Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really good reference for beginning to intermediate, November 11, 2001
In my review for <Creative HTML Design.2> I admitted to being a Lynda convert, and so I am. I am a freelance web weaver, and Dreamweaver is my HTML editor of choice. I also teach web design and development in Southern California, so I am always looking for good references to use in class or tell my students about.Like other books by Lynda Weinman, the Dreamweaver 4 Hands-On Training is well written and comprehensive. My one and only complaint is that her HOT books are targeted mainly for folks who are new to web design, so some of the in-depth, nitty-gritty details I might be looking to add to my arsenal (I've been building web pages since 1994) are sometimes lacking. This book is no exception to the rule. This particular text has several advantages over other Dreamweaver references for several reasons: 1) It's written in English, not "geek". 2) It includes tons of screen captures (mostly grey-scale), step-by-step instructions, AND a CD-ROM with lesson files. This allows you to follow along with the book and do EXACTLY what is shown in the text. 3) It contains practical tips on typography, image optimization, and cross-browser compatibility. 4) You don't need a crane to pick it up. ;-) Unfortunately the book glosses over some of the fine points about using frames, tables and layers in web designs, but these points are minor when compared to the strengths of the book overall. If you are just starting to learn Dreamweaver, or if you are an intermediate user who is looking for an easy to use reference, I highly recommend adding this to your library! BKA
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just learning DW4? Buy this book!, September 19, 2001
Outstanding... You can tell the authors of this book are teachers and not just writers. This is evident in the step-by-step, clear and concise instruction they give us on how to accomplish each objective in the book. I'm a software instructor at a business school in PA. I teach ages from 18 to 78 in my classes. I know so well that people just don't "get it" if they can't follow along and work the problems with the instructor. There is a place out there for reference books, you know the ones... they regurgitate all the information that comes with the user manual for the software, but I don't find these very helpful when learning a new program. This is defiantly not one of those books. The authors don't hedge on the advanced stuff either. There are a few chapters near the end of the book that require some conceptual thinking (working with timelines comes to mind), but here again, the reader is in good hands all the way. And for those really difficult concepts there are Quick Time movies that demonstrate exactly how it's supposed to be done. There are aprox. 630 pages of instruction in the book, and I chewed it all up in a couple days. Do I remember everything I read? Heck no! But I understand what I read, and now I can go back and start applying the lessons to my own website. Even if I don't remember each step exactly, I comprehend the concepts and can always use the book to look the steps up again if I need to. Oh, and by the way... I just read another person's review of the Dreamweaver 4 Bible. The reviewer observed that the author of that book, while very long on explanations of HOW to do things, was very short on suggestions on WHEN to do things. This is one of the things I appreciated most about Garo and Weinman's teaching style. They are always quick to point out the pros and cons of nearly everything (Using frames for instance). They tell you when something will work in IE but not in Netscape. They tell you when some DW4 feature is not supported in an earlier version of either browser... and then give their opinion on whether or not it's worth putting in your website. I find this to be extremely helpful. I am brand new to DW (although I have about a zillion hours in working with FrontPage 2000), so I can't speak to those of you who are wondering if the advanced topics are meaty enough for you, but for you beginners out there here are some words of advice: Buy this book. You will take weeks off your learning curve if you just start here and ignore all the other books on the shelf clamoring for your money. My only regret is that there is not a serious advanced DW4 HOT book.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good course book for beginner/intermediate, October 24, 2001
It reminded me of Adobe's 'classroom in a book' books. The lessons are well thought out and advance the reader from basic concepts to intermediate, and some advanced concepts. I liked this book over a lot of reference-type books in that it forced me to press the buttons and understand the concepts by doing them ("Learning by doing" -quote from back cover of book)There was a chapter on HTML which isn't a prerequiste for learning dreamweaver, but useful. There's also chapters on javascript behaviours, layout, typography, and using GeoCity to put a website online. The book is a decent reference, although its strength is in its tutorials, and as reference it is unable to cover all of Dreamweaver's features. It also only covers the standard version of Dreamweaver, and not UltraDev. Overall, the book is a good purchase if you need to learn dreamweaver 4 and plan to actually read it through.
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