Customer Reviews

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips

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

 

 

Web professionals have long kept a mental list (or a tidy PDA address book) of friends to call on when in need of a particular skillset or novel approach to a problem. The "Killer Tips" books are like having a library of friends right there on the book shelf. And the Dreamweaver MX 2004 edition is written by a couple of the best in the industry...and unlike the friend on the phone, these pages are available whenever you need them.

There's another audience that will really appreciate this book: the self-taught expert. If you've jumped into Dreamweaver and plodded around, making wonderful Web pages that look great and go "wicky wicky wicky", you may have missed out on learning some of the finer functionality of Dreamweaver--some of the time-saving tools that are available. Read through this book and teach yourself how to better use Dreamweaver--how to better take advantage of its possibilities.

And this volume is truly updated for the latest version of Dreamweaver, the MX 2004 edition, which has loads of new functionality and is built atop a CSS foundation. I am currently recommending this book to those who are asking me for the title of a good Dreamweaver book that isn't written like a manual.

I picked up this book several months ago, and I keep coming back to it. I have been using Dreamweaver for six years, and I still picked up lots of great tips in this book. It's great as a tip resource, and one that you will keep coming back to, and I highly recommend it for its content. My two complaints about it are related to each other: The titles of the tips and the organization within the chapters.

In this book, there are tips called "Alias: The Dreamweaver Command" (for Clean Up HTML/XHTML), which don't really tell you what the tip is for. More concise tip titles describing the tip would be a lot easier to find what you are looking for. I would also like to see groups within the chapters. That also doesn't exist in this book.

That said, I highly recommend the book. Though it's not perfect, it's great!

I use Dreamweaver everyday and I consider myself a power user but I still learned a few things from these books (I also own the MX version). I love shortcuts and this book is full of them. Several of the tips included I already knew but there were plenty of new ones that made the purchase well worth it. Dreamweaver is a huge program and it is impossible to learn everything about it unless you use it day and night. If you just know the basics of Dreamweaver, this book will help you unlock all those hidden features you never even know existed (including a game!). I gave this book a 4 because not all tips where useful (to me) and there were some tips that were not really Dreamweaver tips, they were more css tricks. While I appreciate the friendly, conversational tone the authors use, I find the humorous titles confusing. I thought they were amusing the first time but I quickly realized they are not helpful for finding the tips again later. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to get the most out of Dreamweaver. It is not a how-to book for beginners.

I have a truckload of computer books and almost always check the user ratings on Amazon before spending the money and time on a computer book. I was in need of a helpful Dreamweaver MX book and bought Killer Tips based on the reviews. I wish now that I had gone with a different book, I get more out of the "Getting Started..." book that came with the software. There are some good tips in the book but they are very difficult to find. If you like the Scott Kelby's Killer Tips series then ignore this review and buy the book. I have the same complaint with Photoshop6 Down & Dirty Tricks even though it has been helpful at times. I am not one of those that expected a computer book to be funny. The authors' poor attempts at humour are very distracting and a henderance to finding the information I want. If you got all the time in the world and like the Scott Kelby brand of humour then you will like this book. If you are on a tight deadline and need a solution fast, this is not the book for you. I didn't realize that it was a Scott Kelby book when I bought it, otherwise, I might have looked elseware.

Do you have one of those uncles who thinks he's so-o-o-o-o funny, even when he's not? The kind of uncle who has to make a pun or other kind of word play every time he opens his mouth? Maybe you know the type. That's the feeling I got from this book...an unfunny, pathetic guy sitting around trying way too hard to be funny, and falling flat on his face 99% of the time. OK, so there are some good tips in here, but if writers Lowery and Buraglia had expended more time and energy clarifying their tips and a lot less time trying to be funny, this book probably would have been a great help. What makes anyone think that writing a "killer tips" book will make them as funny as Scott Kelby? When will some of these people stop trying to be comedians and start writing usable stuff? When will I learn to stop buying this stuff???

So far, I've bought several of these killer tips books. This one of course and the Flash one that just came out, but it all started with the Photoshp one. That's what got me hooked. I love these books. Great series of books and all are well written. Seems they are intended more for the everyday users or those who have working knowledge but still can't do things the right way. That's me in all cases. I'd recommend any one of these killer tip books.