Dreamweaver MX 2004 The Missing Manual

By David Sawyer McFarland
Published by Pogue Press/O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
2004

List Price: $34.95

I have been a user of Dreamweaver (DW) from Macromedia for about three years now. I never have looked at the miniscule manuals that came with it (when I had a manual at all). I learned mostly by playing with it and by buying third-party books. I wish I had found this book way back then. The title is actually a bit of a misnomer, if you think of the usual manuals that accompany software (not very often these days). They’re a little on the dry side and usually very basic in what is shown.

I am not an expert DW user, but I can safely say I am an intermediate user. This book has something for just about every level of user. First of all, the author has a sense of humor. The sample files (you have to download them from a web site) help you create a site for the “National Exasperator,” sort of a tabloid site. He even manages to work Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore into the mix, not to mention some aliens, Godzilla and Bigfoot.

Keep in mind that DW itself is really not for beginning web designers. It helps to have some experience with either hand-coding pages or with other editors.

The book is divided into several parts. In Part I, we start with a guided tour of DW. Even with the tour, it is useful to have an acquaintance with terminology used in web design. The tour starts with examples that include HTML. McFarland thoroughly explains why one might want to use a WYSIWYG editor and the advantages of using Dreamweaver. After going through a good description of the DW interface, he takes you step by step through the creation of a web site—in terms of how to connect to the site and how to set up your local files. If you follow along, you actually set up a site and create a page. He closes the first chapter by showing how to preview the page.

The book is quite logical in the order in which the information is presented. Chapter Two is entitled “Adding Text to Your Web Pages.” Information about how to add text, special characters, breaks and more are described in easy terms. He is clear in his instructions as he uses a format that makes it easy to follow menu selections. To describe how to enter a line break, he tells you three alternate ways to accomplish the task. One is to “Choose Insert àHTML àSpecial Characters àLine Break.” Inserted in the text are “Cautions,” “Notes,” and “Tips” that give added information. For example, in the section on inserting the line break, he includes a tip about text from other applications and a way to change the settings in DW so you can see where you put line breaks.

A particularly nice set of information includes tips on how to paste text from Microsoft Word and tables from Excel into web pages.

The chapters continue in logical order, moving next to formatting the text that has been placed in the page, then to adding links, with a clear explanation of the difference between document-relative links and root-relative links. What’s next—adding images, of course, including roll-overs and flash buttons.

Once you have learned how to do these basic tasks, he moves on to how build a “Better Web Page.” Part Two. Interestingly enough, he starts with cascading style sheets (CSS) before he discusses using tables for layouts. In Page Layout 101, he describes the fairly standard techniques for creating tables. Then he continues by describing how to use CSS for layout instead of tables. He discusses the use of frames, but explains when and where they should be used, why you shouldn’t use them and how to work around browser incompatibilities when you feel you must use them.

After he’s gotten you to use the WSYWIG capabilities of DW, he takes you back to HTML and the ways that DW makes it easier to maintain and edit HTML The chapter on HTML describes the tools that are provided in DW for editing and cleaning up existing HTML or the one you write yourself.

Part Three is called “Bringing Your Pages to Life.” He begins with descriptions of how to create forms with DW and continues with explanations of how to include Flash, Shockwave and other multimedia files and how to add Behaviors, prepackaged JavaScript programs.

Part Four is about actually putting the site together and on the web, beginning with site management, including structuring your web site. This is about the only criticism I have of the book. It might have been good to introduce part of the material earlier. DW has extensive site management functions and he does a good job of reviewing the functions. His descriptions are very thorough without being arcane. He presents the tools and functions in DW with practical explanations. He covers link validation, web page validation, and browser compatibility as preludes to launching the web site.

Another small disappointment in the book is that he doesn’t spend much time discussing accessibility for those with vision or mobility impairments. He does explain DW’s built-in tools for aiding with compliance, but doesn’t provide much information in the section on creating page layouts or forms about how to create accessible pages.

Once your site has been tested and validated, the next step is to move the site to the Internet (you may have actually been working on it on a remote site). Again he provides clear explanations of how to set up FTP (File Transfer Protocol) within DW to allow you to move your pages onto your Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) site.

Parts Five and Six are more for power users. DW has Snippets, Libraries and Templates. Snippets are pieces of code that you can save to put into other pages. They can be HTML, JavaScript and other languages. DW comes with a number of these built-in and more can be obtained at the Macromedia site and from third-party developers.

Libraries are similar, but the items in the library are linked to pages, so that if you update the library item, all the pages that use the item are updated.

Templates are a way to build pages that have a consistent structure and look. They are used frequently when there is more than one individual working on site pages. Templates can be configured so that only portions can be edited. McFarland walks through these functions and explains not just how to use them in DW, but also relates that use to the real world. He tells the reader why templates may be useful, not just how to create them.

Part Five continues with more information about searching and replacing and about keyboard shortcuts and preferences, and DW extensions.

The book finishes with instructions on how to create dynamic databases using DW, including how to connect to a database. The information is oriented toward the ASP server model and the examples are designed for that model. There is some discussion of other server models.

Each chapter includes explanatory material with definitions of the different tools and functions in DW and a tutorial to illustrate what is discussed in the chapter. The tutorials are at the end of the chapter. This not only illustrates the material, but also gives you a self-check mechanism to see how much you have learned from the chapter itself. The tutorials give you a heads up when something displays on the screen in an unexpected way. For example, in the tutorial on layout with CSS, the page looks a little strange at times as you progress through the instructions. McFarland describes what the page will look like. He also uses a number of screenshots that match your progress through the tutorial. The tutorials make use of files downloaded from the web site. Also available on the web site is a short list of errata for the book.

I worked through the tutorial on displaying database information and everything actually worked the way he said it would.

I like this book because it is clearly written and relates the material to the real world in a way that many similar books do not. I like the explanations of why one way of doing something might be better than another. The book is thorough and because of the way it is organized, can also be used as a reference book for the various functions and features of Dreamweaver. Working through the tutorials will be of benefit to both those who have used various versions of DW and those just starting with it. The latest version has many new features and if you don’t use a book like this, you can miss them.