Customer Reviews

Homesite 4.5 for Dummies

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

 

 

At first I was afraid that since this book was co-written by Nick bradbury, the creator of Homesite, it would be way over my beginner head. But alas- I was wrong. I've had no trouble at all manuvering through the maze of new information, really grasping what a wondeful HTML editor Homesite 4.5 really is. This book is comprehensive as heck and i now know so many little shortcuts I feel like a pro. If you already have a bit of a grasp HTML you can skip ahead and still learn all of the nifty shortcuts that will save you valuable time - that you can spent outside, away from your computer.

Homesite 4.5 is an excellant program, and some of its many features are quite intuitive. But you KNOW there is much more power under the hood... if only you could figure out how to tap it. This book succeeds in doing just that. It does a <<great>> job explaining, not only "To insert an image (for example) click here", but what the various image options are, how they will look, what options may not work with older browsers, and such. Nearly every page I read I thought to myself "Wow! Homesite does THAT?". A book has got to be REALLY good to accomplish that.

The review from LillySSS does point out one (potential) limitation: This book does not teach you how to create a web site. If you've never created a web site before, neither this book (or, in my opinion, Homesite itself) is for you. But if you've created a few pages with Frontpage and now need more control (or want to create pages that aren't so bloated with code) then this book should do the trick. Conversely, if you've hand coded web sites in HTML, the program and this book let you do exactly what you've been doing, but with a whole lot less effort.

In any case... if you are using Homesite, you will get a lot more out of the program, and become more proficient, with this book.

It was a choice between Sams and Dummies. I choose dummies because it was the latest (4.51) and for dummies. When I read it though, it wasn't for dummies. I was looking for more of a step by step this is how you do it kind of book. Instead, it was mostly describing what certain things do without giving a real clear step by step this-is-how-you-do-it. Now I have to go back and buy another Homesite book because this wasn't what I expected at all. If you know what you're doing, then this is for you. I've used frontpage and am fine with it, but this book was way too advanced and general for me.

I've been using HomeSite for several months now and finally broke down and purchased this book. I wasn't sure if I really needed it because HomeSite is very intuitive and I was already very productive with it. Even so, this is a very worthwhile purchase. I have only read some of it, but I discovered a feature that I've been misusing and a few others that I didn't really know too much about. Each of these, properly used, will save me time and I'll be even more productive. Because this book was coauthored by Nick Bradbury, the original developer of HomeSite, I have a better appreciation of his overall intent with HomeSite. It really is a product geared toward productivity and the more you understand that, the more you really want to fully master the software, because like a good investment, you'll get back what you put into it and much more.