DreamWeaver 8 Guide
The book has been great help with my current project and while I learn all about PHP and Dreamweaver.
Dreamweaver 8 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP
Excellent book. Very thorough, but not too much. Bardzell was very good at predicting questions in the book just as they occurred to me. That is, just as I'd start to wonder various things and consider exploring to find the answer; I'd go back to reading instead and in the following paragraph(s), there was the answer. Little to no confusion on the details of how things were supposed to be set up or organized. The book is also very aware of possible redundancy in that practically right at the same time that I repeating complete instructions for a process AGAIN was getting annoying, Bardzell chimed in to say something like: "you've done this several times now , so I'm going to assume you don't need a walk-through and conserve space for more pertinent information." I finished the entire book/example website in about 1.5 weeks (the 21-25 hours predicted work time seems very accurate) and was actually somewhat sad when I flipped the last page to find the index. Very many useful things presented in very understandable presentation--very good book.
Great Resource for beginning in PHP using Dreamweaver
My compliments to the author. I have been a user of Dreamweaver for a couple of years and have been designing websites for about 3 years, but i had a very limited understanding of server-side programming and PHP. This book provided a very clear explanation of the differences between static and dynamic websites. This book also provides the benefit of the tutorials provided in each lesson. The tutorials are very thorough and structured in a relevant order. I would definitley recommend this book to any current users of DW who want to get into PHP and SQL. a beginners knowledge of web-design and programming experience would be a plus before getting into this book, but not a necessity. After working through this book , i feel that i am well educated in the subject of PHP and SQL databases, enough so that i can move on to a more advanced book and learn the more detailed aspects of PHP.
Also, i only used the PHP part of the book, because of personel preference. However, the book also does a excellent job in covering the ASP and CFM technologies as well.
A reference book you'll want to keep close at hand...
Author Jeffrey Bardzell does a great job of explaining the ins-and-outs of ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP use within Dreamweaver 8 in MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8 WITH ASP, COLDFUSION, AND PHP: TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE. Not only does the book cover the subject matter in an easy-to-follow style, but examples and sample files are also provided on the CD that comes with the book. As a person who learns more by doing than by just simply reading about it or seeing it in a diagram, I found this feature to be very useful.
MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8 WITH ASP, COLDFUSION, AND PHP: TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE was a great resource. Primarily, I used it to brush on PHP usage within Dreamweaver, and for this purpose the book certainly exceeded my every need! I've got PHP forms up and running on various client websites now, and would have had a much more difficult time building the complex forms without Bardzell's advice.
MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8 WITH ASP, COLDFUSION, AND PHP: TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE is definitely a book that you'll want to keep on your shelf for frequent reference!
No online errata for this book
I'll say something good first. I found the author to be well skilled in explaining the concepts as well as the procedure when using Dreamweaver 8. Each chapter is written like a good lesson plan, and takes you through the book task by task. I usually have to read more than one book on a technology because what one author fails to explain adequately, another explains very well. That is the case with this book, But don't buy this book.
When I did run into a problem with the code in the book, I went to the website and found that there was no erata page or anything else for this book, the last update was for Dreamweaver MX or some previous version. So now I have to figure out on my own why the code in the book is giving me errors. Unforgivable.
I also read "Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8", and of course it also had errata, but it was fully corrected on the accompanying site. I did not have the problems with the server as the other reviewer did, because I didn't use this book for it after reading about his problems. I used the Foundation book to set up the PHP/MySQL, and it worked just fine, although I haven't tested it on the remote server yet...
Anyway if he's not going to support the book by listing errata on an accompanying site (that he references in the book), then don't bother buying the book.
