Master VISUALLY Dreamweaver(r) MX and Flash MX [Paperback]

Sherry Kinkoph (Author), Mike Wooldridge (Author)

Book Description

Series: Master Visually | Publication Date: September 24, 2002

"One picture is worth a thousand words." If you prefer instructions that show you how rather than tell you why, then this comprehensive reference is for you. Hundreds of succinctly captioned, step-by-step screen shots reveal how to accomplish more than 300 Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX tasks, including:
* Creating tables with Dreamweaver
* Setting up a form
* Working with style sheets and layers
* Building behaviors with JavaScript
* Connecting a site to a database
* Drawing and painting Flash objects
* Animating with tweening
* Adding interactive buttons
* Working with Flash actions
* Creating Flash special effects
Web development tools on CD-ROM!
* A complete, fully customizable sample site
* Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Fireworks MX, and ColdFusion Server MX trial versions
* Paint Shop Pro 7 evaluation versions plus other software tools
* A fully searchable e-version of the book
* "Master It" sidebars answer questions and present shortcuts
* High-resolution screen shots demonstrate each task
* Succinct explanations walk you through step by step
* Two-page lessons break big topics into bite-sized modules

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"One picture is worth a thousand words." If you prefer instructions that show you how rather than tell you why, then this comprehensive reference is for you. Hundreds of succinctly captioned, step-by-step screen shots reveal how to accomplish more than 300 Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX tasks, including:

• Creating tables with Dreamweaver
• Setting up a form
• Working with style sheets and layers
• Building behaviors with JavaScript
• Connecting a site to a database
• Drawing and painting Flash objects
• Animating with tweening
• Adding interactive buttons
• Working with Flash actions
• Creating Flash special effects

Web development tools on CD-ROM!

• A complete, fully customizable sample site
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Fireworks MX, and ColdFusion Server MX trial versions
• Paint Shop Pro 7 evaluation versions plus other software tools
• A fully searchable e-version of the book

• "Master It" sidebars answer questions and present shortcuts
• High-resolution screen shots demonstrate each task
• Succinct explanations walk you through step by step
• Two-page lessons break big topics into bite-sized modules

About the Author

Sherry Kinkoph has been a computer book author for eight years, with 40 titles to her name including Teach Yourself VISUALLY Flash 5 and Master VISUALLY FrontPage 2002. She lives and works near Indianapolis, IN.

Michael Wooldridge has worked as an independent web developer, writer, and consultant since 1995. He has written about technology for Macworld and CNET. He is the author of Teach Yourself VISUALLY Dreamweaver 4, Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop 7, and Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop Elements.

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Visual (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764536966
• ISBN-13: 978-0764536960
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.9 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,619,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars not good for 'teach yourself', August 1, 2003

By 

Marnie L. Leinberger (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Master VISUALLY Dreamweaver(r) MX and Flash MX (Paperback)

DO NOT buy this book if you are expecting to teach yourself anything. the CD rom contains absolutly NOTHING in the way of useful examples. I spent HOURS comparing books and decided on this one becuase I thought, based on the content of the book and the back cover, that the sample files on the CD would also allow me to explore coldfusion and dynamic html pages. But, when I wrote to wiley.com to get some assistance, this is what they said:

"Unfortunately, we weren't exactly clear making this distinction on page 698 in the "Authors' Sample Files" paragraph. What we said was that "These files contain all the sample code from the book in addition to a Flash-based interface.
For clarification, we will reword this to say: The files contain all of the sample Flash files featured in Part XI, as well as a Flash-based interface and some other sample Flash files referenced in the text. You can simply follow the steps in the book to add these snazzy elements to your own Dreamweaver-based page.
That does not indicate that code from the entire book is provided, and notifys the reader that they are expected to apply the Dreamweaver instructions to their own material."

I wrote back and asked them to explain on page 292 the phrase on the bottom left hand corner of the page, "Note: to create this example, see the files located in the space folder on the CD that accompanies this book." There is no "space folder" on the CD that I have. The only thing that comes remotely close to a "space folder" is a *file* called space.mdb.

They wrote back and said it was an "unfortunate error" and offered another book of the same value from them.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good idea, Very disappointing execution., September 4, 2004

By 

Brandon Zylstra "brandondrew" (Ypsilanti, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Master VISUALLY Dreamweaver(r) MX and Flash MX (Paperback)

Being able to learn something visually is great for those of us who are 'visual'. But this book seems to be just cranked out according to a formula, with little time (or perhaps little talent) being spent to make it very good.

Occasionally there's an image which illustrates a helpful point, but mostly it's just screenshots and assemblies of clipart with very dry text. It looks like the author just made a list of the features and tools in Flash and Dreamweaver and took a set of screenshots for each one and wrote a blurb telling about each. Most of the images which are supposed to be illustrating some point are fairly pointless, and most of the screenshots are not very useful either. Do you need a screenshot everytime you're told to select something from the menu? For instance, to import a sound file, it would be enough to mention File > Import, rather than giving four screenshots showing people how to use the menu and resulting file dialog box etc. Maybe the last shot, with the found file showing up in the library, is useful. But even that is badly executed, since you have to hold the book close and squint to read the text in the relevant portion of the image that lets you see just what is being illustrated. This squinting problem is owing to the fact that (virually?) all the screenshots are of a whole screen. Either the authors are too lazy to crop them, or they have a (bad) format forced on them. Either way, it's lame.

As for the illustrative images (which appear to be pieces of clip art assembled together): most add very little value. Does a picture of a movie reel, with (door) keys next to two of the frames convey any more than the name "key frame" already conveys? If you're just taking the metaphors that are embedded in the terminology, and throwing together pictures of them, how is that of any value?

I'm not sure what makes the "Master Visually" series different from the "Learn Visually" series, since this starts out by telling you how to use Control-O to open files and Control-N to create new ones. Is this "Dreamweaver and Flash for the Totally Braindead™"?

I recommend getting PeachPit books instead. In my experience they don't suffer from any of the problems I mentioned here. The images are well chosen and convey useful information, cropped down to what is relevant and sized so you can see them. And not ugly, either. Furthermore, the writing is much better, which is still extremely important. Just because a book is teaching 'visually' doesn't mean the writing should be mere captions to the pictures.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the beef?, April 22, 2003

By 

T. Mehrens "tom95134" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Master VISUALLY Dreamweaver(r) MX and Flash MX (Paperback)

Lots of pictures but not much beyond how-to open the various functions. Also the CD contains almost nothing in the line of real examples. I bought this book after browsing it and expecting the CD to have a full set of work files but was sadly disappointed.

If you're looking for something along the lines of the Adobe Classroom In-a-Book series then this book doesn't fall even close to being in that class.