Customer Reviews

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Hands-On Training

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Once upon a time, right around the turn of the century, I took a class in web design. The principle texts were from Lynda Weinman's Hands-On Training series, and I was generally pleased with the methodical nature of the instruction, and the insightful way it explained WHY you were doing what you were doing. Lynda's Dreamweaver 2 H.O.T. was no exception.
My work took me in a different direction, and six years later, I find myself pretty much retraining from scratch. Naturally, I chose the same book for retraining in Dreamweaver MX 2004. My first discovery was that the book was riddled with errors and oversights. There is an errata URL that itemizes a variety of errors and corrections, and none of those I discovered are listed there.
OK. So the book has a number of embarrasing, uncorrected mistakes and gaffes. Most appear to be carryovers from previous editions, suggesting the author and editors got sloppy and may not themselves have followed through the steps. In a classroom environment, where an instructor is handy to help you figure out the mistakes and what the author intended to say, it's still very educational to find and correct the mistakes yourself.
So, I completed the book, and keeping my marked-up copy as a reference, have the foundation I need to build a web site. But something was missing... Something about buttons... Imagemaps and hot spots! Way back when I learned Dreamweaver 2, the H.O.T. book covered those tricks. They're completely absent from this edition. And rollovers. This edition only skirts the subject.
What else has the author left out?
This book does a fine job of explaining what it does manage to get straight, but there are some glaring omissions, and if you're self-training, there are some mistakes that could leave you dead in your tracks trying to figure things out.

I should warn you up front that MX 2004 is the first version of Dreamweaver I've used, and this is the only book on Dreamweaver I've gone through. Veterans of Dreamweaver may have a different perspective on this book.

That said, the book isn't wearing well for me. I have so far worked through Chapter 7, and taken frequent peeks at the chapters to come. At first, I was impressed by the detailed and numerous screen shots, but then I began noticing all kinds of small discrepancies between the text and the screen shots.

Furthermore, I'm using the Mac version of the software. If you only read Chapter 1 in the bookstore, it looks as if Mac and Windows screen shots get about equal time. In point of fact, don't expect to see any Mac screen shots after Chapter 2, and some of the ones that are included are misleading and/or mislabeled. I realize that there must have been great time pressure to get this book out near the release date for the software, but it would have been nice to have a Mac user work through and proofread this book.

Finally, I find the writing style irritating. There are lots of smileys in the text, which make it seem much less professional to me, and the author tries to keep a conversational tone, but it often just seems too cute.

This book is good if you are a beginner and dont know the software at all but...if you are looking for some advance learning this book is not for you.

I purchased this book used. It was in great condition and the CD was unopened. I used it for a beginning web design class. Class was spent learning other things so it was up to us on our own time to learn the program. It's been a great help to me the and interactive chapters and movies work really well. They break everthing down so it's as simple as possible. I had a basic fully functioning site made by Chap 6.

The only hang up people might have is that it caters far more to PC users than Mac ones. Most of the examples are PC based. But I work on a PC and used a Mac for my classes and had no problems.

I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't know the program at all and wants to learn the basics of Dreamweaver.

The book itself is pretty good. I happen to like the H.O.T. (Hands On Training) Series. But the Author is really annoying. I totally agree with the post here titled "Cutesy and Wordy." The text is littered with winking smileys. For example, the text in front of me says the following:

"Save the changes to this page and leave it open for the next exercise. Please. ;-)"

Lame. And even lamer, on the next page it says:

"The document ... should still be open. If not, go ahead and open it now. I will wait right here."

It's full of stuff like that, which I don't really want from a book.

But if you can tolerate that, I think it's a pretty good book overall. I did find several mistakes that slowed me down a bit, but if you're intelligent enough to realize that there might be mistakes, you shouldn't have too many problems. Also, I heard from my classmates that this book isn't as Mac-friendly as they had expected.

I have a few other Dreamweaver MX 2004 books and this one is basically good although it doesn't touch on more advanced concepts like some of my other DW books. Someone mentioned they didn't like the humor, it may not be your "cup of tea," but it certainly doesn't diminish the books worth. My only complaint is that there are far too many errors in the book. The publishers website has an errata link for the book, but I've found some that are not included. Most of the errors are obvious, but some took me a while to figure out. I actually learned the most by trying to solve problems that resulted from the books errors. I've enjoyed the book and would recommend it. I feel pretty comfortable with DW after reading this book.

I had read quite a few other books on Dreamweaver Mx and Flash Mx before I found the Hands-on Training Series. Most of them are quite tedious but I forced myself through because I didn't know better. With all those newly acquired terminologies, I still had no idea how to put a web site together. I heard that I was not the only one who had this problem, including some of those who signed up for those time and money consuming workshops. Once their teachers are gone, they are left stranded.

Fortunately I discovered this Garo Green's book. This book was No bore! Part of his presentation style is conversational, very easy to read. Most importantly, I followed every step illustrated in the book to build a model site [...]. I was hooked!

Within 3 months I was able to put together a live and functional site (with the help of using Flash MX as well). Some people may feel differently but I do enjoy Garo Green's easy-going humor. It makes a daunting task of learning web building from scratch simply fun.

As a Macromedia Dreamweaver developer, I found Marc Campbell's Developer Certification Study Guide a wonderful must read.

All these are wonderful textbooks that I go back from time to time for reference. I'm not saying other books are a total waste but it's this very book "the Hands-on Training" that gave me the ability to create a live functional web site.

This is a book, clearly written by someone who understands how to teach. Most of the other guides I have found for this application skip many crutial steps in the process. I wind up tyring to apply what I've learned and cannot because one or two pieces of the puzzle were left out.

This book however makes a novice feel very comfortable with Dreamweaver and is wholly responsible for the comfort I now have with the program. I only wish that the writers of the book had written a "step 2" book so that I could continue my learning.

If you're running Panther on a Mac G4 machine, than this is the book for you, assuming of course you've upgraded from Dreamweaver MX. If you haven't than you certainly should think about doing so, because the 2004 version has so much to offer.

Others have said it, and I'll second the motion, this "Hands-On Training" book should have been the one to come with the official program. Garo Green and Lynda Weinman from lynda.com assume you have only limited knowledge of how your Mac works. No knowledge of HTML is required. If you can work your mouse, you're ready to go. You'll be designing your first website in no time at all. This one gets two thumbs up.

I started working on Dreamweaver MX 2004 with some basic experience from earlier Dreamweaver versions. I was completely lost and unable to understand what I was doing. Garo Green's book laid it all out very clearly and simply. I keep it by my right-hand side all the time now.
His writing sytle is relaxed and personable. There's no wordy descriptions or explanations. It won't put you to sleep like the other books did.