Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver [Paperback]

Joseph Lowery (Author)

Book Description

Series: Landmark | Publication Date: October 25, 2002

Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver is for Dreamweaver designers and developers who are serious about increasing their productivity, expanding their skill set, and making themselves more valuable in the workplace. You'll find techniques for integrating Dreamweaver with your company's content management system, automating the creation of web pages from XML data files, and capitalizing on Dreamweaver's extensibility.

With Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver, you combine general principles with specific Dreamweaver methods and strategies. Not only will you learn how to accomplish specific tasks, you'll discover how to enhance your productivity by:

• Integrating Dreamweaver and your content management systems
• Employing techniques for Section 508 compliance
• Coding SMIL multimedia presentations within Dreamweaver
• Incorporating XML content into Dreamweaver templates
• Dynamically automating static web page creation
• Building sequential navigation
• Communicating efficiently with Flash[tm], Fireworks[tm], and Dreamweaver
• Unearthing and applying Dreamweaver's extensibility layer

Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver, your guide to overcoming productivity challenges and pushing your designs even further!

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver is for Dreamweaver designers and developers who are serious about increasing their productivity, expanding their skill set, and making themselves more valuable in the workplace. You'll find techniques for integrating Dreamweaver with your company's content management system, automating the creation of web pages from XML data files, and capitalizing on Dreamweaver's extensibility.

With Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver, you combine general principles with specific Dreamweaver methods and strategies. Not only will you learn how to accomplish specific tasks, you'll discover how to enhance your productivity by:

* Integrating Dreamweaver and your content management systems
* Employing techniques for Section 508 compliance
* Coding SMIL multimedia presentations within Dreamweaver
* Incorporating XML content into Dreamweaver templates
* Dynamically automating static web page creation
* Building sequential navigation
* Communicating efficiently with Flash[tm], Fireworks[tm], and Dreamweaver
* Unearthing and applying Dreamweaver's extensibility layer

Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver, your guide to overcoming productivity challenges and pushing your designs even further!

About the Author

Joseph Lowery is perhaps the best-known Dreamweaver author, trainer, and programmer. His books, including the Dreamweaver Bible and Fireworks Bible, on the web and web-building tools are international bestsellers. A much sought after consultant and trainer, Joseph has presented at such conferences as Seybold, Macromedia UCON and DevCon, ThunderLizard's Web World, and Fawcette Publication's WebBuilder. As a programmer, Joseph contributed two extensions to the latest release of Fireworks MX and has created many extensions for Dreamweaver. He also developed the Deva Tools for Dreamweaver set of navigational extensions in his role as a partner in Deva Associates, Ltd.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (October 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735712778
• ISBN-13: 978-0735712775
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,886,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joseph Lowery's books about the web and web-building tools are international bestsellers, having sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide in nine different languages. His most recent book is the Dreamweaver 8 Bible. Joseph is the author of the recently published CSS Hacks and Filters as well as the Dreamweaver Bible and Fireworks Bible series from Wiley Publishing. He also wrote Design and Deploy Web Sites with Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3 from Macromedia Press. In addition to co-authoring Dreamweaver 8 Recipes and Dreamweaver MX 2004 Web Application Recipes with Eric Ott as well as the Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips series with Angela Buraglia.

As a programmer, Joseph contributed two extensions to the latest release of Fireworks and many extensions available for Dreamweaver. He has presented at Seybold in both Boston and San Francisco, Macromedia conferences in the U.S. and Europe, ThunderLizard's Web World, and KW Media Group's Mac Design Conference. Joseph is currently the Director of Marketing for WebAssist.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Think you know everything about Dreamweaver? Think again., November 18, 2002

By 

Stephen Britton "tech writer and web developer" (A quiet suburb outside NYC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver (Paperback)

I must admit this is the first Dreamweaver book that I have purchased since 2000. During the past two years, I couldn't find a Dreamweaver book worth buying. I have been using Dreamweaver almost daily since 1997 and I found that I have reached the point where I didn't need to buy a book with each new release. I just read about the new features in the Dreamweaver manual.

Now, like this book's title suggests, Joe Lowery has taken Dreamweaver far beyond the information found in any previous book or manual. Like a skilled mechanic, Lowery opens up Dreamweaver MX's hood and takes us on a journey through the program's vast javascript and xml classes and libraries. He shows how to use Dreamweaver to import and export XML templates, cascading style sheets, and how to template navigation systems. This is information that you won't find in any other book or even on Macromedia's manuals or website. If you are an experienced Dreamweaver developer and want to know more, this is your guide to all the nooks and crannies in this great program. No where else can you read about extending Dreamweaver with javascript interfacing with C++.

Still, this book isn't perfect. I wonder why Lowery bothered to devote a chapter to SMIL. SMIL is a multimedia language that has been around for years, and it has never gained a following. SMIL's biggest drawback is that it requires the user have either a RealMedia or QuickTime player installed. Most developers who are serious about multimedia will use either Flash or DHTML, which doesn't require a special player (Note that the Flash player comes standard on newer Microsoft and Apple operating systems). Yes, the Dreamweaver editor can be used to create SMIL applications, but this chapter should have been used for something more useful.

Nonetheless, this is a great read for the experienced Dreamweaver developer who is looking to expand their knowledge. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique material, January 18, 2003

By 

Foti Massimo (Vezia (Switzerland)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver (Paperback)

Joseph Lowery has a love affaire with Dreamweaver dating back to 1998 and version 1.0; that's why this book is more than just an expert writing about a piece of software, Joseph is passionate about Dreamweaver and the result is a real work of love. The book contains 10 chapters, covering different topics; each chapter stands on its own, allowing the reader to pick only one topic at time, there is no need to read from cover to cover here. The vast majority of the material available here is simply not available elsewhere; Mr Lowery covered things that may surprise even a seasoned Dreamweaver veteran like me. If you enjoy pushing Dreamweaver to its limits you can't miss this one

5.0 out of 5 stars TAP INTO THE POWER OF DREAMWEAVER MX !, November 29, 2002

By 

Elaine Montoya "motion.tv" (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver (Paperback)

If you have been working with Dreamweaver for some time now, and are ready to take your skills to the next level, Beyond Dreamweaver is the perfect resource. Through a concise and straightforward writing style, the author takes you on a broad exploration of development possibilities beyond Dreamweaver's "everyday" usage.

The book begins with an excellent chapter on the ease of integrating Dreamweaver MX with Content Management Systems. While this chapter may not seem as relevant to developers since Macromedia's introduction of their content management system - Contribute, it clearly demonstrates the extensibility of Dreamweaver. In doing so, it opens the reader's mind to virtually unlimited possibilities for creating custom integrations. Additionally, it continues to be a valuable example for developers using other Content Management Systems such as Interwoven or BlueMartini.

The next chapter provides an excellent overview of Section 508 website accessibility requirements. It also discusses new features available in Dreamweaver MX that will assist developers in ensuring that their websites are accessible.

Beyond Dreamweaver goes on to provide a great introduction to XML. Examples clearly demonstrate how to use Dreamweaver MX, both to export template content to XML and import XML into Dreamweaver templates.

The next few chapters present a variety of techniques that will enhance productivity. You will learn how to build Sequential Navigational Systems for both small and large scale websites; about Dreamweaver's ability to cross-integrate with other Macromedia products such as Fireworks and Flash; and how to go beyond Dreamweaver's built in capabilities and actually build your own custom cross-product extensions.

If you are interested in creating your own extensions, Beyond Dreamweaver explains how to use the standard classes and libraries that ship with Dreamweaver as a starting point. And if you really want to dig in and explore under the hood, it gives you an excellent example of how to take this even further by using C++ to create your own extensions to JavaScript.

The chapter "Making Flash Connections" was of particular interest to me as a designer/developer who specializes in Flash site development and dynamically generated database driven websites. A valuable example that was provided demonstrates the ability to pass data - either static or dynamically generated - from a Dreamweaver coded page to a Flash .swf file. Additionally, a second example demonstrates the new Flash Remoting features which allows Flash to send and receive more complete data structures. I particularly enjoyed exploring the possibilities of combining the Macromedia tri-product MX powerhouse - Flash, Dreamweaver and ColdFusion. Quite a combo!

Beyond Dreamweaver does not extensively delve into any one topic. Instead it provides the reader with a broad range of examples that can be used as a springboard for further exploration.