Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Demystified (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

As an experienced Dreamweaver developer, you don't need a guide to step you through every new Dreamweaver MX 2004 button and feature. Chances are, you'll be able to figure most of those out on your own. What you need--and this volume delivers--is an in-depth exploration of how you can leverage all of Dreamweaver's power to take your own Web development process to the next level. Moving beyond the explanations that are readily available in the product's documentation and the commonly available introductory guides, author Laura Gutman draws on her own extensive experience as a multimedia Web application developer to explore some of the software's more creative and complex uses--many of which involve features new to Dreamweaver MX 2004: editing files, manipulating databases, and changing code directly on remote FTP and network servers without first stetting up a Dreamweaver site; using CSS to improve your design procedures; and more. Easy-to-follow explanations, insightful exercises, render a complex topic painless.

About the Author

Laura Gutman works as a multimedia web application developer and educator in the fields of multimedia, programming, and design. Her first experience in computer science was at an IBM training school in 1983, where she learned how to punch cards, dissect mainframes, and program in COBOL. In the intervening years, she earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) and has worked as a graphic designer and illustrator (for print and multimedia), technical writer, and multimedia developer. Currently Laura lives with her dog, parakeets, and hundreds of computer toys in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to her development and consulting work, she teaches a range of courses in multimedia and graphic design at the University of New Mexico. You can visit her online at http://www.rocketlaura.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1272 pages
• Publisher: Macromedia Press (November 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735713847
• ISBN-13: 978-0735713840
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,429,527 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good resource., December 2, 2003

By	Michael Buffington (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

Dreamweaver MX 2004 Demystified is an excellent resource for web developers who use DWMX 2004, but probably shouldn't be your first choice if you're looking to make full use of the tool with ColdFusion. The writing is fresh and easy to read, written in a conversational tone that makes reading and understanding topics easy. The book is chock full of useful screenshots with clear labels, showing exactly what the text is talking about. There are plenty of useful tables and illustrations, making the overall quality of the book stand out.

As a ColdFusion developer, however, the book seriously falls short. To be fair, the book isn't intended to be a Coldfusion reference, but there are some serious flaws in the chapter on integration with ColdFusion that could have been avoided if the author and technical editors actually knew ColdFusion. Rather than talk about how to write ColdFusion code, the chapter should have been written with a focus purely on integration with a ColdFusion server. Instead I felt like it tried to fill space by explaining things about ColdFusion that quite frankly were completely incorrect. I'm not as experienced with other web application models like PHP and ASP, but I also felt as if I was rereading documentation, rather than learning something new. I felt as if those chapters were book thickeners, and would have given the book 5 stars had those chapters been more useful.

I was pleased to find a chapter on integrating DWMX 2004 with version control systems - a topic that has been fresh on my mind lately as I consider using Dreamweaver MX 2004 100% of the time.

In short, the book is worth having for any serious web developer. I'm pretty confident that when I run into a problem with DWMX 2004, I'll be able to find an answer in Dreamweaver MX 2004 Demystified.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Thorough, August 29, 2004

By	Jennifer Bennett "multimedia trainer and prod... (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I normally use the visual quickstart guide for teaching but for unexplicable reasons, the VQS guide wasn't out when I needed to teach so I turned to demystified. I found it very easy to use and greatly appreciated the examples. I even tought myself a topic I've been meaning to learn for a couple of years. This book made it so easy, I'm not sure why I waited so long!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, very comprehensive, April 8, 2004

By A Customer

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to eventually get into depth on Dreamweaver. The book is rated as "Intermediate/Advanced" level on the cover, but it's a book a novice to Dreamweaver can easily understand. The book goes well beyond just the very basics of using Dreamweaver however. For example there is a section on the coding syntax for Dreamweaver templates. Overall I found it to be very clear, well-organized and easy to follow, and enjoyable, and I am really glad I bought it.