Book Review: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Unleashed

Book Details

Authors: Z Ruvalcaba, M Pizzi

Publisher: SAMS

ISBN: 0-672-32361-0

Price: U.S. $49.99

General: Released September 2004, 980 pages

Table of Contents

I. GETTING UP TO SPEED WITH DREAMWEAVER MX.

1. What's New In Dreamweaver MX 2004.
2. Welcome to the Dreamweaver MX 2004 Interface.
3. Dreamweaver MX 2004 Site Management.
4. Dreamweaver MX 2004 Essentials.

II. STATIC WEB PAGE CREATION.

5. Creating Tables.
6. HTML Forms.
7. Framesets.
8. Dreamweaver Templates.
9. Assets and the Library.
10. Cascading Style Sheets.

III. ADDING INTERACTIVITY

11. Behaviors.
12. Layers in Dreamweaver.
13. Adding Video and Audio.
14. Inserting Flash and Shockwave.

19. Integration with Complementing Programs.

IV. INTRODUCTION TO WEB APPLICATIONS.

15. Introduction to Web Applications.
16. Web Application Preparation.
17. Dreamweaver MX 2004 for Application Development.

V. MIDDLEWARE.

18. ASP and ASP.NET.
19. PHP and MySQL.
20. ColdFusion.

VI. DATABASE-DRIVEN PAGES.

21. Database Primer.
22. SQL Primer.
23. Working with Dynamic Data.
24. Modifying the Database.
25. SQL Search Page.
26. Adding Shopping Cart Functionality.
27. Security and User Authentication.
28. XML Web Services.

VII. APPENDIXES.

Appendix A: Accessibility.

Appendix B: Extending Dreamweaver MX 2004.

Appendix C: General Resources.

Unleashed

Unleashed is a good brand title (IMHO) – it implies fearsome power being allowed to run riot, the word definitely invokes a sense of foreboding … unfortunately so did the idea of reviewing this book after finding some of the gremlins that had afflicted the production process (for more details read on).

Firstly though let's quickly look at the basics. At 980 pages this volume is a pretty comprehensive run through all aspects of using Dreamweaver in the construction of web sites. As can be seen from the table of contents, following a tour around the interface and some basic concepts, the book covers the creation of client-side code (static web pages, delivery of Flash and Shockwave), before moving on to discuss server-side code and the development of database-driven sites. Here the book covers a number of different server-side technologies including PHP, ASP, ASP.NET and ColdFusion (although oddly I couldn't find any mention of JSP).

Quite reasonably at this point the main authors bring a few extra hands on deck to help with the coverage of the server-side; Sean Nicholson writes on PHP and MySQL and Rob Sherman contributes a ColdFusion chapter.

In terms of level the cover states a user level of Intermediate – Advanced. Of course one person's Intermediate level developer maybe another person's Advanced – these categorisations are fairly arbitrary. However, given the way material is presented in the book, I would feel a Beginner – Intermediate label is more accurate. For me there are far too many 'introductory' sections in the book to make it a reasonable buy for an Advanced developer (surely they would want a more specialised text to fill in the gaps in their knowledge).

Furthermore the delivery of the material is most clearly in the Beginner camp – sample from a step in Chapter 13 "Choose OK (Mac) or OK (Windows)".

Also I feel this categorisation may put Dreamweaver beginners off buying the book. That's a shame because I would have thought such a broad and wide coverage of Dreamweaver and web development technologies would be useful to a novice looking for their first book on the subject.

Digging In

I have to admit I haven't had time to walk through any of the examples, however the writing style looked clear, and precise – ideally suited for a beginner.

In covering the wide range of Dreamweaver capabilities the volume touches on a huge variety of technologies. Personally I feel that is a very double-edged sword as this can lead to a broad-brush approach that does well in exposing the reader to technologies but may not give them appropriate weight or context.

For example we have both a chapter on frames and a chapter on CSS. To do the authors justice, there are mentions of the pros and cons of the former and the merits of the latter, but the weight of these discussions doesn't, I feel, reflect the trends in quality web design. Extremely hearteningly the book does contain a whole chapter on Accessibility.

Another double-edged problem of the comprehensive approach is the problem of redundancy (how many people who read this book will want to read about PHP, ASP.NET and ColdFusion?) and repetition/ordering – databases being used in Chapter 20 before being introduced in Chapter 22. The repetition between building aspects of the case study in both ASP and ASP.NET reflects another dilemma of such a book – go with one technology and miss out on the other, or go with both and expand the book!

But maybe I'm being overly harsh? Undoubtedly the book contains an absolute wealth of knowledge and will give newcomers to web development a good grounding in how to use Dreamweaver, and an introduction to the main concepts and technologies needed in web development. Not only that, but there are enough examples provided, including the Web Store case study, to give a new Dreamweaver MX 2004 user plenty of new skills.

Q&A?

Nope not question and answer, but quality and assurance. I don't like throwing stones at book publishers – it's far easier to criticize than produce … however the consumer also has the right to expect the best product they can get, and this product does have, even on a cursory investigation, some issues in this department.

Almost every book you pick up will have typos somewhere (if you look in the above Table of Contents, you'll see one that is reproduced from this book's detailed ToC), however more confusingly at many places in the text the book's support site is misquoted (it should be http://www.samspublishing.com/title/0672326310 as given on the cover). OK minor and annoying, but more troubling are the screenshot errors; wrongly situated shots in chapters 9 and 10, then chapter 13's shots are reproduced in chapter 14, while it appears chapter 14's shots made it into chapter 15.

I strongly suspect that this latter problem resulted from a glitch in an automated image insertion routine, however it rather undermines the credibility of the overall product. It also proves especially confusing to what I believe is the core audience for the book – Beginners.

I would also like to quite carefully draw a distinction between the author's skills (which I am not familiar with) and my views of the deficiencies book, which are more reflective of the publishing process.

My view is that, while this book definitely contains a lot of interesting and useful information it is pitched at the Beginner level, and even if you like a 'jack of all trades' volume, the production problems noted mean that I would recommend waiting for a reprint before buying this book.