Beginning Dreamweaver MX 2004 (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author), Todd Marks (Author) "Many years ago the famous concert pianist, and sometimes composer, Glenn Gould wrote a musical composition called "So You Want to Write a Fugue..." (more)
Key Phrases: user typed anything, central style sheet, new server behavior, Extension Manager, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Access (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“…the quality of information provided is impeccable…” (PC Utilities, June 2004)

“…hands-on tutorials take readers through creating three complete Web sites….”  (Mac World, May 2004)

Product Description

With this book you will quickly be creating powerful, dynamic web sites with Dreamweaver MX 2004 - the latest version of Macromedia's powerful, integrated web development and editing tool.

Beginning Dreamweaver MX 2004 takes a practical approach to learning Dreamweaver. Over three sections, it takes a step-by-step approach to the development of three different web sites:

• A static hobbyist site, designed for publishing and sharing recipes and cooking tips
• A dynamic soccer fan site, designed to display upcoming events and news, and which each individual visitor can personalize
• A corporate web site built from dynamic, configurable building blocks
• Each section builds on the lessons learned in the earlier sections and demonstrates increasingly powerful techniques.

As you work through the book you learn how to program using Active Server Pages (ASP), which is used as the example dynamic technology. The core concepts learned in building web sites with ASP are applicable and easily transferred to other languages. To help, the book includes four appendices that provide fast paced guides on how to get started using JSP, ASP.NET, PHP, and Cold Fusion 6.1 with Dreamweaver.

If you are new to web development, Beginning Dreamweaver MX 2004 is the perfect guide to get you started creating attractive, functional websites quickly and easily using the Dreamweaver MX 2004 tool.

If you have already done some web site programming in the past, but youre new to Dreamweaver, Beginning Dreamweaver MX 2004 will show you how to develop your sites with the skills you already have, but in far less time and with fewer bugs using the Dreamweaver MX 2004 tool.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 792 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (February 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764555243
• ISBN-13: 978-0764555244
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,418,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Author's support on this book is amazing, July 6, 2004

By	hang10web (Midwest, United States) - See all my reviews

Despite the fact that some reader reviewers don't think you should have to read a book from beginning to end, this book is set up that way. In fact, the introduction, and back cover indicate that you will build 3 complete websites in the book, so its obvious that you can't just jump around and hope to keep everything straight. (I don't do web development that way, either.)

What I do want to point out about this book, is Imar Spaanjaars - one of the 3 authors on the book, who is absolutely amazing. I subscribe to the book's support forum at p2p.wrox.com, and Imar never fails to answer a dreamweaver question, or provide a solution - even when it does not involve the book. To me, that alone was worth the price of the book.

Thank you Wrox for a great Dreamweaver book, and thank you in particular to Imar.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book for the beginners, July 4, 2004

By	Shubhada Savkar (Dubai, U.A.E.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have found the structure of this book immensly helpful. Its unique feature is that it guides you to systematically develop three complete web sites. Most of the other books tell you various ways of dealing with `parts', but this book deals with the `whole' - which is exactly what the beginner needs. For the same reason you will need some patience to follow this book - everyday you will pick up from where you left yesterday. But then you will see the site taking shape in front of your eyes.

The book guides you step by step through various stages of the development process of each web site and after each particular stage it explains `how it works' behind the screens. So the reader knows exactly what is happening and why it is happening - he is not blindly hitting the keys only because `the book says so'.

Another great feature of the book is the online support available on the p2p forum. At times when I got stuck and didn't see the expected results on screen, I posted my queries on the forum and got them answered in no time. At other times I could just go through the queries posted by the other readers - which was again very helpful, because all were referring the same book. So many of my queries got answered without even posting them on the forum.

The book has three web sites developed step by step. The first one is static and the other two dynamic. I found the the first two sites much straight forward and well explained. The last site deals with building a structure of a dynamic site which can later on be developed with just the data from the data base. I found this chapter a bit complicated and felt that it could have been explained in more detail. However since I got a readymade structure at my disposal, I know I can develope many more sites based on this structure, by just filling the values in the database.

When I bought this book, I was a complete novice in the field of Dreamwever. When I finished the book I had the satisfaction of having developed three complete web sites. Since these three web sites are all completely different in nature from each other, I got a wide experience in developing static as well dynamic sites. Most importantly this book lent me a confidence to build web sites using Dreamweaver. Go for it if you are a beginner and if you want the satisfaction of having developed a web site on your own.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars covers graphics and hooking to databases, October 20, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

If you really are new to Dreamweaver, there might be some understandable trepidation at the size of this book, that claims to be for beginners! But the bulk is due in no small part to the authors choosing to describe 3 case studies. The implementation of code for each case illustrates various ways to use Dreamweaver.

One interesting point of the book, compared to others on Dreamweaver, is that it seems to give equal emphasis to both the visuals that you can make, and to hooking pages all the way back to a database. Most Dreamweaver books concentrate on the former. But here is exhaustive detail on using ASPs or JSPs on the web server. It also looks at integrating Dreamweaver with PHP and MySQL, a popular combination. Graphics designers may not be so enthralled by some of this back end stuff, but on large websites, it is essential.