software design

As with other Visual Quickstart Guides, this book had me working in no time at all. It covers everything you need to know to get started with Dreamweaver MX and even goes a little deeper for more advanced users.

I've been using this to help learn Dreamweaver and while it's a good resource for basic information, it's definitely a mixed experience.

It seemed that every time that the book started heading toward a subject I found useful (timelines, animations, hotspots), the book would direct me to the appendices on their website. This was extremely frustrating. Plus some of these appendices were completely missing, like timelines and animations (Appendix N). I wanted to create an image slideshow -- advanced but not overly so -- but since the book was missing this subject completely, I had to patch together the information from a search on google.com.

And sometimes it's helpful if a book tells me what a program CAN'T do, so that I don't spend hours wasting my time on something won't work anyway. This book fails to do this, unlike the excellent Missing Manual guides.

I had a good experience with Peachpit's Photoshop 6 book, but this book has really turned me off from their products.

While this review is still basically correct it needs to be ammended because the appendeces on the web are not complete. When looking for an appendix Q, which was referred to in the book, the online appendeces only included A - N. The publisher referred me to the author, but the email addresses given only return errors. Very disappointing. The rating has dropped from 5 stars to 2 for this reason.

...This is called VISUAL QUICKSTART. When I want depth I look at publishers like MacMillan Technical, Wrox, and O'Reilly. When I want some help doing a project with software that is unfamiliar to me, then I look first at these guides. They are reasonably priced and get me working quickly.

I haven't found anything that claims this book is for advanced users, it is clearly marked beginning to intermediate. Nor is it a tutorial. It is 700 pages of direct instructions that are grouped by task that are well indexed with a complete table of contents. And it is all to the point, I don't have to wade through dross to get to the silver. It also has a companion website that provides extensive appendices, along with links to other sites that the web developers that I know recommend - webmonkey, killerwebsites, pagesthatsuck and more.

I would say that this book is for beginners at Dreamweaver, not new computer owners. I am comfortable technically, I want to put up a site with Dreamweaver, and this is a book that will keep me busy and learning new things for a long time. Since I am not a developer, along with the website it may well be the only book I will ever need. However, the online references need to be completed.