Product Description

With over 3 million users worldwide, Adobe's Dreamweaver is the most popular web development software in the world, and it just took another step forward with CS3, the new version released in 2007. Having come a long way from it's humble beginnings as a as a simple web design tool, CS3 allows you to rapidly put together standards compliant web sites and dynamic web sites with server-side languages and Ajax, and much more. To complement this great new application, David Powers has written the ultimate guide to it—The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 teaches you everything you need to know about the application, from setting up your development environment environment to publishing your sites and applications on the web, and everything in between. * Takes you through your development environment set up * Covers everything you need to create both standards compliant web sutes, and dynamic web applications * Teaches several real world techniques using a series of step by step tutorials What you’ll learn * How to set up your ideal development environment, using Mac OSX/Windows, Apache (and IIS on Windows,) Apache, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin * Creating standards compliant web sites using CS3's XHTML and CSS features * Creating dynamic web applications using CS3's PHP and Spry Ajax server behaviors * Building several real world web site functions, such as form validation, random quote generator, search function, user management/login pages, dynamic Ajax gallery, and much more. * Creating an interface design in Fireworks CS3 and importing it into Dreamweaver CS3. * How use Dreamweaver CS3's XML functionality, to consume RSS feeds, and create Spry data sets * Using includes, templates and master detail pages. * How to publish your site after you've created it

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243579 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 784 pages

About the Author
David Powers is an Adobe Community Expert for Dreamweaver and author of a series of highly successful books on PHP, including PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy and Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8. As a professional writer, he has been involved in electronic media for more than 30 years, first with BBC radio and television and more recently with the Internet. His clear writing style is valued not only in the English-speaking world; several of his books have been translated into Spanish and Polish.

What started as a mild interest in computing was transformed almost overnight into a passion, when David was posted to Japan in 1987 as BBC correspondent in Tokyo. With no corporate IT department just down the hallway, he was forced to learn how to fix everything himself. When not tinkering with the innards of his computer, he was reporting for BBC TV and radio on the rise and collapse of the Japanese bubble economy. Since leaving the BBC to work independently, he has built up an online bilingual database of economic and political analysis for Japanese clients of an international consultancy.

When not pounding the keyboard writing books or dreaming of new ways of using PHP and other programming languages, David enjoys nothing better than visiting his favorite sushi restaurant. He has also translated several plays from Japanese.

Customer Reviews

Informative and Confidence Building
Ajax, Spry widgets, Spry effects? - having upgraded to CS3, I had no idea what these were and was very tempted to stick with what works fine for me: frames!

However, I discovered this book and it is proving to be very useful. It calls itself `The Essential Guide' and this is what I am finding it to be. Not too heavy, not jokey, just well-written, with clear explanations, loads of screenshots and insights into what to do, what to avoid and what can be ignored.
Unfortunately it is over 700 pages long and I'm only 10% through (although it doesn't need to be read in page order) but I felt it valuable to draw your attention to the book sooner rather than possibly never.

Is it for you?
As the author, David Powers, writes:

`If you're at home with the basics of (X)HTML and CSS, then this book is for you. If you have never built a website before and don't know the difference between an tag and your Aunt Jemima, you'll probably find it a bit of a struggle. .... the idea is to adapt the code generated by Dreamweaver to create websites that really work. I explain everything as I go along and steer clear of impenetrable jargon.
Although you do some hand-coding with Spry, most features are accessed through intuitive dialog boxes.'

`I don't assume any prior knowledge (of Ajax and PHP) ... Dreamweaver takes care of a lot of the PHP coding, but it can't do everything, so I show you how to customize the code it generates. Chapter 10 serves as a crash course in PHP, and chapter 11 puts that knowledge to immediate use .... This book doesn't attempt to teach you to become a PHP programmer .. but (should give you) sufficient confidence to look a script in the eye without flinching.'

Besides comfort food for the not-well-informed (like me) e.g. why Ajax is so called (p.34), and what's the connection between Ajax and Spry (p.38), you're also given warnings why search engine spiders won't index your Ajax-reliant content (p.38), why you should avoid heavy use of Spry on your site's opening page (p.39), that Spry-changed content cannot be bookmarked, and why the back-button may not work as expected (p39). As you can see, even on just these three sample pages there's some valuable stuff.

I look forward to delving deeper, and, from what I've read so far, I feel confident that this is an excellent guide and commend it. If I find otherwise as I progress, I'll update this review.