Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having gone through 'Dreamweaver CS3 Classroom in a Book' (twice) and 'Dreamweaver CS3 for Dummies', 'The Missing Manual' is the only one I'd recommend; meaty (995 pages) but readable and clearly explained with good (downloadable) tutorials.

I have recently started a Dreamweaver CS3 College Course. I purchased CS3 The Missing Manual as an added extra for my course. There are alot of different books to choose from on this particular subject so I scoured the internet and did a bit of research. Dreamweaver cs3 the missing manual and dynamic cs3 seemed about the best on all the reviews. Im so glad that I chose CS3 The Missing Manual. There is plenty of important and handy information in this book, from basic web design to advanced Web design and practically everything in between. I often get stuck on questions on my CS3 College course and revert to The Missing Manual. You can pretty much garantee that the book will resolve the problems along the way. I would say that The Missing Manual is extremely helpful.

I have had this book for a month now and have only recently started using it and I must say it is extremely well written and enjoyable to read and use! You can dip in on subjects or wade your way through it. I've already picked up lots of tips to help streamline my web design and the explanation of the Spry tools is excellent especially as I'd never come across it before! Tabbed webpages a doddle, data display manipulation a godsend and so on. The book really does walk you through and doesn't assume that you know everything about the task you want to do.

Even if you know Dreamweaver well, there is sure to be something in this book you didn't know about! I fully agree that the title - The Missing Manual - is well warranted!

***Errata - have now finished the book, yes, finished all 995 pages and it stays good to the end! Buy it and use it! ***

This is by far the best Dreamweaver book I've come across, its made a huge difference to the quality of the sites I build, The CSS tutorials are spot on and make you pick up things you thought were not possible. The author has a great understanding of how a 'rookie' web designer thinks and feels so hats of.

This is one of the better computer books Ive come across in a longtime. As a beginner to modern web development , I found the structure, content , and style of writing to be very helpful in my efforts to understand an idiosyncratic (to me) non-WYSIWYG piece of software. In particular the walk thru tutorials were helpful. Be advised however, that to create a decent looking site, you will also have to go through the same learning curve in Adobe Flash, and Adobe Photoshop / Paintshop, in order to make your sites at least semi presentable. And throw a microsoft course in ASP.net in there too.

This is the first of the 'Missing Manual' series I have tried. On the plus side it is good value, the style is very readable and the exercises are worth the effort. So why flawed? Well, there are too many forward references - blah blah blah style sheet but this will be explained in detail in 200 pages time. The other aspect I dislike is the style decisions are dictated rather than explained - set this value to blah but I won't explain why or what the alternatives are. It's a good compromise and worth working through but it will leave you wanting a comprehensive reference text.

This book is very indepth indeed if not a bit waffly. It is very reference orientated (there are a few tutorials) but if like me you learn better from following along to tutorials I would suggest another book. I was ultimately disappointed by this and ended up purchasing another book.
Great for referring to but light on step by step tutorials

I'm currently building my own web in my spare time with no prior experience. I knew that Dreamweaver would give me what I needed but friends had warned me that getting my head around Dreamweaver would be difficult as there's a great deal to learn.

With a steep learning curve ahead, I knew I needed a book that would help me through the difficult times. I bought this book based on the positive reviews and then having a quick look in Waterstones. By the end of chapter 1 I was confidently setting up a new site and soon I was creating new web pages, adding and formatting text using CSS and inserting images. I've just learnt about creating links and adding menu bars.

I'm one of those people who likes to have a handle on things. The book works for me as it helps me to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. There are times when I'm reading, making my own notes as I go along, then I will be following a tutorial that draws on what I've just been reading and the skills and knowledge from previous chapters.

This is a well considered piece of writing that has given me instant satisfaction through immediate results. The use of coloured pictures would have been ascetically pleasing but this isn't a huge problem in the great scheme of things. I still have a long way to go but I don't feel overwhelmed and looking forward to moving onto the next stage.

As a Graphic Designer it is more urgent for me to learn web design for future employment but it has always seemed very daunting as everything single basic thing needed to be explained and this book does just that. It is well written and keeps your concentration.There are tutorials too and is brilliant for absolute beginners. I highly recommend this book for anyone, even if you just need things cleared up. Brilliant.

I am currently studying the Adobe Certified Expert Dreamweaver CS3 course at college, and my Lecturer not only recommended this book, but brought his own copy into the class for us all to read through. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that this book was an absolute must if you are serious about sitting the Adobe Certified Expert exam on Dreamweaver CS3. In this regard, if you are a student of any age sitting a course based on Dreamweaver CS3, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

The language in the book is as "jargon" based as required, although it does assume that since you are studying Dreamweaver you have some grasp of the basic internet terminology and standards such as XHTML, CSS, PHP, FTP, etc.

However, as you read through the book and pick up pieces of information you are invited to join in by downloading free tutorial files from the specified website. These files are in a 2.8mb ZIP file download and, just to reiterate, they are absolutely free of charge. This is extremely helpful for people like myself who prefer to see not only read an exercise on how to do something, but prefer to also see the exercise and it's outcome in action.

As well as the free tutorial files, there are also completed tutorials (also free) to download and look over if you want to jump directly to the end result as you read through the book. However you chose to study, there is a method and accompanying tutorial files to suit.

Again, this book was recommended to me by an Adobe Certified instructor who insisted that this book was the one he used the most when studying for his own Adobe Certified Expert exam. Whatever aspect of Dreamweaver you want to learn, whether it's defining sites, building sites with tables, creating and applying external style sheets, or simply uploading content to a server using FTP, this book has something for every level of Dreamweaver CS3 user and then some. It's well laid out, the examples are well illustrated, the menus are well explained, and the tutorials are absolutely free of charge.

If you only have the money for one Dreamweaver CS3 book, make it this one. Many people go for Adobe's own Classroom in a Book series, but I found that particular book to be a bloated, overly technical, and somewhat blurred view at the way the program worked. David McFarland's book gets right to the point, shows how to do things clearly and concisely, and as I said offers tutorial files to let you view the examples in print on your own screen.

A definite 5 stars for me.