Creating a Web Site in Dreamweaver CS4: Visual QuickProject Guide (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Dreamweaver has been the tool of choice for professional Web site designers for years. And since it became part of the Adobe Creative Suite, even more users, including beginning Web designers, have turned to it to start creating Web sites. This book is for those beginners—all the people who are itching to design their very first Web site but don’t want to learn every last Dreamweaver feature to do so. This full-color guide offers them the quickest way to create a well-designed, user-friendly Web site! Each short chapter uses big, bold screen shots and step-by-step instructions to illuminate one aspect of this process. By the end of the book, users will create a simple Web site, fill it with text, graphics and tables, use style sheets, create image maps, add navigation and links, and test and publish the final product. Timely tips and sidebars detailing good design practices round out the book.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is available in several Adobe Creative Suite CS4 packages or it can be purchased separately. For customers who already own Dreamweaver CS3, Dreamweaver 8, or Dreamweaver MX 2004, there is special upgrade pricing.

About the Author

Nolan Hester has written more than a dozen books for Peachpit Press, including the best-selling previous editions of this book. Along with Retouching Photos in Photoshop Elements: Visual QuickProject Guide, he’s written Visual QuickStart Guides on Adobe Lightroom, Microsoft Expression Web, Adobe Photoshop Album, and Microsoft FrontPage.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (December 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032159150X
• ISBN-13: 978-0321591500
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #169,277 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Makes Dreamweaver More Confusing, February 14, 2009

By	Cal Martin "16th Century Enthusiast" (Aptos, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This book is deceptive as a "visual quick project". I learned Adobe Pagemill years ago using Maria Langers book put out by Peachpit Press, so I thought this one would make Dreamweaver approachable for a beginner like myself. The author uses lines to point to a visual example on the screen of what he is saying and often the line is actually pointing to the next thing he will say. After he has us set up the home page in a cascading style sheet, something a beginner has never done before, instead of going to the next logical place-creating a page that will link to the home page css, he jumps into adding flash video, creating lists, etc. When he has us put an image on the page he vaguely mentions to create an image folder to put the image in when saving it, but never bothers to tell us how to do that. I found myself struggling every step of the way and searching on my own for how to accomplish tasks. Beginners need step by step directions and usually when learning how to create a website these steps go from how to set up your index.html page to how to create a new page (he doesn't even bother with a "new page" in this book), to how to link the two pages, along with basic text boxes and image boxes. This book will give you little of substance.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Look for something else, April 22, 2009

By	Hugh Mann (Swizzlesticks, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

I've had a lot of success with Visual Quickstart books, but I was surprised at how poorly written this one is. The first reviewer is right; it's replete with nonsensical instructions, topics grouped together that have no purposeful or sequential relationship, etc. Nevermind that companion files are provided, you'll start banging your head against the wall wondering where the missing chapter is. If you're a teacher who already knows the subject and can pretty much skim over most of it then I'm sure it's a fabulous book; but for those of us trying to learn the program on our own, it's a blind alley that gets us off course and wastes our time.

I do recommend, however, the Visual Quickproject by Liz Castro if you're looking for an introduction to HTML; it's a little out of date but much of it still applies, and she seems to know how to provide steps that actually lead to a decent conclusion.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Short Course Classroom Guide, March 1, 2009

By	R. Beste "IT Instructor" (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As an IT teacher, this is exactly what I was looking for to use in a short course for Dreamweaver CS4 - a short book at a reasonable price that is well-written and goes through a good example.

The previous reviewer complained that some of the concepts were not well explained - This may be an issue if you are teaching yourself - but it is fine for use in class as I can explain the extra material as I'm teaching it. Well done to the author and Peachpit Press

For a future edition, I'd like to see some review questions (or extra challenges to try on your own) so any students who are working faster than the others can be busy with extra work.

I'd also like to see some discussion of the fact that (usually) one copy of your website is on your computer and one copy is uploaded to your web-host and the need to find and pay for a domain name and web-host.