The Joy of Dreamweaver MX

Get cookin' with Dreamweaver MX using this unique and compelling cookbook filled with ready-to-use web solutions. Featuring dozens of "secret" recipes — and including sample code in ASP/VBScript, ColdFusion MX, and ASP.NET — this book will help you deploy dynamic and sophisticated web applications instantly and expertly.

Technical editor: UDzone's own George Petrov!

Read Chapter 13 — "Uploads Made Simple" — here on DMXzone.

Companion site: www.newmanzone.com.

From the Front Cover
"Extensive, thorough, and focused...the best book that I have read on building and deploying data-driven web sites with Dreamweaver. Buy it, and before you know it, you'll be an expert, too." —George Petrov, UDZone.com

From the Author
The purpose of this book is not only to show you what Dreamweaver MX can do "out of the box," but to push the software to its limits. Over the past several years, I have scoured web sites and newsgroups, pored over books and magazines, and "burnt a lot of toast" in search of simple, reliable recipes for the most demanding Dreamweaver dishes.

In The Joy of Dreamweaver MX, I want to share this hard-won knowledge with you. Using step-by-step recipes, this book illustrates how to implement features that DMXers can really sink their teeth into. Use the book to flex your culinary muscles — to learn new skills and experiment with new flavors and ingredients — and before you know it, you'll be a Dreamweaver MX Master Chef! Here's my guarantee to you: If you follow the recipes carefully, and remember to have fun along the way, soon you'll be creating the kinds of hearty web sites even your mother would be proud to serve.

Who Should Read This Book
I wrote The Joy of Dreamweaver MX because this is the book I wanted when Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 was released. Plain and simple.

If you've ever used any web design software, this book is for you. If you're a web designer eager to make the transition to web developer, this book is for you. If you're an experienced Dreamweaver UltraDev user who wants to add a few new tricks to your repertoire, this book is for you. For most users of Dreamweaver MX, the burning question is "How'd they do that?" Or, more to the point, "How do I do that?" The Joy of Dreamweaver MX provides the answers — the "secret" recipes, if you will. This book doesn't dwell on the rudiments: it assumes you already know how to boil water and separate an egg. Instead, The Joy of Dreamweaver MX offers the kinds of soup-to-nuts solutions that aren't documented in the manual.

Written for the moderate to advanced Dreamweaver MX user, The Joy of Dreamweaver MX offers step-by-step recipes for creating data-driven web sites using ASP and ColdFusion MX. Part I, "Setting the Table," explains how to install and configure the software needed to complete this book. Part II offers recipes to get you acquainted with Dreamweaver MX, including an advanced contact form, a guestbook, and a news section. Part III is the "meat and potatoes" of the book: recipes for user authentication, file uploads and downloads, content management, batch updates and deletes, nested repeat regions, and much more.

Armed with this book, and Dreamweaver MX, you have everything you need to create the data-driven web sites of tomorrow. In addition, the companion web site, www.newmanzone.com, includes all the databases, code, and extensions needed to reproduce the book's sample web applications.

Table of Contents

Part I Setting the Table: Get Cookin' with Dreamweaver MX
Chapter 1 Dreamweaver MX: Cleaner, Whiter, Brighter
Chapter 2 Utensils: Choosing the Right Tools for the Job
Chapter 3 Ingredients: The Care and Feeding of Databases
Chapter 4 Organizing Your Kitchen: The Macromedia Workflow

Part II Appetizers: Some Recipes to Get You Started
Chapter 5 Advanced Contact Form
Chapter 6 Advanced Guestbook
Chapter 7 Filtering Recordsets Using Parameter Queries
Chapter 8 Filtering Recordsets Using Stored Procedures
Chapter 9 Download Counter
Chapter 10 News Section

Part III Entrees: Building a Data-Driven Web Application
Chapter 11 Preparation and Planning
Chapter 12 Insert Record and Retrieve Identity
Chapter 13 Uploads Made Simple (sample chapter)
Chapter 14 Preview Image Before Upload
Chapter 15 Batch Deletes
Chapter 16 Batch Updates
Chapter 17 Nested Repeat Regions
Chapter 18 Online HTML Editors
Chapter 19 User Authentication
Chapter 20 Admin Section
Appendix A Sample Code
Appendix B Ingredients