bit at the end, but it is inserted where you need it in the scheme of making a site, just after the layout.

This is the time you start to play with the images etc that will go to make your site look good, and careful planning is needed here to avoid having images that are too big and load slowly, or even saved in the wrong format, or not sliced to optimise download times.

The Fireworks MX section is well written with very detailed instructions regarding the optimizing of images with this program which is packaged with Macromedia Studio MX. These programs fit seamlessly together and you can switch from one to the other, reduce file sizes and slice and save in the applicable format and have the HTML file for putting them back together on the web, and then have the file switched back to Dreamweaver, all in one easy stage.

No more opening a file, manipulating and slicing and then saving before re-introducing the file to Dreamweaver from disk. Do the whole job and re-introduce the re-worked image into Dreamweaver MX and re-size it, or apply the changes in place in Dreamweaver. If it is still not right, just repeat the process.

Fireworks MX optimizing of images for the web is superb, and it is considered one of the best programs for this work.

Features.

Dreamweaver MX/Fireworks MX is broken into 6 parts for easy navigation.

The first part is all to do with setting up and saving templates etc for your site.

Fireworks is covered next, and this consists of 6 chapters which go into a lot of detail about image files and how to deal with them best for web optimization.

After that you go to the actual page layout, and dealing with tables and layers etc, including the whys and wherefores associated with this.

After learning all about interactivity and CSS and hyperlinks you move to inserting dynamic content, such as Flash files, rollovers, and forms.

Next comes the complicated stuff, the development and programming side of things. Not just HTML, but ColdFusion, XML, XHTML, and other emerging technologies.

The final section is devoted to site administration, which is essential for good site keeping. It makes your job much easier in the long run.

This involves things like browser compatibility, administering the site, and also customizing and extending Dreamweaver.

Book Description.

617 pages of well-bound, good quality pages, followed by appendices.

32 chapters are further broken up to make detailed exploration easy.

A short colour section helps to explain some of what has been written.

A very useful CDROM is included with tutorials and sites to get further information, tutorials and links to user groups.

A surprise here is a series of tutorials on Photoshop.

Demo versions of the other Macromedia MX programs are included too.

Dreaweaver MX has a lot of new features including the interface which now follows the look of all MX products.

Fireworks seems to have many new features when compared to older versions and are aimed at ease of use.

An abundance of screenshots on nearly every page are included to make sure that you can follow what has just been explained.

Only a brief section of colour pages is included, but as you will be checking the net for sites, that should not matter.

Information is what this book is about. The book is backward compatible and anything that relates to the newer version is marked well.

Bottom Line.

The bottom line for me is that this is an extremely useful book, whether this is your first site, or you have been doing it for a while. I am sure that you will find things that you weren't aware of, had missed, or just forgotten. It is easy to read, and easy to follow, and that makes it worthwhile from the point of view of a user of these two programs.

Mixing the two programs in their correct places in the book is really very sensible. Ok, you may still want more info on Fireworks MX as a program, but what you do get covers a lot of ground, aimed explicitly at how it works with Dreamweaver MX, which, after all, was the idea.

I believe this book is probably the best written book on fireworks/dreamweaver to date. If you are looking for a book that covers every topic you could imagine look no further. I have been looking for a book that ties the fireworks/dreamweaver concept together for months and I came across Savvy in the book store and haven't put it down since. The book is well thought out and written for the beginner to the advance. Also it is great to be able to contact the author on Yahoo's group site....a huge plus to the book...again thank you Mr. Crumlish for this excellent addition to my library

1st few chapter chapters showed promise. Laid out easy to understand. Fireworks chapters are obviously written by someone else and leave alot to be disired. Not very intuitive examples, make you struggle though it, that and missing files from cd dont help. Typo's through out book, and chapter 30 has a bullet point on the first page of the chapter about the topics to be covered on Finding or Preparing a Host Server, but the topic isn't covered in the chapter. Copy Editors sure fell down on the job in this book.

When I purchased this book I had high hopes for it, as most of the customer reviews had given it a high rating. But, this is probably the most uninspiring web design book I've ever come across.

Yes, all the technical details are in there, so if you're looking for a reference manual, perhaps this book would be a good one to have on your shelf ... but Macromedia's own help files, website, and user's guide provide the same information. So, why spend the extra [$$] for a volume that's not nearly as succinctly written?!

If you're the type who likes to learn by doing, then you'll be disappointed with "DW/FW" Savvy. The tutorials are lackluster and the included photos/layouts on CD-ROM are unbelievably amateurish. The Fireworks section is just "OK," which is surprising since Joyce J. Evans is a highly regarded expert. Once again, everything you need to know is included, but you're definitely not going to say "Wow, I want to do that!"

My advice is to sprint on over to Project Seven's website and purchase their "Dreamweaver MX, Building on Solid Foundations" ebook. You'll learn *so* much and have a truly enjoyable time while you do. PVII's team has a design aesthetic that provides for clean, functional, well thought out pages coupled with cutting edge CSS techniques that will have you just marvelling at how much you can do with styles.

Bottom line, your money could be better spent elsewhere.

This book takes you on a journey from basic information to advanced concepts. Regardless of your experience with Dreamweaver and Fireworks, you're sure to learn something new.

The chronological organization covers both programs in a logical manner for beginners that are starting with an idea and working their way to a final website. For the more advanced readers there are numerous indexes so that the desired information is easily found. Something all readers will find especially useful is the seven-page appendix of Windows and Mac Keyboard Shortcuts.

This book is great for anyone interested in mastering Dreamweaver and seamlessly integrating Fireworks for more efficient web design.

The annoying, chummy tone of the generally awful writing is the perfect compliment to the factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and tiny type. A fair number of the required tutorial files were not on the CD, and are not available on the website.

There's a great deal of useful information, but why wade through an error-laden bombastic text that's easily 20% longer than it needs be to get at it? It's a handsome text, but handsome is as handsome does.

A good editor could have saved this book. Apparently Savvy doesn't employ any.

If you are new to FireWorks MX and DreamWeaver MX, DON'T waste your time with this book. There are too many errors, inaccuracies and incomplete process steps. Plus, the CD does not have all of the sample files mentioned in the Hands On portion of the lessons.
If you are experianced with FireWorks MX and Dreamweaver MX, nothing savvy here either. No new tricks, no great tips.
Needless to say I was very disappointed.

DREAMWEAVER MX/FIREWORKS MX
AUTHOR: Christian Crumlish
PUBLISHER: Sybex
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

BOOK REVIEW: Have you been designing web sites with Dreamweaver, Ultra Dev, and Home Site? If so, you need to update your program to Dreamweaver MX. It is ALL these programs in one! The CD that comes with the book, Dreamweaver MX-Fireworks MX, has a 30-day trial of the program plus the Photoshop Learning Studio.

The book contains so much information it is hard to provide a short review of it. There are two appendices, one that contain locations for tutorials and the other that is full of keyboard shortcuts. The chapters themselves provide information on such subjects as XML, 508 accessibility, custom menus, and, of course, the basic information on how to get around in Dreamweaver and Fireworks.

Dreamweaver MX gives you a choice of using the "old" version layout of Dreamweaver 4.0 or the new layout of MX. While it might be a bit harder to work with a new format, it is definitely worth the time to give it a try. Everything is right there at your fingertips. Dreamweaver MX-Fireworks MX walks you through all of it. There are files on the CD to go with the tutorials in the book.

Come on and get on-board with the newest web designing programs and use Dreamweaver MS-Fireworks MX as your guide through it all.