Dreamweaver MX / Fireworks MX Savvy with CDROM (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Dreamweaver and Fireworks can help your project run more smoothly whether you are building a website from scratch all by yourself for yourself, collaborating with..." (more)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"I must say that the Savvy series has impressed me mightily so far." -- Virginia DeBolt, Web Teacher

Product Description

Dreamweaver / Fireworks Savvy features a task-based approach combined with hands-on tutorials, all designed to get beginners up to speed quickly and help intermediate and advanced users master this robust web development tool.

Lead writer Christian Crumlish is an author and consultant who's been designing web sites since 1994 and using Dreamweaver since it first appeared. Backed by a team of topic-specific contributors, he provides in-depth coverage of critical topics, including: best-practices web publishing and site management techniques; in-depth instruction for customizing and extending Dreamweaver functionality; creating, developing, and optimizing graphics with Fireworks; as well as adding and managing dynamic content to database-backed web applications using any number of server models.

Dreamweaver / Fireworks Savvy features a color insert illustrating color management and optimization techniques, as well as a CD with Dreamweaver Extensions, practice files, product demos, and other helpful resources.

Like all Savvy books, Dreamweaver / Fireworks Savvy is printed on quality, coated paper for crisp image reproduction.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Sybex (June 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782141110
• ISBN-13: 978-0782141115
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,585,548 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money, January 7, 2003

By	Richard H. Sutor (New Castle, DE USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you have a limited budget or are a beginner to Fireworks/Dreamweaver, don't waste your money on this book.

This is one of those books written by commmittee - a group of authors each doing separate chapters. Unfortunately it reads as if none of the authors ever coordinated with each other. One glaring example, most of the illustrations are B&W and the text keeps referring the reader to the see color examples in a later chapter. Unfortunately most of the examples the reader is sent to see are not in that chapter at all! Whilte there is a copy editor and a technical editor listed as part of this book's production team they don't appear to have done anything constructive.

I have been making notes in my copy as I find typos, grammatical errors and errors in the tutorials (either mistaken directions or missing directions or material missing from the included CD). Virtually every chapter has several errors of each kind.

The beginner will quickly become confused, or worse, give up on trying to learn.

There is a Yahoo group run by the lead author of the book where some of the errors were beign collected. A week or so ago the author noted that the book had gone into a 2nd printing. It is possible that some of the many errors in the first edition were caught and fixed. I certainly hope so. This book does real damage to the image of Sybex as a publisher of quality material.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent informative book, October 16, 2002

By	Tim Skyrme (Adelaide, Australia) - See all my reviews

Dreamweaver MX and Fireworks MX Savvy

By Christian Crumlish, with Joyce J Evans, Lucinda Dykes, Heather Williamson, Greg Holden, Guy Rish, Michelle Davis, Rita Lewis, and Rick Tracewell.

Overview.

I found this book to be very informative and readable. The use of a mixture of experts to contribute to a book is not new, but having as many as this is unusual.

There is no overt clash of authors as you read through, and as Dreamweaver is such a deep program, it seems best to have experts in different fields contribute what they do best.

The first thing that stood out about the book is the fact that it features two separate programs in the title. As you work through the book, the reasoning becomes apparent.

The book is laid out logically, starting, as you would, with page layout and setting up, and using templates, and getting all the pieces together.

At this stage, you leave Dreamweaver and go straight into using Fireworks. This is a logical progression, albeit an unusual concept. Fireworks fits seamlessly with Dreamweaver, and as they are both part of the MX Studio range, it is likely that the users of one program will have at least a passing knowledge of the other.

Finding a web image program into the middle of a web page program was a bit of a surprise. I expected to come across this bit at the end, but it is inserted where you need it in the scheme of making a site, just after the layout.

This is the time you start to play with the images etc that will go to make your site look good, and careful planning is needed here to avoid having images that are too big and load slowly, or even saved in the wrong format, or not sliced to optimise download times.

The Fireworks MX section is well written with very detailed instructions regarding the optimizing of images with this program which is packaged with Macromedia Studio MX. These programs fit seamlessly together and you can switch from one to the other, reduce file sizes and slice and save in the applicable format and have the HTML file for putting them back together on the web, and then have the file switched back to Dreamweaver, all in one easy stage.

No more opening a file, manipulating and slicing and then saving before re-introducing the file to Dreamweaver from disk. Do the whole job and re-introduce the re-worked image into Dreamweaver MX and re-size it, or apply the changes in place in Dreamweaver. If it is still not right, just repeat the process.

Fireworks MX optimizing of images for the web is superb, and it is considered one of the best programs for this work.

Features.

Dreamweaver MX/Fireworks MX is broken into 6 parts for easy navigation.

The first part is all to do with setting up and saving templates etc for your site.

Fireworks is covered next, and this consists of 6 chapters which go into a lot of detail about image files and how to deal with them best for web optimization.

After that you go to the actual page layout, and dealing with tables and layers etc, including the whys and wherefores associated with this.

After learning all about interactivity and CSS and hyperlinks you move to inserting dynamic content, such as Flash files, rollovers, and forms.

Next comes the complicated stuff, the development and programming side of things. Not just HTML, but ColdFusion, XML, XHTML, and other emerging technologies.

The final section is devoted to site administration, which is essential for good site keeping. It makes your job much easier in the long run.

This involves things like browser compatibility, administering the site, and also customizing and extending Dreamweaver.

Book Description.

617 pages of well-bound, good quality pages, followed by appendices.

32 chapters are further broken up to make detailed exploration easy.

A short colour section helps to explain some of what has been written.

A very useful CDROM is included with tutorials and sites to get further information, tutorials and links to user groups.

A surprise here is a series of tutorials on Photoshop.

Demo versions of the other Macromedia MX programs are included too.

Dreaweaver MX has a lot of new features including the interface which now follows the look of all MX products.

Fireworks seems to have many new features when compared to older versions and are aimed at ease of use.

An abundance of screenshots on nearly every page are included to make sure that you can follow what has just been explained.

Only a brief section of colour pages is included, but as you will be checking the net for sites, that should not matter.

Information is what this book is about. The book is backward compatible and anything that relates to the newer version is marked well.

Bottom Line.

The bottom line for me is that this is an extremely useful book, whether this is your first site, or you have been doing it for a while. I am sure that you will find things that you weren't aware of, had missed, or just forgotten. It is easy to read, and easy to follow, and that makes it worthwhile from the point of view of a user of these two programs.

Mixing the two programs in their correct places in the book is really very sensible. Ok, you may still want more info on Fireworks MX as a program, but what you do get covers a lot of ground, aimed explicitly at how it works with Dreamweaver MX, which, after all, was the idea.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book ever written on fireworks/dreamweaver, October 10, 2002

By	todd (Livonia, NY USA) - See all my reviews

I believe this book is probably the best written book on fireworks/dreamweaver to date. If you are looking for a book that covers every topic you could imagine look no further. I have been looking for a book that ties the fireworks/dreamweaver concept together for months and I came across Savvy in the book store and haven't put it down since. The book is well thought out and written for the beginner to the advance. Also it is great to be able to contact the author on Yahoo's group site....a huge plus to the book...again thank you Mr. Crumlish for this excellent addition to my library