Great book for any dreamweaver developer
I dont normally review books, but I thought this one was worth reviewing. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who works with dreamweaver and wants to create modern, standards compliant websites and web applications.
The book is well written and thoroughly covers the subjects it claims to cover.
Each chapter is also written in such a way that it could be read independently of the other chapters. This is highly useful if you only want to cover one or two of the three primary subjects covered (css, php and ajax with Dreamweaver cs3).
By the end of this book you will be able to create basic (though useful) web apps, validate user input in forms, use dreamweaver's built in ajax functions (spry) to make content much more interesting and create standards compliant websites that will be viewable in all browsers.
Great way to learn
I have a lot of books. I teach this stuff and try to read everything I can. This book is great. Easy to follow and the tasks are a useful way to learn how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This goes from easy to more advanced in each section so anyone that needs to learn how to use CSS will get value. I highly recommend this book.
This guy is a very excellent teacher
I've been through this book hard enough...everytime I think the author got some missed point, no...it was my own mistake. I go back and read over again the part where I encounter the problem and thats it..The author has never left anything incorrect. I encounter a lot of frustrating part (cursing the author!) but when I turn back, again; it was my mistake. I left some paragraph unread. (Sorry.) David had done an excellent job concerning about his readers. He definitely try to delivers as best as could and he succeed. Everything works just fine if you care enough to read thoroughly. I've been through with the Vhost, Vista installation, the relative root link, the PhpMyAdmin and yes, it works just fine. My side of advice, honestly; This book is more suitable if you at least have some basic experience working with Dreamweaver. Otherwise, I can't guarantee you know what you're doing (and not enjoy in doing so). Take a basic Dreamweaver book first (such as Adobe in a Classroom. Although it's there are some negative review about it, just ignore it. If you're really a beginner, you will be comfortable with it). And then take on this book. You are on a path of correct way to learn drive fast and efficiently. The combination to success in Dreamweaver is; The Classroom in a book, This book (Essential Guide) and the Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver by stepahanie and greg. Finishing this three, further on with the PHP. That's all. And for me, again; David Powers has done an excellent job.
Best in class
I LOVE THIS BOOK. David Powers did a great job on this book. I've been looking for a book to teach me dreamweaver cs3, css, and php and this book delivers. It killed three birds with one stone. The book is wonderfully written, easy to understand, easy to follow, contains no php errors. This book has saved me countless hours of headaches and frustration. This is a sixth book I bought on php and it actually works. Only bad thing about this book is you wished there was more, a part 2. Once you start this book you can't sit it down. Everything goes so smooth. David Powers has me hooked I hope he writes a book for cs4 when it come out.
Title is misleading, it's not about PHP or AJAX
This is a purchase that I regret. :-( I was quite disappointed by the misleading title. The book contains decent coverage of Dreamweaver for beginners. The book is not quite a tutorial but it is definitely not a comprehensive reference.
The book covers how to do basics in Spry. Spry is the AJAX framework bundled in Dreamweaver. There is no depth in the writing on Spry, and the coverage of RESTful and AJAX is minimal. The same can be said for the treatment of PHP. The coverage of PHP is superficial. There's no practical guidance on how to use PHP in Dreamweaver application development.
Two is harsh, because this is an average book and it probably merits a 3 but for the misleading title. However, I can't bring myself to mark it as a 2 because the author saw a way to sell copies. Returning to Dreamweaver after missing a couple releases, I found "Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual" to be a more complete book, and while it also covers Spry and a bit of PHP it makes no pretensions about its focus.
