Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Stuff!, Dec 7 2007
This review is from: The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP (Paperback)
This book is for intermediate to advanced Dreamweaver users. Even though I am a total dreamweaver beginner (with basic HTML background), I found the instructions so simple, and detailed, (for both Mac and PC) the text was a pleasure to read.
It features many diagrams, pictures, and code view(extremely helpful) to show you exactly what your doing and where you should be. Highly detailed explanations of PHP, Spry (ajax), and CSS. With no prior knowledge of dreamweaver CS2, I found the beginning explaining the new updates to be a little 'out there', however, if a beginner can thoroughly understand and benefit from this (advanced) book, that indicates it was very well written indeed. I've struck gold. It seems like the author really put his heart into this piece of work.
I bought this in conjunction with Dreamweaver CS3 100 essential techniques, (not recommended, just another bundled stack of reworded 'help files.')
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1.0 out of 5 stars
Should I be impatient ?, Mar 4 2011
This review is from: The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP (Paperback)
Still waiting for that book after 25 business day. No star or a dead star for Best Bargain Books on AmazonCA.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great for a Visual Learner, Aug 29 2007
By Kelley A. Rao - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP (Paperback)
As a developer who is modestly adept with PHP, this book is a welcome addition to my library. With the recent release of CS3, it covers the nuts and bolts of the application(s) including the newly introduced Spry Widgets. Being a visual learner, I especially appreciated the chapter entitled "Creating a CSS Site Straight Out of the Box." The instructions were clear and concise and provided a great foundation for building future CSS based sites.
Every chapter, at least for me, was full of "Ah Ha" moments. I think I've learned more from this book than any other I've read in the past year (and there's been plenty). I even figured out how to get PHP My Admin running, thanks to this book! I recommend it highly.
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wealth of Knowledge..., Nov 30 2007
By LCO - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP (Paperback)
If you are VERY comfortable with PHP and MySQL, this may not be the best book for you. (I say that with some reservations, though, because of the vast wealth of knowledge in this book between page 1 and page 729.) Also, if you don't know how to code in PHP, the "Introduction to the Basics of PHP" in Chapter Ten may not be enough instruction for you to comfortably appreciate this book. BUT, if you have some knowledge of PHP (for example, you are a self-taught PHP coder like myself), need the power of PHP and MySQL, and are curious about any benefits there might be from this new technology SPRY (Adobe's implementation of AJAX), this will be an excellent book for you. The writing is clear, concise (in spite of its detailed explanations), and logical.
The strength of Powers' book is providing you with the vast majority of tools you will need to create, test, and implement a dynamic Web site using the power of PHP, MySQL, SPRY, and more. For instance, Chapter Four has detailed instructions on setting up a PHP server on your hard drive to enable you to test your server-side programs. Those instructions begin with downloading the PHP installation files and end with trouble-shooting possible configuration problems, including all necessary steps in between.
The book continues with how to set up a PHP site using Dreamweaver, learning the rules, tips, and benefits of cascading style sheets (CSS), the advantages and creation of a SPRY navigation menu bar, and an in-depth examination of on-line forms and data validation. Since the next logical step is doing something with the form data, the MySQL database product is tackled beginning, again, with its installation, continuing with the use of the phpMyAdmin feature, and ending with the storage of database records (including access control and security issues). As if this was not enough information to digest, the book ends with a guide to and uses for XML and XSLT in your Web site.
One more big plus from this book is that it offers the code (tested and commented) for a number of commonly used functions on Web sites today. If you are looking for a login function, form validation function, mail function, (and the list goes on) you'll find the code in this book.
Again, there is a wealth of knowledge in this book from front cover to back cover - well organized and easy to grasp.
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Widgets forever..., Sep 29 2007
By Paul Shortis "Graphic Designer" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP (Paperback)
A fabulous book so easy to follow and informative.
This brings Dreamweaver to today and has dropped completely the outdated use of tables that others (such as H.O.T.) seem to be stuck with when the industry trend is only to insert tables into a page when using excel spreadsheets and such and never to use them for page building.
The extensive introduction of Widgets is a delight and has completely replaced those Javascript drop menu's avoiding all the pitfalls they entailed. The author leads you into dreamweaver in the usual way, most of these titles use, then easily run through tutorials that demonstrate how to build a site from simple CSS templates and from scratch. Step by step the author leads one from simple site to the introduction of widgets (new to DW CS3) through to PHP pages and on to databases and includes.
Very easy to folow and brings one up to date on the new CS3 architecture.
|
|
|