Customer Reviews

Novell's Certified Web Designer Study Guide

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

 

 

***The Good:***
This book will help you pass the Novell CWDs exams, and may be the only study guide suitable to do so. Even if you are an experienced web developer, many questions on the exams are based on how Novell recommends you do things, i.e. the Novell way. In that regard, this book is indispensible for those wanting to pass the exams, since you will not get this information anywhere else. The chapter ending questions, while not verbatim from the exams, do a very good job of preparing you for what you'll see on the actual exams, so much so that you almost can skip the chapter entirely and just fill in the blanks with answers from the back of the book, and study that. I don't recommend this approach, but that's how preparative the questions are; don't skip them.

***The Bad:***
If you are not already an experienced web developer, this book will not make you one. There are a great many tidbits and cool tricks an experienced developer can pick up to expand his knowledge base, but this book is too small to be a comprehensive study of all the technologies it covers. If you are new, start with something else. There's not enough here to even make it on my reference shelf.

***The Verdict:***
If you want to pass the exams, BUY THIS BOOK! If you want to learn HTML or JavaScript or web design, buy something else.

This book is more valuable to you than any classroom session! However, don't think you can be a web page design professional until you master the Photoshop skills. (buy a photoshop book) HTML experience really helps you to move along, because it requires practice.

The first third of the book taught me HTML well. However, I am not sure how much value Web Design certification holds. So I chose not to bother with the certification exam.

The second and third parts were a little hard for me to follow. I feel I could have gotten HTML instruction as good as from the first third of this book by purchasing a cheaper book devoted only to HTML.

I bought this book for my college class instead of the book I was supposed to buy and I'm glad I did. I read this book within 3 days and I feel that it taught me the basics of most things I needed to know. It lacked a little detail in some of the more involved features of html and I don't think that chapeter five (Using advanced Web Page features) should have contained so much data with so little description of how to use it. It goes into great detail on the actual structure of a web page and the importance of a well thought out plan. In all, it's a good starting point.

This book is more valuable to you than any classroom session! However, don't think you can be a web page design professional until you master the Photoshop skills. (buy a photoshop book) HTML experience really helps you to move along, because it requires practice.