Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 in 24 Hours

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a more advanced computer user with a bit of Dreamweaver experience (OK, so it was many years ago). I wanted to get back into it, but dreaded the thought of mucking about lamely until I got the hang of it again. This book starts with the basics, and even though I am generally familiar with a lot of the concepts, the author always mentions more than one way to do things, so even "know-it-alls" like me find themselves learning a lot. I have finished the first 12 chapters and feel good about my knowledge of the programs basic features. It progressively gets more advanced in easily digestible chunks, so I'm looking forward to finishing the last 12 chapters. The only people I wouldn't recommend this book to are those who were advanced users of the previous versions. It's meant to introduce someone to the program in general, not deeply discuss the new features only.

Sam's Teach yourself Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 in 24 hours, is a comprehensive book that covers virtually everything you will need to know about the program. I initially chose this book because I had limited experience with Dreamweaver and wanted to be able to learn the fundamentals very quickly. One quick note about the titles of these books. Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 hours series is a bit misleading in the sense that it doesn't actually mean you could pick up the book one night and be an expert the next. O.K. well sort of...The Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 hours series of books are composed of 24, one-hour lessons that cumulatively help the user to learn a particular software program.

If you don't like learning theory or "why" something works then Sam's Teach Yourself Dreamweaver CS3 in 24 hours may not be the best kind of book for you. It is not the kind of book you can peruse on the weekend or take on a trip to help ramp up your skills. As an inexperienced Dreamweaver user, I found that I couldn't just go to the table of contents and select a section that sounded interesting. I felt like I had to start at the beginning and work my way through each chapter.

I am a Dreamweaver novice but an intermediate user of html, xhtml, and css so the beginning of this book was not as useful for me as say someone with no experience at all. This book would probably best suit someone without any web development experience at all. A small knowledge is certainly not detrimental but it forced me to skim the beginning and I felt myself wanted to "do" something.

This book doesn't have as many practice exercises as I would prefer. If you are someone who enjoys an included CD/DVD or at least a website with practice files then this book may not be the best for you. The book does suggest that you learn some fundamentals of web design/development by opening a pre-existing website. This task would certainly be helpful for the novice and is a good way to learn many CS3 features.

As someone who has used these type of training manual books before I felt that the greatest assets that this book had several strengths including: 1) Comprehensive and Detailed Explanations, 2) A good amount of screen shots, 3) Content Is Well Organized.

The weaknesses of this particular book include: 1) It is entirely black and white, 2) It is much too comprehensive for an intermediate user, 3) lacks an accompanying exercise files.

I would recommend this book to someone with absolutely NO web design, web development, or Dreamweaver experience. I would also recommend they begin on page 1 and work their way through incrementally as the book is intended. Give yourself 24 Days and do a one hour lesson a day. That would be a great way to get through each of the lessons and thoroughly learn Dreamweaver CS3.

Nate

I chose this book among many because I thought it could help me learn Dreamweaver quickly. I had no experience whatsoever in web design but wanted to create and manage my own site for the purpose of selling a product. It does cover the basics and leads you fairly well through some processes. However I did get stuck a few times and I found I still had to turn to the web for help. In fact, I re-started my whole site using other advice from the web. About half way through I stopped using the book because it was teaching things that just weren't relevant to the basic user. Overall I felt the book was too basic in parts and unnecessarily detailed in others. However I am pleased to have it as a reference and I expect I'll open it for advice some time in the future.

I have previous Dreamweaver experience -- but from an older version. Since I am self-taught, I decided to get a copy of this book and see what foundational skills and tips/tricks I could pick up.

I found Betsy's book to be very helpful. In addition to the foundational information, she provides plenty of excellent examples to help go a step (or two!) beyond. I really feel like I have a solid grasp of what this software can do for me.

Unlike the user above, I did not find any errors in step actions.

I found this book to be very helpful and informative. I'm new to Dreamweaver CS-3 and I found that this book really covers the basics of Dreamweaver and Web design and gets into some of the more advanced features. After reading this book I've really gotten a grasp of Dreamweaver. I find that it is especially a good resource in conjunction with the online seminars from Adobe.

The back of this book, which arrived today, says "User Level: Beginning" and they are right. Wish Amazon's description of the book would have said that. I can see why the book's style would appeal to beginners, but with much Front Page experience, I needed at least an intermediate text. Less on the basics (like relative vs. absolute paths)and much more on style sheets, tables, etc. Also missing (not even in the Index) was any mention of "Contribute" a new Adobe tool designed to be used by non-programmers to maintain Dreamweaver-built websites.

So the book goes back and I will order something tougher.

I have read quite a few Dreamweaver books and this one by far is the easiest to follow. It has broken down steps in a way that gets straight to the point of what you need to do to build a site.

I knew nothing about dreamweaver and wanted to upgrade and improve it. This book got me through the 'basic training', good if you are looking only for the basics.

I know a little (a very little) HTML, and this manual is helping me expand my ability to design web pages. I have a long way to go, but it looks as though this will be a good guide.

500+ pages chocked full of drivel and very little instruction which appear to have been transplanted from other manuals and websites. Buy this book only if you like product placement advertising.