Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easily worth ten times as much!, March 26, 2006
This review is from: Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Hands-On Training (Paperback)
I have some HTML experience (typing code manually, not using a program) but it has been several years since I needed to use it. When the need arose again, I purchased Dreamweaver, but I didn't know how to use it. Thanks to this training manual, I am well on my way!
This manual starts in the beginning and assumes the reader knows very little or nothing about web design. That will make it incredibly easy for an extreme novice to learn. By far, the best part of this training is the hands-on approach. Most people don't truly learn how to do something unless they actually do it, so this is a perfect approach for something as complex as web design.
There are a few things this book is not, so I'll list some. This is not a manual for advanced WYSIWYG web designers. This is not a book for JavaScript coding or any other advanced element. This is a wonderful book if you are just learning or not very proficient with Dreamweaver and want to learn more, but it would not be for advanced users.
The CD comes complete with all files necessary to recreate sample web sites by following the written instructions in the book and videos on the CD. Years ago when I designed sites just with hand-typed HTML, I thought little of those who "cheated" and used programs to help them design. But now I see the difference! By using Dreamweaver, you can be a novice designer and still create a dazzling dynamic site in a fraction of the time that it would take an expert designer who hand-typed code! This book will get you well on your way!
Highly recommended!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
42 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult To Follow, December 21, 2005
This review is from: Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Hands-On Training (Paperback)
This book is aimed at someone new to using Dreamweaver and starts with the basics in chapters 1-5 (Interface, Site Control, Creating Documents, Inserting Text and Images, Linking) and moving on to various subjects including Cascading Style Sheets, Typography, Tables, Layout, Rollovers, Forms, Behaviors, Templates and Library Items in chapters 6-16.
My two main problems with this book are:
1) The Diagrams are not clearly labeled to make the lessons easy to follow. Trying to find where a button or menu selection in a window is located is not easy when you've never used a program before. More pictures showing exactly where you will find what is being talked about in the text is essential for a visual tutorial. There are some pictures, just not enough. The book "How To Wow Photoshop CS2 For the Web" does a good job of this.
Problem 2) The book does not attempt to cover common situations where the student might not be seeing on their screen what is pictured in the book. Especially in a program like Dreamweaver where there are many windows, menus, panels, etc that need to be managed, it's easy to miss (or not see) something. A good tutorial book anticipates that a beginner might make a mistake and will have a paragraph that says something like... "If you don't see the X option, it's because you don't have the Y tool selected."
Another area that I had a problem with is the order of the material presented. The chapter "Layout" does not come until the middle of the book, after the chapters on CSS and "Tables". And the author did not give a good sense of which was the best way to go about putting a layout together: CSS, Tables or Table Layouts. The author could have given a better idea of what is the best workflow when starting a site. The topic of "templates" and "libraries" does not come until the end of the book. But to me it was confusing since it seems like you should be aware of these things before you start a site since you'll want to take advantage of templates and library items in your site. Also, an idea of how to incorporate Photoshop with Dreamweaver layouts would have been useful. There are many gaps that the reader will have to figure out by themselves.
The tutorials in this book were not easy to follow. Is it because Dreamweaver is a difficult program to use? I'm not sure. Based on my experience with this book, I can't recommend it. As of this review: the book "Dreamweaver 8 Training From the Source" has not come out, but I am going to give that one a try next.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One revision away from excellence, April 9, 2006
This review is from: Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Hands-On Training (Paperback)
This is certainly one of the better teach-yourself books out there, but it still lacks that last coat of polish. Also, you'll need somebody to answer your questions, and those questions will turn up!
Some things that newbies, like me, will encounter include:
* If you get out of synch with the step by step procedures, it can be very difficult to get back. Other folks in our class noticed this, too, as well as other Amazon reviewers.
* The book is usually good at explaining what you're doing and why, but not always. The "not always" parts can derail your understanding.
* Their terminology is sometimes sloppy. For example, they often write "click and drag" when they really mean just "drag." Their definitions of rollover states also fail to communicate clearly.
* Their instructions don't always make sense on a Mac. For example, their incantations to bring up a browser to review your work don't function as published, and they tell you that you don't have to save your work, but on my Mac, you do have to save your work to see it in the browser.
* The text doesn't make sense when you go back weeks later to look something up, it only makes sense when you've just finished an exercise. On CSS rollovers, for example, instead of the book telling you what effects you specified and how they worked, the book just says, "The buttons... look fantastic."
If you have an outside source to answer your questions, this book can be wonderful. If you're on your own, plan on getting stuck a few times along the way.
The book's pretty good as it stands, I've learned a ton from it and the exercises are well-conceived. Give this book one more revision, and hopefully most of my criticisms will have been addressed. Excellence is within reach.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
