Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver 1.2 for Windows & Macintosh VISUAL QUICKSTART GUIDE

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

 

 

I was very pleased with this book. For a low cost, it provides you with a comprehensive explanation of Dreamweaver's capabilities and how to achieve the effects you want. As the title suggests, you get excellent pictures to help explain the concepts.

I found the book to be well organized. J. Tarin Towers avoids repetitiveness and babbling and gets right to the point. Once you complete the book, it acts as a nice reference to quickly look something up - should you forget.

The book even teaches you some HTML as it goes along. So if you're unfamiliar with some HTML commands, you'll get help from the author so you'll know what is going on. However, I wouldn't rely simply on this book if you're completely new to HTML.

My only complaint about this book is the online appendix. You are required to go to this book's complimentary website in order to get information on the following 3 things: The Image Map Editor, Roundtrip HTML, and Browser Compatibility. Why not just include them with the book? Some of those things seem odd to include in an appendix, too (e.g., include the image map section with the chapter on Working with Images). The whole website ordeal seemed suspicious to me.

Despite the quirks with the appendices, I found this book to be quite informative. It goes through and explains Dreamweaver's functions successfully and quickly. Let's face it, you don't want to bore yourself reading a book 2 inches thick on how to use a fairly simple program. You want to quickly get through a no nonsense book and actually use the program. And for that, The Dreamweaver Visual Quickstart is what you need.

I read it cover to cover in less than 3 days. I went from knowing "0" about how to fully use DW to giving advice and tech support to co-workers. I even upgraded to DW 2.0 because I read a friend's QuickStart book for 2.0 and saw all the new features. Just about all of the VQS books are GOLD! The local university requires its Graphic Design students to buy them too :)

I work designing web sites, but I had to teach Dreamweaver. So, I used this book as a guideline for my course.

I have gone through a lot of software books,but none that made learning a new software as easy as "Dreamweaver 1.2". This book explains everything in a clear and brief way without being boring. It was the first time that I have finished an entire book without frustration or confusion. If just all tutorials could be that simple, uncomplicated and yet bring such an amount of information across.

For about the same the money, I would recommend purchasing the Janine Warner book, "Dreamweaver for Dummies." Mr. Towers was among the first to make available a Dreamweaver user's guide. However, being first is not always the same as being best. This QuickStart Guide is largely a recapitulation of the Dreamweaver help files. An expert user would find such a book to be superfluous, while a novice would need better prose to help them understand the concepts. Of course, the best book available on this subject is the Dreamweaver Bible. The DW Bible is well written and comprehensive. Worth the extra money.

As far as I'm concerned, some of the earlier (one-star-type) reviews are just plain wrong. Towers strikes a good balance for new-to-the-web folk as well as for people who want more than Macromedia provided in the shipping version. Yes, as one reviewer notes, she does say "see chapter so-and-so" quite often, but perhaps that's because she does a good job of breaking up the subject into lots of chapters. The price is right and the writing isn't stilted. I found her style clear and effective, and who needs another CD in the back that pushes the price up to $49.95?

Covers DW1.2 reasonably well, but author seems to delight in the word "nifty". This is nifty, that is nifty. One has to try and bypass this in order to get to the information underneath, which is quite reasonable. Although I felt that the references to go to the web site to find out more were puzzling - after all, why buy a book in that case.

Frankly, I found this book a bit dreary. Sure, it might be clearly written but I really found the "I'll discuss this more in chapter x" a bit irritating. I think a book aimed at beginners and intermediate users should concentrate on topics and EXPLORE them, not simply mention them and pass on by.

There are much better books available, the Dreamweaver Bible for example, so hopefully this book will soon be forgotten. I was not impressed with it.

The homesite is disjointed, tries to be funny, and basically says nothing about Dreamweaver. It all seems to be entrenched in the SF LSD culture (days gone by). See the site, and you'll see the book in a new light. The content you need is in the book, but I wonder if the author got bored and moved on.

A real novice might derive some value, but it could have done a much better job. I will use it to prevent rising damp getting to the books on top. Found a use for it after all! Sorry, I'm being critical but it really is dreadfully arranged. Value for money? Not really. Ability to probe detailed topics? Limited.

The author might know her subject but she doesn't enthuse it.

This book is for anyone with little or no experience with Dreamweaver. The book takes you off slow with text work and by the end of the book you are working on Macromedia timelines. It's authors reveal all the powerful features of Dreamweaver 1.2 and gives them to you in a clean and clear format. This book show it all from tables to javascript. The whole book contains great information on how to make a web site better and also some great tips on editing the html in Dreamweaver. If you are new to Dreamweaver and want a book that will show you the great possiblities with Dreamweaver-then this book is for you!

Very simple examples and clear writing, this book is a must for the average user. Forgot how to use the timeline or what the heck is a layer? Find it fast and understand it so you can get back to work.