Customer Reviews

How to Use Dreamweaver 4 and Fireworks 4

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

 

 

This has to be the best possible starting point for those wanting to learn Dreamweaver and Fireworks. The book is great and easy to dip into at any time, and covers all the areas needed to get into both applications. I teach Dreamweaver and Fireworks to beginners and this book has been a fantastic help and utility. I would recommend it to anyone wishing to get to grips with either or both pieces of software. You don't have to work through it in stages - just pick up the bits you need when you need them. If you are looking to get started with Dreamweaver and Fireworks - this is the book for you.

I had never used Dreamweaver or Firewrks until I got this book, and used it with the trial version of the software. I may not turn you into an expert, but you will certainly understand how it all works and be able to make great sites without too much hard work. I liked the pictures in the book and th fact that you can do stuff in any order, not just start at the beginning. I wish there was a book just for Fireworks like this one.

First, let me state I'm a Computer Science major and while not an expert in web design do consider myself on the intermediate/advanced level. After going over this book, I found it to leave out critical how to's and an overall lack of good practice for teaching. I will say it's very simple, straight forward approach is good for those weary starters. But, I know from classes I've had that it's best to tech it right from the start even though it may seem harder and less fun.

This book doesn't have many errors though and what it does teach can help the beginner. However, they do leave out information and proper teaching of the software that I view as critical and thus such a low opinion. If you are looking for some beginner books I would advise going with the "Dummy" series. Also, I HIGHLY recommend the de'facto standard that I use and recommend called "Dreamweaver Hands-on-Training" by Lynda Weinman and Garo Green. That's the book to learn dreamweaver on period. For firworks 4 though, I haven't seen enough yet to comment.

Best of luck.

I really loved this book, having had a bad experience with another Dreamweaver book I opened this feeling really worried, but there was no need.

The book is sold as a beginners book and I am just that, so I found the approach to the tasks really simple and noice to follow. Within a couple of hours I was calling my frinds to tell them I had a website. Okay it was a simple one, but it was mine. The book explained getting started and where to find things in a way that really suited me.

The Fireworks part of the book is not as in depth as I would have liked, so I mailed the author for help with something and got a helpful and informative personal reply really quickly.

I liked the way that I could do things in the order I wanted to and that I didn't need to work through the book from beginning to the end, I just did what I wanted when I wanted, it was cool, and I will be looking for more book by the same author

I found Mr. Coley's book good for a quick read, but there were several important areas that really annoyed me.

First the good:
Did a nice job of hitting on the key areas of Dreamweaver & Fireworks.

Now the bad:
1)There was no common thread, ie no project to tie everything together. It's all presented in disjointed bits and pieces.
2) Sometimes a later topic (tasks as Coley refers to them) builds upon an ealier Task that he assumes the reader has saved. But he does not tell the reader that they should save them for later!
3) Does a very poor job explaining the important Dreamweaver Layers concept(layers, layout cells, layout tables). Does not tie them together or clearly explain how the user should or should not, use all three of these elements together in the designing of a webpage.

This book badly needs to have an underlying webpage project in it so that the author can use it to tie all the important elements together.

This book has many shortcomings but I liked it anyway. You'll be exposed to situations that force you to create objects such as graphics, animations and forms. This is both a blessing and a curse. For example the author said go online and locate a graphic to demonstrate an animated .gif! So I went on CNET and located and downloaded an American flag furling in the wind. Kind of tacky if you ask me. There were no real projects, something I believe the book desperately needed, but some of the techniques the author had me develop were a fair substitute. I liked being forced to think. It forced me to learn how to use the product. Also, the extensive use of screen captures sometimes made up for the terse instructions. This is a real advantage. For example, I went through the Dreamweaver 4 Hands On Training book; that book didn't require much thinking, just following the instructions, so I didn't feel as involved and didn't feel as if I'd learned as much. One omission that the author repeated was to gloss over the Export Preview Image Optimizer; its a moderately complex dialog box and I wish he would've explained how to use it. Instead he just said "When you are happy with the settings click the Export button to continue." He left optimization for the last eleven pages of the book. He occasionally fails to mention little things that you have to do to get his techniques to work. I sorely needed a sample file on Part 21 Task 3; the author called for a map of a country to render as a imagemap. I spent hours on CNET.COM to no avail. I found lots of maps, but none to download for free. This is one of many circumstances where he should've supplied graphics. After all, how can you teach how to use a graphics program without any graphics? Also, in two places the author referred to commands in Fireworks that didn't exist. In the second, Copy HTML Code, he claimed "a wizard opens that will guide you through exporting the image files to a specified location and copying the HTML code into the Clipboard." Sorry, no such luck in my version folks.

Overall, you'll learn more in the Fireworks portion of the book than you will in the Dreamweaver portion. Finally, I must say that I was glad to finish this book and I mean that in a positive sense. I don't find it easy to go through a book when I have to both read and follow directions. When I'm just mindlessly following directions or blandly reading text, I can go through a large book but I don't learn much. But when you have to follow exercises and think and find assets and learn, a 350 page book is pretty big. Nevertheless, I have ordered the Macromedia Dreamweaver & Fireworks Workshop. It covers material this book doesn't cover. Overall I give this book 2.5 stars; it covers both Dreamweaver and Fireworks superficially. The lack of projects and assets detracts from its value. The author is a good writer and knows how to create projects. I suspect the editor's restrictions made the book worse than the author could've written it.

I have purchased just about every book on Dreamweaver and this one is head and shoulders about all the others! It is terrific. Anyone who wants to learn Dreamweaver should have this book, and if you already know Dreamweaver, it is a great reference tool.

I thought this was a wonderful reference for using both Dreamweaver and Fireworks. They're so complementary to each other that it helps to have one book that incorporates both pieces. I would definitely recommend this book to people who are getting started into web design. It's an easy book to read and follow, which is unusal for most technical books I've come across.

.... The book focuses on procedures, rather than providing information on the process of designing a page or artwork. It covers the most common tasks that users are likely to want to do, chunking this information into easy-to-follow, bite-sized pieces. The book's attractive, color layout mimics an online demo, with drawings underneath each procedure indicating the needed mouse movements.

The Fireworks content is very marginal. The format is good for beginners and easy to follow. Others should find another option.