Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver MX Templates

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First off, this book is not for someone who doesn't already know how to use templates. See previous comments by readers concerning "spawn child pages" which is a vague term not used anywhere else relating to dreamweaver except in this book. What they mean to say is "open as new from template." It took me many many hours to discover this discrepancy.

The main problem with this book is that it goes through 150 pages of explaination without any examples. When they hit you with the actual hands on templates tutorial at page 151, they assume you digested the previous 150 pages and give you ZERO meaningful direction back to the relevant topics being demonstrated. The benevolent authors feel that "use methods described in earlier chapters" is enough direction for their readers, which is absolutely ridiculous.

In frustration, i began searching the web and found an excellent tutorial on pattysite.com about creating nested templates that was infinitely more valuable than this book for getting started with templates. it explained the overall structure of templates in a very concise manner.

After working through the pattysite nested templates tutorial, the book was a somewhat useful guide to the inner workings of dreamweaver templates. Also to be fair, the authors are fairly active on the dreamweaver newsgroups and are readily available for grilling / answering questions. (they will be hearing from me shortly)

So summarizing my rant above, buy this book if you already use templates and want to learn some new tricks, skip it if you don't. This book could easily be reduced to half its size, but as we all know, that doesn't sell very many books. The common logic is that the heft of a manual is directly proportional its value...

As a Professional Website Designer/Developer, it is my job to make sure that I offer my clients a well designed website that they will not only be comfortable with, but proud of. Templates make things a lot easier - but not everyone knows how to use them.

The best way that I've found to learn the ins and outs of Templates in Dreamweaver MX is this book. It is written in a language anyone can understand. It offers hands-on projects to show you, not just tell you, how things work. Whether you are an experienced Dreamweaver User or Website Developer, or a beginner, this book can walk you through the process of using templates to design your websites easily and effectively. It's insightful, well-thought-out, well-written, and an extremely useful tool that I would recommend to anyone at any level. Thanks Brad and Murray for writing this awesome book!

Dreamweaver MX Templates is the first great "how to" book for utilizing the power of library items and templates. Of all the mysteries not well understood about DW features, Templates is certainly high on the list.

Mystery solved!

Brad and Murry have covered the territory well with a book that starts at the beginning (section 1) and builds (section 2) so that anyone reading the book can walk away confident in the uses of templates, new template features in DWMX and the awesome timesaver available in library items.

Instructional and easy to read material, complimented by easy to understand exercises reveal the power in templates, library items and snippets.

A great book for those new to the power in DWMX and a good reference guide for those who understand DWMX but just haven't gotten the hang of templates and library items.

I bought this book with some hesitation, but decided to give it a shot. I really want to learn more about templates, and be able to use them on future sites. What a big dissapointment!! I received the book today and just finished reading the majority of the book.

I followed the examples, did the exercises, but to not much avail. The book makes vague references such as see previous chapters, when refering to instructions such as "spawning child pages." Rather difficult to understand!! Perhaps I will give it another try, but for now, I am going back to Dreamweaver 4 and the previous versions of templates.

Definately not recommended!!

If you are an avid Dreamweaver MX user and rely heavily on templates for your site design, Dreamweaver MX Templates is for you. You may already be using templates to save time in web site design, as you may have done in previous versions of Dreamweaver. However, you may not be getting the most usage our of your templates as you could be. This book shows you a side of templates within Dreamweaver MX that you may never have known to exist previously.

Dreamweaver MX Templates thoroughly covers not only basic template usage, but also the programmability features of templates. It shows you how to manipulate the template programming language to create extensive template pages with a handful of code.

All in all, the book is very well laid out and easy to understand. There's tons of information packed into the book with plenty to "wow" the reader with a lot of "I didn't know Dreamweaver templates could do that". If you're serious about tapping deeper into Dreamweaver MX templates, this is the book to buy.

This Book is for The Dreamweaver Users who wants to get more out of Dreamweaver. Written mostly for the "Experienced User" But you don't have to be an expert to need or want the advantages that Dreamweaver Mx Templates provide.

If you use Dreamweaver Templates, You know how handy they can be.
If you've used Dreamweaver Templates, You also know how confusing they can be.

This Book highlights the best aspects of MX Templates. The How and Why you should use them in the working environment. How to speed up production and just make your job easier.

This book is easy to navigate. If you have any experience with Dreamweaver or the Internet, all you really have to know is, what it is do you want to do.

This book covers topics not covered in the Dreamweaver manual and explains in further detail topics that do cross over.

If you use Dreamweaver or want to use Dreamweaver. This book is a must read!

Here are some highlights that I found very helpful:

Library Items:

Library Items aren't new and have been covered in previous Dreamweaver manuals.

Dreamweaver MX-templates put Library Items in a perspective that show you how to use all the elements of Dreamweaver that work together to give you the full benefit of Dreamweaver MX.

Snippets: Anyone who's ever wrote HTML has used snippets, even if you didn't realize it.

If you've ever veiwed the source of a page to see how it's been done, or had to go back into a site and grab code you've already written to apply it to a new site in a different environment , You've used snippets.

Snippets allow you to save parts "snippets" of code to reuse over and over again. Snippets are available under windows in the snippets panel.

Unlike library Items, snippets aren't updateable site wide.

A find and replace could save you some time and provide similar results if used carefully.

Templates and Regions
This section goes in to further detail on how to use templates to their fullest extent.

The sections on Nested templates and Editable Regions should clear up any confusion anyone may have or had using Templates in this way.

I know I couldn't have figured it out without this book or a one on one tutor.

Dreamweaver MX-templates also covers overlooked topics like the importance of removing dreamweaver markup.

Section 2 The Project:

Covers exercises to use on your computer and examples of templates to download.

The project was great because it puts you in a working environment with out the stress of a working environment. So if make a mistake you will learn from it, instead of setting the project back or worse. Better to make the mistakes in the project exercise than in the real world.

Anyone who reads this book and completes the exercise should have just about all the knowledge available to Dreamweaver to date.

Again, If you use Dreamweaver or want to use Dreamweaver. This book is a must read!

The latest version of Dreamweaver introduced major enhancements--and significant complexity--to its templates feature. This book covers all of Dreamweaver's code reusability features--templates, library items, and snippets--in detail. The first section of the book uses text, illustrations, and some short exercises to cover these productivity features, including a description of the user interface, pros and cons of using the specific feature, the underlying code that Dreamweaver generates, and where you can obtain useful Dreamweaver extensions related to the feature. The second part of the book puts all the theory of the first section into practice by walking through a project that showcases the use of templates. You can download all the files necessary to complete the exercises of section 1 and the project in section 2 from the book's companion web site.

So much of the power of the MX templates comes from tweaking the code that it's difficult to figure out their best use without some guidance. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to delve into Dreamweaver MX's code-reusability features; even if you've mastered the use of templates in previous versions of Dreamweaver, you'll need this book to take full advantage of Dreamweaver MX's new template features.

Halstead and Summers book on Dreamweaver MX templates is strangled by explanations about, well everything. If you wrote a 40 page document why you love your significant other and presented that document to her or him, they may think something is missing up there. If you, however, gave her or him a ticket to Hawaii and a diamond crusted watch and then said, I love you. They would certainly get the message.

Dreamweaver MX templates doesnt present the gems of template building, but instead explains and explains and explains over and over again. While reading this book about templates, you only wished the authors used a template to structure their writing. The main points, key points, or need to know information is just buried in extraneous explanations.

This is not a learning by doing book. There is a project at the end of the book, but believe me, you will fall asleep or throw the book in the trash before you get to it.

This book says a lot about templates. It says so much about templates that you have to wonder what are the authors trying to tell you about them. If you want to be bored to template infamy, then buy this book.

Templates in Dreamweaver MX are far more advanced than previous versions of Dreamweaver. There are five new regions to enhance and extend Dreamweaver templates.

The templates have become mini-programs in a way which allow the designer a vast amount of control - control that I didn't even realize was possible. I bought this book to learn about Editable Tag Attributes and was amazed at what can be done with the new templates.

In the first section of the book, the authors cover new template features -explaining them in depth. The second section of the book walks you through the development of a template-based web site. The authors also explain pitfalls so that you can avoid making mistakes in your design.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it. The template snippet extension that they provide is fantastic too. To learn more about his book, visit the author site...

I've been using Dreamweaver Templates since I started using Dreamweaver two years ago; they just make sense to the way I work. With Dreamweaver MX & Dreamweaver MX Templates I can really tap the power that templates possess.

This book is great; it's a mini-reference and a project all in one. The authors (Brad Halstead & Murray R. Summers) present the material in such a way that you can understand it, and use it. When they hit a topic that is beyond the scope of the book, they tell you where you can go and find out what you need. They explain the benefits (and draw-backs) of Snippets, Library Items and Templates in such a way that developers can utilize these tools. The project section of the book really shows the power of templates.

If you are looking for a reference book or a project book, you get both! I just thought I was using templates... now I can really use them.