When is a Web site more than a Web site? When it's a site built using Macromedia's Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, which allows developers and designers to more easily link their sites to database engines. Foundation Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 illustrates how far you can take a contemporary site and make it much more than a showcase. The authors clearly illustrate how to use Dreamweaver UltraDev to make a slick, contemporary, database-driven site.
Using a very practical approach, the book is a series of tutorials working toward a common goal. By the end of the final chapter, and after building a functional site, the reader comes away with working knowledge of how UltraDev works. Fourteen chapters lead the reader from the very beginning (setting up the software and a local database engine) through building a site, moving data between the database and the pages of the site, setting up user logins and shopping carts, using e-mail functions, and more.
Many graphics designers quickly shy away from the technical end of site design, but the authors have done a wonderful job of keeping things simple and clear. Each chapter is concisely written, offering step-by-step instruction and plenty of screen shots. Each chapter builds on the last, and the result is a Web site with all the functions of a true commerce site. The ideas and features learned can be easily adapted to almost any site concept.
Often, it is not enough to be a talented graphics artist when selling yourself as a Web designer. Customers increasingly want more than fancy graphics, and, in addition, demand sites that are dynamic, constantly updated, and able to tie into a database of some kind. This kind of work is not for every designer, but the combination of Dreamweaver UltraDev and this book make a project like this less intimidating. --Mike Caputo
Review
This book will enable you to program the code needed to produce slick web pages without relinquishing any design skills -- Computer Arts Magazine
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