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Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques ReviewAdobe Dreamweaver CS3 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques is exactly the book I needed to help me move from Adobe GoLive, which is being phased out, to the similar -- but different enough to be confusing -- Dreamweaver CS3. This book showed what could be accomplished through a clear and detailed hands-on approach to this feature-rich but daunting program.
The book is well structured into 100 brief, informative sections. They are useful individually -- meaning you can look up precisely what you need for a task and get a complete, but not overwhelmingly exhaustive, explanation with step by step instructions. (If it's essential that you know some underlying technique, the author tells you where in the book to find it -- but mostly, what you need is right there.)
The sections are also tied together into a dozen chapters on related techniques, that progress logically from the basics of creating a site to the full range of bells and whistles, from styling to forms to embedding media (Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media) to DW CS3's cool new Spry animation effects. There is an extraordinary amount of useful information presented in just 250 pages, yet the book never feels crammed. However, it could have used a few more illustrations, including ones for completed projects -- although the author purposely leaves it up to the reader to implement the techniques that he explains. I like this approach.
The book is much more illuminating than DW CS3's built-in Help fragments, that constantly send you to yet more -- and more -- references, many times without really telling you how to do something. Here the author has the space to provide both brief context and practical instructions. This book is also a lot more useful than the overpriced Adobe Classroom in a Book (CiB) that focuses on about a dozen large-scale "representative" projects -- if you're lucky, somewhere in the countless steps is the small piece of info you need to get a specific job done. By contrast, this book is the best of both worlds: more detailed and practical than the built-in Help and much more accessible than CiB. Goldilocks would love this book, since it's not too small, and not too big -- it's just right. I also appreciate that, for all of its conciseness, the writing has a friendly 'can do' quality.
The main content is clearly separated from the subsidiary information presented in sidebars. This 'bonus information' often explains why it's best to do something a certain way (often to increase the accessibility of Web pages for people who are visually impaired, or who simply turn off images for faster browsing). The only major topic missing is how to connect a DW site to a database, which with all the flavors (ASP, Cold Fusion, many more) would require a separate guide of this length.
The book wisely devotes many sections to the features that are brand new in DW CS3, including a strong focus on CSS-based layouts. The Internet has adopted 'best practices' standards -- meaning CSS-based pages -- so the author focuses both on how to use Adobe's nice built-in templates (both basic and styled versions), and on how to create your own from scratch. The clunky table-based, or frames-based (UGH!), layouts many of us have been using are going, going, soon to be gone. That's why the focus here is on CSS layouts, which offer much greater design flexibility and control, and faster loading times (they take far less code than their table-based ancestors, e.g., instead of specifying a bunch of different fonts, over and over, with CSS you do it just once in a master Style Sheet). In stumbling through DW CS3, before getting this book, the single most confusing thing was "div tags" (that basically structure everything in the page layout) -- if only I'd had the brilliantly lucid explanation found here in Section 33 - Defining Div Tags! Now, it all makes sense -- thank you!
Although I think this is a five star book, there are a couple of frequently used items that I wish the author had included in full detail: (1) instructions -- in Section 55 - Formatting Image and Page Styles -- on how to create a 'floated' image with a caption (a border around it would be nice too), and (2) how to "bulletproof" a site, making sure that pages can expand properly if someone increases the font size (as opposed to breaking apart into an incoherent mess). In addition to this book, which for me is a clear top recommendation (I've pored over several of the other 'first out of the gate' DW CS3 guides in a local bookstore), I recommend Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design: Improving Flexibility and Protecting Against Worst-Case Scenarios With XHTML and CSS. I don't believe that Cederholm's recommendations are proprietary, since they are common sense (once he explains them) and very simple; but they would have made this How-Tos book even more valuable.
I'm still having fun experimenting with techniques -- many involving Spry widgets -- that this book details, that I'll use on future sites. Ah, if only I'd had this book before going the 'trial and error' route, learning DW CS3 while creating the site I recently finished -- I would have cut my work time in half or better. This book provides a wealth of targeted hands-on instruction, including all the basics of CSS layouts, with clarity and a friendly tone.
Here is the complete Table of Contents
Chapter One - Creating a Web Site
Section 1 Collecting Site Content
Section 2 Defining a Local Site
Section 3 Organizing a Local Site
Section 4 Managing Site Views
Section 5 Managing Sites
Section 6 Defining a Remote Server Connection
Section 7 Connecting to a Remote Server
Section 8 Transferring Files Between Remote and Local Sites
Section 9 Synchronizing Local and Remote Content
Chapter Two - Working in the Document Window
Section 10 Exploring the Document Window
Section 11 Viewing Panels and the Property Inspector
Section 12 Editing Page Content in Three Views
Section 13 Examining Dreamweaver Toolbars
Section 14 Using the Insert Toolbar
Section 15 Using the Insert Menu Bar
Section 16 Creating a New Page from Scratch
Section 17 Defining Links
Section 18 Creating Pages from Blank Templates
Section 19 Creating Pages from Sample Starter Pages
Section 20 Creating Pages from Sample Style Sheets and Framesets
Chapter Three - Designing Pages with Tables and Frames
Section 21 Creating a Table in Standard Mode
Section 22 Creating a Table in Layout Mode
Section 23 Creating Fixed and Flexible Columns
Section 24 Embedding Tables Within Tables
Section 25 Defining Table Properties
Section 26 Defining Cell Properties
Section 27 Generating a Frameset from Samples
Section 28 Formatting Framesets
Section 29 Defining Links Between Frames
Chapter Four - Designing Pages with Absolute Placement Objects
Section 30 Defining Absolute Placement Objects
Section 31 Formatting AP Divs in the Property Inspector
Section 32 Managing AP Divs in the AP Elements Panel
Section 33 Defining Div Tags
Section 34 Using Rulers, Guides, and Grids
Chapter Five - Working with Text and Images
Section 35 Formatting Text with HTML Attributes
Section 36 Applying Colors to Fonts
Section 37 Defining Inline Text Attributes with CSS
Section 38 Preparing Images for the Web
Section 39 Embedding Images in a Web Page
Section 40 Making Images Accessible with Alt Tags
Section 41 Editing Images in Dreamweaver
Section 42 Aligning Text and Images
Section 43 Defining Image Maps
Section 44 Placing Photoshop Files in Web Pages
Chapter Six - Planning and Embedding Site Elements
Section 45 Creating Template Pages
Section 46 Generating New Pages from Templates
Section 47 Updating Templates
Section 48 Creating and Placing Library Items
Section 49 Updating Library Items
Section 50 Including Navigation in Templates and Library Items
Section 51 Uploading Templates and Library Items
Chapter Seven - Formatting Page Elements with CSS
Section 52 Formatting Page Elements with Style Sheets
Section 53 Defining Page Style Using the Body Tag
Section 54 Formatting HTML Text Tags with CSS
Section 55 Formatting Image and Page Styles
Section 56 Applying CSS to Links
Section 57 Defining CSS for Printable Pages
Chapter Eight - Collecting Data in Forms
Section 58 Creating Jump Menus
Section 59 Embedding Forms Linked to Server Databases
Section 60 Defining a Form in Dreamweaver
Section 61 Defining a Form Fieldset
Section 62 Placing Text Fields and Text Areas
Section 63 Placing Check Boxes
Section 64 Placing Radio Buttons
Section 65 Placing Lists/Menus and File Fields
Section 66 Using Hidden Fields
Section 67 Placing Form Buttons
Section 68 Defining Form Actions
Section 69 Defining a Spry Validation Text Field Widget
Section 70 Defining a Spry Validation Textarea Widget
Section 71 Defining a Spry Validation Checkbox Widget
Section 72 Defining a Spry Validation Select Widget
Chapter Nine - Embedding Media
Section 73 Creating Flash Text in Dreamweaver
Section 74 Creating Flash Buttons in Dreamweaver
Section 75 Embedding Flash and Flash Video Files
Section 76 Embedding QuickTime Media
Section 77 Embedding Windows Media
Chapter Ten - Adding Effects and Interactivity with Spry
Section 78 Inserting Tabbed Panels
Section 79 Inserting a Spry Menu Bar Widget
Section 80 Formatting Spry Menu Bar Widgets
Section 81 Inserting a Spry Accordion Widget...Read more›
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