Customer Reviews

How to Do Everything Microsoft Expression Web 2

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

 

 

This is the worst How To book I have ever purchased. I have purchased many How To programing books in the past and expected much more than what I received form this book.
To me it did nothing more than walk through the menus and did a poor job of that. Much of the time they referenced code that needed to be downloaded or referred the reader to different websites for code or examples.
I would not recommend this book to anyone at any level.

I bought this book to learn how to use Microsoft Expression Web 2 at work. If you can learn by reading then this book is probably acceptable. However, if you need to learn how to use Microsoft Expression Web 2 by doing, then find another book.

Page xviii of the book instructs you to download files from[...]. If you follow the directions as written, you will not find the download files because the publisher, McGraw Hill, changed the look of the website and the locations of the download files. However, if you find the McGraw Hill download area and download the files, you will find there is one critical folder missing in the download -cafeR. Unless you have the cafeR folder with the files contained within, the major example in the middle of the book is useless because you do not have the image files, the css files, etc. to complete the example. The example is, what I think, makes one able to understand how Microsoft Expression Web 2 works after you complete the example. The other files that they supply you for other parts of the book are helpful and are there but the nuts and bolts part of it requires the files in cafeR.

I tried to obtain the missing files in folder cafeR from the authors, Rick Leinecker and Donna Baker, and the publisher McGraw Hill by sending each an email message. Rick Leinecker and McGraw Hill did not respond. Donna Baker did respond but sent me a folder called cafeR with files that did not correspond with the files mentioned in the book or they were missing. (e.g. cafe.txt was missing).

I guess I would take issue with the quote from page 7 of the example which in part states "....a delightful book called How to do Everything: Microsoft Expression Web 2." I wonder if you can't get the proper files in the download area, which is a fairly simple operation, does that mean that information in the book is suspect?

Hope this review was helpful.

Ralph Patterson

When I buy a new product for development, I usually try to get several books on it so I can get different perspectives and content. Plus, often, one writer will leave stuff out or consider something not important and one of the other writers will fill in the blanks.

Good thing I do it this way. If this was the only book I bought on EW2, I wouldn't know how to do much. I went through the book, just like I did with the 'Special Edition Using EW2'. That book, like it says on the cover, may be the only book on EW2 you need. This one would leave ya hanging.

I'll give just one example. If you're developing a site on a machine that's not running a web server, php and asp, EW2 offers a mini-server called the EW Development Server. This book mentions it in one place, for one page. It's somewhat important for some people. I'm developing on a laptop that I didn't want to install all the gear on. The Dev Server turns out to do what I needed at a low cost of disk space and memory use. I didn't learn that from this book - I learned it from Using EW2.

Yeah, now I can do everything. But not with this book. Sending back for a refund.

This text is written in very simple language and has good illustrations. I am using the text to use EW2 for the first time and am finding it very helpful.

I am using this book in a class that I am teaching. I taught the class once before using this book. The book was great for my students, and they learned Expression Web 2 fairly well.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn Expression Web 2.