Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source [Paperback]

Jeffrey Bardzell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321241576 | ISBN-13: 978-0321241573 | Publication Date: November 7, 2003

As the Web has evolved, so too have users' expectations of it--which means that today's Web developers are being forced to deal with issues that weren't even considerations not long ago. How do you develop a site that customizes itself to individual users? How can you design your site so that even nontechnical users will be able to contribute content? To answer these questions and more, you need this book. By examining your favorite Web authoring program--Dreamweaver MX 2004--in the context of databases and the technology solutions that have grown out of them, this book/CD combo will have you moving from static to dynamic sites in no time. You don't need programming experience to construct the fictional travel tour site that's the centerpiece of this volume. Just follow along with the 16 hands-on lessons (which include side-by-side ASP PHP, and ColdFusion code), and you'll be well on your way to the interactive, easy-to-maintain, and standards-compliant sites that represent the way of the future.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey Bardzell is an IT Trainer and multimedia instructional developer at Indiana University. He has developed many courses and authored numerous books on Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, and ColdFusion. He co-founded Allecto Media, an eLearning development and consulting company, with his wife.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Macromedia Press (November 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321241576
• ISBN-13: 978-0321241573
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,680,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, November 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source (Paperback)

As a graphic artist with a severe case of left-brain subject-avoidance, I approached this book on building Dynamic Web Applications in Dreamweaver MX 2004 with a goodly amount of apprehension. Jeffery Bardzell's intelligent, engaging style allayed all of that in the first few paragraphs. His presentation is clear, direct, and sets you up to win.

The book is a healthy, 16 lessons long, with each lesson progressing through short steps that are visually reinforced by screenshots. By the end of the book you will have upgraded a static HTML site filled with obsolete code, to a standard compliant, CSS formatted, dynamic, XHTML site, and will have mastered the fundamentals of dynamic application development. I can't wait to go out and develop my first database-driven site! Thank you, Jeffery.

Linda Rathgeber

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good for those who really need their hands held., May 27, 2004

By 

Mark Angel "Angelhand" (Globe Trotter) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source (Paperback)

I bought this book upon seeing all of the wonderful reviews it was given here on Amazon. I had been designing web pages professionally for about a year, and was ready to make the move to dynamic development. I had only a little knowledge of web programming and attendant technologies and thought this would offer the best place to begin. Unfortuntely for me, it was a little too simplistic.

The book is mapped from beginning to end on an imaginary site, Newland Tours; the reader follows along, doing the steps given, to turn the site from static into dynamic. The problem for me was two-fold. I learn by understanding the fundamentals, and theory, first, and then by trial-and-error. This book allows for neither.

The author barely scrapes the theory or "why" behind any of what is shown; in fact at one point he states that it would be beyond the scope to do so - which is precisely the trouble with much of the book, everything one might want to know seems to be beyond the scope. Much of the book is "do this, do that, save and close." If you make a mistake, you can fix it easily enough by loading the completed page - but this proves to be a double-edged sword. Since the fundamentals of structure and syntax have not been thoroughly realized, the reader may feel as if he has no idea of what went wrong in the process, and it becomes tempting to load the finished pages and move on. In fact, the author encourages this in several spots. So those like me, who like to explore and learn from our mistakes are rather left by the wayside, ironically, in the book's attempt to make itself more newbie-friendly.

Additionally, the pages are bloated with disruptive screenshots, but the code is often obscurely placed, with its attendant notes even more buried inside a paragraph of "advice." This advice follows every single step in the book, but is so overwritten that it fails to convey its intentions in many cases. A paragraph may read like this: "You have to ... You have to ... You have to ... And you have to ..." Again, for a person who learns by trial-and-error, this is slog-through material.

Finally, it was an unfortunate publishing choice (and perhaps not the author's) to try and cover all three scripting languages in one introductory book, particularly one so overly simplified as this - in fact it doesn't make any sense at all. It's akin to trying to learn algebra, geometry, and trigonometry concurrently. It's confusing, annoying, and most often results in skipping or skimming over large chunks of text, even pages and sections. The fact that every one of the author's examples is given in ASP, and that PHP is on several important occassions almost ignored (the form-to-mail script, for instance, is hugely underwritten, with the flimsy excuse that it is too involved to go into) doesn't help.

If you -really, really, really- are clueless in the realm of dynamic web programming, and you like to have someone map everything out for you, and you don't necessarily feel the need to apply this to your own site, but rather just want a general overview to gain some familiarity, this book will be useful (if not helpful). However, if you are actually hoping to build your own site dynamically after going through this book, you might want to consider buying one of these, instead:

Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All-in-One ;
PHP and MySQL Web Development, by Welling/Thomson, second ed.

-- or any other book suited to your language of choice (ASP, CFML).

Both are much more informative and far more open-ended.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have, October 20, 2004

By 

Dylan Carlson (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source (Paperback)

This is a fantastic book that teaches you how to use Dreamweaver MX 2004 more effectively when coding dynamic database-driven Web sites in one of the 3 programming languages covered (ASP, ColdFusion or PHP). I thoroughly enjoyed Jeffery Bardzell's writing style, allowing me to build on the theories presented, repetition of code and Web standards best practices.

There were a few errors throughout the book, but they were mostly typos. I did not have any trouble with the code presented in each lesson. Also, I was able to complete the entire book without referring to any of the code in the completed files folder. The author also takes the time to clearly list and explain the meaning of each step in technical terms without losing the reader.

If you are new to building dynamic database-driven Web sites, then pick up a copy of this book. I guarantee you will have a better understanding and develop clear coding concepts while working through each lesson. As an added bonus, you will build several useful applications (i.e. search interface, authenticating users, basic content management system, etc.) that you can use as a template for building more complicated applications.