Dynamic Learning Dreamweaver CS3 [Paperback]

Fred Gerantabee (Author), AGI Creative Team (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596510578 | ISBN-13: 978-0596510572 | Publication Date: November 19, 2007 | Edition: Pap/Dvdr

Dynamic Learning: Dreamweaver CS3 is like having access to a top-notch team of your very own instructors. Written by product experts and trainers who have produced many of Adobe's training titles, the book takes you step-by-step through the process of learning to use Dreamweaver X like a pro.

This full-color book is organized into lessons, with easy-to-follow instructions, tips, examples, and review questions at the end of every lesson. Each lesson is self-contained, so you can go through the entire book sequentially or just focus on individual lessons.

Topics covered include:

• What's new in Dreamweaver CS3
• Dreamweaver CS3 Jumpstart
• Creating web sites
• Styling pages with CSS
• Working with Snippets and library items
• Using tables and frames
• Adding Flash, video, and audio content

In addition, the book comes with a companion DVD with video tutorials and all of the files needed for the lessons, including final, completed Dreamweaver files. A free Instructor's Guide is available online.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Fred Gerantabee is an Emmy-award winning interactive designer, author and educator with over 13 years of experience in web and interactive design, development and consulting. Most recently, Fred was an interactive producer with Walt Disney Interactive/ ABC television, creating synchronous, FLASH-based applications and interactive games for major television events such as the 2004 Presidential Elections, the Academy Awards, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Fred is an Adobe Certified Instructor and ACE for Flash, Dreamweaver and Flash Lite and the author of several books including Flash CS3 and Dreamweaver CS3 Dynamic Learning series books on O'Reilly publishing. He is a speaker, training manager and instructor at Aquent Graphics Institute, where he delivers custom consulting, training and curriculum solutions.

The AGI Creative Team is a highly experienced group of authors and instructors with a strong track record for developing and delivering best-of-breed books, video content, seminar series, and conferences.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Pap/Dvdr edition (November 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596510578
• ISBN-13: 978-0596510572
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #620,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Computers & Technology > Graphic Design > Web Design > Dreamweaver

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plenty Here for Beginners, November 18, 2007

By 

Brett Merkey (Palm Harbor, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dynamic Learning Dreamweaver CS3 (Paperback)

§
This book has a lot going for it as a classroom tool. The 13 lessons deal with the basics of using Dreamweaver, customizing it to the way you work, and touches on broad Web coding issues. So beginners, who most need those broader issues as context, will appreciate that something extra they need.

The author does not go into much detail on any subject. Two of those "broad issues" I mentioned before were Cascading Style Sheets and using tables for layout. The book shows the importance of CSS to good design and introduced me to some CSS conveniences in Dreamweaver CS3 I was not aware of. One odd thing: the author warns against using tables for page layout (correct!) but then titles a chapter and video session "Creating Page Layouts with Tables." Yet, the content of the chapter had very little to do with using tables for layout. It stuck closely to some of Dreamweaver's best facilities for handling *data* tables, like the CSV import feature. Lousy title, good content.

The book itself is done up in full color with illustrations tracking each lesson well. I sometimes felt the included videos were a bit padded and neither as valuable or as clear as the text. However, the detailed "zoom ins" were a nice touch and helped a lot. Since many of the screens in the video were chock full of objects, I had trouble following the author's actions in the clutter. It would have been better if his mouse cursor had been larger or a bright color to make that part easier.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Poor Book, April 19, 2008

By 

Wasted Saturday (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dynamic Learning Dreamweaver CS3 (Paperback)

I never take the time to write a book review but maybe I'll save you the money and especially the time. I bought this over other books for the instructional DVD included. The very first instruction in Lesson One on the DVD tells you to open "index.html". There is no "index.html" in Lesson One on the DVD. So, I read the beginning of Chapter One for Lesson One and it says to open "SpryWidgets.html". The instructions on the DVD and the book are worlds apart! Upon opening the "SpryWidgets.html" it does not have the text needed to follow the instructions on the DVD. I spent over three hours trying to interpet the two different sets of instructions. The book is very poorly written with no attention to detail. Now I have to drive back to Borders in the morning on my $3.50 per gallon gas to get my money back. I wasted over half a Saturday on this turkey!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great way to start creating web sites., July 7, 2008

By 

Joseph S. Reid "technology advantages" (Calif) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dynamic Learning Dreamweaver CS3 (Paperback)

Not fully understanding what I was getting into I offered to support a web site for a non profit organization that did not have the funds to pay for the service. Using this book as a textbook, I was quickly able to get up to speed and bring their web sit up to date. I have since been asked to develop a web site for a possible new business.

The book takes a step by step approach with each step explained. Possible errors or points of confusion are anticipated and clarified. Each lesson has well developed examples that can also serve as models for your web site. The book is in color so the book pictures match the screen displays. I scanned over the first chapter of what was new because it was all new to me. I followed the other lessons as one would a textbook using what was appropriate for my own site. I never encountered a step that wasn't possible and when finished with the lesson their examples were good templates for what I was doing.

This book does not cover the server side of the coding and I have started using another source to learn how to use PHP with Dreamweaver. However, I still refer to this book for ideas and found it to be an incredible frustration free way to learn how to create and update web sites.