Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 in 21 Days

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As an experienced Dreamweaver/HTML user with little knowledge of databases, I had planned to skim the early chapters to learn about new Dreamweaver features than dive into the "UltraDev" part, but when I began reading I found much more than the usual "how to use this program" list of features. There's a chapter on designing a website, an excellent one on database setup that includes detailed explanations of how to structure data, and a lot of practical advice for those of us who are new to dynamic web content. This author knows his stuff. Would I recommend it to someone who'd never even seen HTML? No. Would I recommend it to everyone else? -- Absolutely.

If you are a backend or middleware programmer writing ASP, JSP or CFML, you probably won't like this book too much. If you are a front-end designer/developer who wants to start activating your web pages with server-side logic, this book may give you a start. The author does an adequate job of explaining how to do things with UD4, but does not dive deeply into the depth of the technologies. As an ASP developer and long-time user of Drumbeat and UltraDev, I often found myself turning to UD4's help system or the Macromedia tech library for more in-depth information. I'm happy to see publishers getting UltraDev books out on the market but I question the timing of this publishing. It was in print and on the shelves before UD4 was even shipping. This timing issue shows up in the lack of depth in the text. Additionally, the author offers too many pointed opinions on related technologies instead of taking an unbiased approach at explaining the technologies. For example, he says it is better to use Java Applets then Flash movies because you don't need to worry about plug-ins (not mentioning the need to have the Java Virtual Machine on your system :0) - but ignores the fact that the Flash plug-in is on 96% of all computers connected to the Internet.

I'd suggest waiting for Joseph Lowery's next edition of the Dreamweaver Bible.

What can I say, I liked this book!

The book seems to be aimed at someone who is reasonably intelligent, has little to no web experience, and doesn't want to get their hands too dirty creating dynamic sites. I think part of the problem with the UltraDev product is that it really doesn't do that much without editing the code directly. This book could easily have broken down into an ASP programming guide, but it doesn't. The author seems to understand that NOT EVERYONE wants to use Microsoft products for their server deployment (even though ASP *is* used as the example).

Personally, I'm thrilled to see something other than a book on Microsoft Access. I haven't tried MySQL in quite awhile, and, after installing it, I'm quite pleased with both the performance of the backend and the GUI on the front.

For the drumbeat users, I'd say this isn't your book - when Macromedia integrated Dreamweaver into what *was* Drumbeat, they opened up web development to a whole new group of people - those who haven't ever seen or touched a development tool or language. This book is for those people. It does touch a bit on coding issues, but that's the only way anyone is ever going to do anything beyond simple lists in UltraDev.

First of all if you are a total beginner, take a DreamWeaver book first, then take this one (Ultradev). The book is fine giving you examples about how to do almost anything with databases with Ultradev using minimal hand-written code. The product is impressive, i think DreamWeaver Ultradev is the best piece of software ever created to create any kind of web site. To this book I gave it 4 because the author examples only covered asp in VBScript, when jsp is more widely used today and more standard.

Also he used MySQL, that it's pretty nice, but there are stuff like the password(fieldname) function that is not available in other databases like: ORACLE (the one I'm using) to do stuff like banner rotators, when ASP has it's own adrotator object.

Anyway, this one will get you up and running fast. There are some minor errors at the book, but you can figure them out easily.

The CD-ROM included sucks!! no images, source example where only from chapter 15 to the end. WHere are the graphics and examples for the first 14 days?

However the content is good and the narrative is informal, so it's easy to understand.

I bought this book for myself to round out a holiday order, and I feel someone obliged to comment on the "Not for Beginners" review.

I think you'll find that the other reviews say that this is "*not* for someone who doesn't know HTML". I do agree that if you've never seen HTML, you should probably order a DreamWeaver 4 book as a "starter" companion. However, if you've never seen HTML, I don't think UltraDev is necessarily a wise investment at this point.

Nonetheless, in no way are you expected to use MySQL. I was pleased to see the MySQL information (for Windows or Unix) because it lets you get up and running on Windows without needing to have Microsoft Access installed. If you are using Access, you'll still need to know the basics of SQL in order to effectively use the software in anything but "basic" mode.

Overall, I'm pleased with my purchase. I guess that if you're planning on doing serious dynamic development you should have an understanding of HTML and at least an inkling of how databases work before reading - but assuming you do, you should be happy with this book.

This book got my attention after leafing through a few pages and seeing the chapter on database normalization. I feel like I finally understand how to do something beyond the little "show stuff in a table" apps I was writing before. It's a good solid book on using UltraDev, but covers some ground that others may not be so interested in.

I'm a fan of series like the "in 21 days" books because they break topics into logic units, instead of using a listing format like reference series. This is a good one because it starts slow and builds, as it should, to somewhat ambitious projects. The author does a good job of explaining the building blocks before implementing them and of calling attention to potential problems -- this book is worth it alone for the trouble-shooting help it gives.

There is a problem in the combination of Dreamweaver basics and UltraDev/Database set-up in the same book because the complexity of the 2 parts are far apart. Buying it for one part of the other is fine (I bought for the UltraDev help) but be aware that you may be bored or highly challenged when going sequentially through the book. I'd blame the software more than the book for this.

It's alittle bit pricier, but this book seems to be the best of the UltraDev "bunch". The pace is a bit slow to begin (it has to cover everything in the Dreamweaver portion of UltraDev) but it quickly picks up and demonstrates several very different applications that can be built with UltraDev. Its more than just "here's how to show your data on a webpage" - which seems to be the standare fare of other titles.

Finally, a book that actually MAKES SENSE! I purchased the original UltraDev 1.0 back when it was released in May(?) and the included manual was next to impossible to follow.

In fact, I had just about given up on the software until I was reading through this in a local bookstore. The book is written from the perspective I needed - ie. How does someone actually make the software do something USEFUL? Even though UltraDev 4.0 hasn't even hit the shelves of the software stores yet, this book made several things in the first version clear that previously left me dumbfounded. I guess I may purchase UltraDev 4.0 afterall.

This book provides excellent coverage of the UltraDev feature set, and is truly written so you can start from scratch and build dynamic sites. While the author does use ASP, he makes the ASP specific code quite obvious and provides a chapter on JSP/CFML.