Hi, I just received the job of Webmaster at my small College. I have no previous experience and for the last few weeks I have maintained the site with simple copy and paste jobs. I'm looking for some books that will tech me from the <b>Ground up to Advanced</b> (we're paying someone to Professionaly redo the site and I need to know how work with, adjust, and add-on when it gets done).

We have <b><u>Macromedia Studio MX</u></b> which contains-

Dreamweaver MX:

Macromedia Flash MX:

Fireworks MX:

Freehand:

I am <b>more concerned with Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks</b>. I am willing to buy 1 book specificly for each; what ever will give us <b>the most info from Newbie to Advanced</b>.

<b>I am going to buy them tomorrow</b>.

So far, I'm condsidering 1 of the following for Dreamweaver:

Inside Dreamweaver MX, Dreamweaver MX: The complete reference, Dreamweaver MX Bible, or Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Dynamic Applications: Advanced Training from the Source.

Any Suggestions are appreciated. Thank You!

Edited by - Pinecrest on 10 Aug 2004 23:08:27

Hi,

There are plenty of tutorials available to you to help you along.
You'll find that one book wont teach you everything, especially where the word advanced comes into it.

the beauty about dreamweaver if your new is its a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. So you dont need to go full blast for advancced level, as everything the guy building the site does, you will visually be able to see.
Just tell him to 'comment' all his code so you know what it does.

the books you mentioned ive had a few.
mx bible - not worth the money, teaches you what any basic manual or tutorial site can.
advanced training from the source - deals more with creating applications inside dreamweaver, databases etc.. but a decent book.

Fireworks is by far the easiest graphics program to learn. You will pick it up with no need for books, trust me.

Flash on the other hand is by far the hardest of the three. Not only will you need a good eye for movement, you will need to learn a code language called 'actionscript' and after 3 years of using it, im still confused with it a lot of the time.

Regards,
Dave

[DWMX 2004]|[FlashMX 2004 Pro]|[SQL]|[Access2000]|[ASP/VBScript]|[XP-Pro]

Thank you UltraDave,

"So you dont need to go full blast for advancced level, as everything the guy building the site does, you will visually be able to see."

Yes, but within this process I would like to learn <b>(or get on the path) to Professionaly building web sights</b> and eventualy, I want to be certified.
The Purpose of these books is to not just help keep up the website, but also train others that will come after me. So, that when they leave they will be able to use this as a skill in a job. Plus sooner or later the sight is going to need an over haul.

Maby it would be more specific to say that I'm looking for something to help take me <b>beyond the included turtoial and give more room to grow.</b> I still havn't gone through the intergrated turtoial, (I will when comp gets back up) does that teach stuff like tables, templates and Layers? How to get Flash in there and have screens fade in and out, <b>how do I use (and use it well) what's in the package</b>...I guess that's kinda what I want.

If I got a new 2004 book (like <u>Foundation Dreamweaver MX2004</u>, would that be backwords compatible and help me out with this previous version or are they to diffrent?

Edited by - Pinecrest on 11 Aug 2004 07:01:49