In this section you will be able to read Books-, Online Trainings- and other products reviews that we think you might be interested in. Mostly the reviews come with a competition, where you can win a free copy of the reviewed product so check us regularly and you might win!
If you want DMXzone to review your product, please contact us!
Weighing in at almost 1,000 pages, SAMS Macromedia Dreamweaver MX2004 Unleashed certainly has weight on its side.
But does quantity and quality go together? DMXzone takes a quick peek between the covers and gives their opinion.
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Unleashed is available at Amazon >>
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Eric Meyer on CSS is renowned as a classic book in this area; unsurprisingly (and pleasingly for the rest of us) Eric is back with another 10 carefully crafted CSS-based projects which walk us through the steps we need to take to build beautiful standards based, cross-browser designs.
The projects cover such topics as covering an HTML-based design to a pure CSS one, using background images to achieve cross browser translucency effects and creating drop-down menus without using JavaScript.
The climax of the book is where Eric describes the creation of a design for the CSS Zen Garden web site – a fantastic resource that has shown the power of CSS to the world, and showcased some incredible talent along the way.
New Riders - the publishers of More Eric Meyer on CSS – have kindly agreed to give five copies of this excellent book away to readers of DMXzone. All you have to do to be in the virtual hat is to drop us an e-mail telling me what the CSS Zen Garden design created in Chapter 10 (but viewable here) is actually called (hint there's a View this design's CSS link on the page, or you could read on).
Competition winners to be announced on 25th November.
Don't feel confident about winning? The Amazon page is here >>
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One of the really nice things about working at DMXzone is making people happy when you tell them they've won a book. It's not unusual to get a quick note of thanks, but Jim Arthur of Jude Ministries.org went one better and dropped us a review to share.
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Case studies in programming books are extremely helpful ways to exemplify a concept, technique or technology in programming – they really help the text to sink in. One of the problems though is that rarely does a case study cater exactly to the situation you find yourself in (which in some ways is a relief, otherwise there would be a lot fewer programming jobs!).
There are, however, often common scenarios that crop up repeatedly, and tackling four generic Web sites, via carefully explained case studies, is the premise behind Dreamweaver MX 2004 Design Projects, the new book from friends of Ed by a collection of authors well-known to DMXzone readers (Rachel Andrew, Craig Grannell, Allan Kent and Christopher Schmitt).
Friends of Ed have kindly provided me with a review copy so I can see for myself how the idea has worked in practice.
Purchase Dreamweaver MX 2004 Design Projects from Amazon >>
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Although we ran a competition to win the book a couple of weeks ago, we've just managed to get our sticky paws (thanks to author Christopher Schmitt and his publishers O'Reilly) on a couple of extracts from the book.
In the accompanying download (follow the link marked Details ... adjacent to the Code Download heading in the blue box on the right) you'll find three recipes for CSS success taken from different sections of the book.
The book covers CSS 2.1 using the classic cookbook approach of considering a topic and taking a Problem – Solution – Discussion approach to its treatment. The first two sections efficiently set the scene and deliver the code needed to achieve the desired result. The final section allows space for development of ideas and explanation of the code, potential gotchas and alternatives.
Read the extracts - buy the book >>
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Dreamweaver MX 2004 Design Projects is the latest release from friends of ED to cover our favourite web design tool. This new book is a collaborative effort by Rachel Andrew, Craig Grannell, Allan Kent and Christopher Schmitt with each author taking a standard web site type (entertainment/fan site, news portal, external facing corporate website and intranet site) and looking at it from inception to implementation.
Earlier this week we posted an exclusive extract from the book and, as we mentioned before, we are running a book giveaway competition spread over 2 days.
Today is the second of those days – the extract concerns the database set up for a news portal project and in it authentication is considered; the simple question for today is:
Send this answer, along with the one previously posted on Wednesday along to this e-mail address to be in the virtual hat.
Read MoreDreamweaver MX 2004 Design Projects is the latest release from friends of ED to cover our favourite web design tool. This new book is a collaborative effort by Rachel Andrew, Craig Grannell, Allan Kent and Christopher Schmitt with each author taking a standard web site type (entertainment/fan site, news portal, external facing corporate website and intranet site) and looking at it from inception to implementation.
Earlier this week we posted an exclusive extract from the book and, as we mentioned before, we are running a book giveaway competition spread over 2 days.
Today is the first of those days – the extract concerns the inception part of a news portal project and in it three personas are described; the simple question for today is:
Send this answer, along with the one on Friday along to the e-mail link provided in Friday's post to be in the virtual hat.
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Knowing how much you enjoy their books, our contacts over at friends of ED have very kindly provided us with five copies of their latest book – Dreamweaver MX 2004 Design Projects – to give away.
The authors will be well known to DMXzone regulars as the book has brought together Rachel Andrew, Craig Grannell, Allan Kent and Christopher Schmitt together in one volume. The book takes the form of a collection of four case studies, each based around a common web archetype.
Christopher opens the book with an entertainment/fan site project, Allan is next up with a news portal that makes use of his beloved PHP, Craig comes third with an external facing corporate website and Rachel wraps up the show by building an intranet site based on Access and ASP.
By looking at the projects from inception to delivery the authors look at the profiles of different audiences, consider appropriate designs and technology choices and then show how to implement the site using Dreamweaver MX 2004 to build standards compliant sites.
To provide some insight into the style of the book and show just how good it is, friends of ED have given DMXzone an exclusive extract (see attached PDF) from Allan's news portal study.
This time we're going to split our competition over 2 days – on Wednesday and Friday we'll be posting small snippets of our extract, together with a very simple question, on DMXzone. Send both answers in the e-mail link provided in Friday's post to be in the virtual hat.
Winners to be announced on October 7th.
Read MoreYou're going to be seeing Sas's name on a lot more articles (and maybe see her at some forthcoming conferences), so we thought we'd give DMXzone readers a chance to find out a little more about who she is, what she does and ask is everything possible?
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There's a chance you might not be familiar with releases from SitePoint – you won't find their printed books on the shelves of many bookshops, as primarily they sell direct from their tremendous website.
So I have to admit I was pretty pleased when Matt Mickiewicz contacted us here at DMXzone and offered us the chance to carry some content from their latest release (Steven Grosvenor's, The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects and Practical ActionScript) and to let us review it.
To buy The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects and Practical ActionScript visit the SitePoint purchase page here >>
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Author Christopher Schmitt was so bowled over by the response of DMXzone readers to the competition to win his last book (Adobe Photoshop CS in 10 Simple Steps or Less), that he asked us if we'd like to feature his CSS Cookbook.
Given the popularity of our CSS related premium content articles, we reckon this could be our most popular competition yet and jumped at the offer of Christopher (and his publisher O'Reilly) of 5 books to give away.
Using the 'house' style for Cookbooks, this release tackles a specific issue (say setting a background image) and then uses a Problem – Solution – Discussion approach to setting out the information needed. The concise format of the first two sections allows quick identification (or reminder) of issues and provides focussed code snippets. The discussion portion gives space for a rounded explanation, and furnishes the reader with the understanding they need to customise the code for their own purposes.
This book covers CSS2.1 with chapters covering topics such as Web Typography, Links and Navigation, Forms, Hacks and Workarounds and Designing with CSS. Oh, and it features a grizzly bear on the cover!
CSS is a powerful tool for controlling web page layout and content presentation. For this competition we'd like you to drop us an e-mail containing the URL of the best looking text-heavy web site you know of. By that I mean a site such as DMXzone or O'Reilly's site where text is king and images are largely confined to banners and thumbnails.
Winners will be revealed on 9th September.
If you don't want to wait, visit Amazon >>
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Sometimes you want a Website to look, well, a little more animated. When that happens it's time to turn to Flash. In The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects & Practical ActionScript by Steve Grosvenor you'll see how to build over 60 real-world Flash applications that can add wow factor to your Web site.
This book is aimed at developers who've got the basics of Flash under their belt but haven't yet delved too far into ActionScript. By providing solutions to some of the most common Flash problems, and addressing frequently desired tasks this book aims to inspire, educate and motivate.
DMXzone will be reviewing the book shortly (see here) but before then, courtesy of the publishers Sitepoint, we've got a sample chapter from the book covering Animation Effects available for download (and a short snippet extracted below).
Order The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects & Practical ActionScript, direct from Sitepoint >>
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