Customer Reviews

Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 Fireworks 4 Studio: Training from the Source (With CD-ROM)

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

 

 

First, let me state this. I agree that the title can be misleading. That is why the old cliche should be heeded to; "Don't trust a book by its cover." I'm a web developer and consultant. I purchase many, many books, but I read the editorials and reviews before I decide to spend any of my money. In the Editorial Review by Amazon.com it says, "It doesn't cover Dreamweaver in depth, but it does show how to integrate Fireworks into the Dreamweaver workflow..." This was a flag for me to check it out more thoroughly.

As for the content of this book, it hits the mark for showing a person the fundamentals of Fireworks. I'm a Photoshop user from way back but I love the seamless integration between Fireworks and Dreamweaver.

I recommend this book added to the reference of any serious developer who is not focused on using any single brand ofapplications or programs and is adaptable of using different applications in their quest of web design and development..

I can understand that anyone who bought this book to learn about Dreamweaver 4 would be disappointed. However, I got a lot out of this book for the following reason. It gives a real good lesson on laying out a page in Fireworks (or Photoshop) as an initial step in the design process. I have been interested in exploring this approach to page making. It was with this in mind that I purchased this book. From it I have learned a lot about Fireworks and web design.

Granted the book does not show much Dreamweaver. But there are a wealth of books on Dreamweaver. It does do a good job with Fireworks of which there are not as many books. If you want to learn fireworks this book works, if it is Dreamweaver you are looking for look elsewhere.

After waiting 5+ months for this book, I finally received it yesterday. Although I haven't read the book in any detail yet, I was sorely disappointed when I thumbed through this book. Even though the title lists "Dreamweaver 4" first, be aware that this book is 90% Fireworks 4 and 10% Dreamweaver 4.

Let me quote from the introduction of the book: "This book is not intended to teach you Dreamweaver, but you will use Dreamweaver in Lesson 11 to see how Fireworks and Dreamweaver work together."

Given this information -- I would encourage the authors to take the word DREAMWEAVER out of the title.

I am a student and have taken a Dreamweaver 4 class and a Fireworks 4 class. Believe me, there are lots of quirks trying to get Fireworks behaviors to work within Dreamweaver. I thought this book would address those topics and help me understand the integration of these two programs. NOT!

If you want a beginning Fireworks 4 book, this might be the book for you. If you really want a comprehensive book on using Dreamweaver and Fireworks together -- keep searching.

This book only seems to cover a couple of basic steps in the use of Dreamweaver, yet is filled with a plethora of knowledge for fireworks. I really expected a lot more from the manufacturer of the software, yet I was left hanging with a lot of questions as to how I can do certain things in DW.
The lessons that ARE taught in this book are very helpful, but it's the material that is not covered that most people are actually looking for. The book is not that bad, but for the price, all readers wanting to learn Dreamweaver will be very disappointed.

The book is very good if you're wanting to know more than you probably need to about Fireworks (search and replace?). It is NOT training of any kind for Dreamweaver and even admits that in the introduction, which is a little late for online shoppers.

Like others have written, this book is primarily about Fireworks, so the title is misleading. That being said, its a pretty good book. It covers bitmap and vector tools, buttons, image maps and slices, optimization and exporting, and more. The book taught me a few tricks too. The CD ROM included synchronized with the book yet the files didn't do the work for you, so I still learned something, which is what I want. Overall I was satisfied with the book until the end, then all hell hit loose. The book gives you 2 projects to do with very little instructions because you're supposed to be able to complete the exercises based on what you've already done. It didn't turn out to be that easy for me. The HTML output page of the first project was nothing but blobs, and I couldn't figure out why. I had to contact a Macromedia tech support person who figured out my errors, which I still don't fully understand. The errors I committed weren't discussed in the book! But like I said, overall I was satisfied with the book. But I would not say that this book is all you need to learn Fireworks. It was light on behaviors and effects, and really most everything. It would've been nice if it gave me more in-depth treatment of the tricks so they "stuck" with me. The actual text is about 351 pages, but it could easily have been 500 pages to add some more substance to what was taught, just so I got some more theory instead of just "do this then that." And a few more tricks would've been nice. Like I said, you'll be needing more books after this one, at least I'm going to continue doing so, but this is a good start.

The title says Dreamweaver and Fireworks, but it really only covers Fireworks. The Fireworks examples seem fine, but if you're still getting the hang of Dreamweaver, this book isn't as useful.

I preordered this book monthes ahead of printing schedule, only to receive it and notice in the preface that this book is not intended in helping to learn Dreamweaver, which is 95% of the reason I purchased th book in the first place! It looks like a decent book to learn Fireworks, but does not integrate Dreamweaver until the last chapter. I think I am going to return it and contact Macromedia, I was scammed with this book!

If you are in the market for a comprehensive tutorial for Macromedia Dreamweaver, this is not the book for you. The first ten chapters are spent on learning Macromedia's image editing software, Fireworks. The title of the book is very misleading.