Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source [Paperback]

I understand no new book is published without errors; and this one is no exception. My only problem is, when I contacted the author (Jeffery) though Allectomedia to point out a few new errors, he never responded. According to the online form you fill-out they state, "We usually respond within a couple days". I waited a month, and didn't receive any response nor notice these new errors added to their errata page. I then filled the online form out again, and another month later, nothing. Perhaps they don't want their errata page to get too large, as it may deter others from purchasing this book.

Now I know which books and authors to avoid.

Within one week, I had finished the book and made large advancements in designing my own PHP based site and am loving it. It is great to go back to for reference on the hand-coding, and has allowed me to use the skills learned, twist them around and, with the helm of DW, to develop better applications. I have had this book for three weeks and it has let me rocket past my expectations.

The only problem is that I wish there were more. Now that I understand the basics, I would like the "advanced" copy of the book. I want to know more about how the PHP relates with the SQL, and samples of how could go further into my development. The book lacks on "the second step", but I suppose that would require a second book.

One reviewer stated that the book allows for no trial and error, I believe that the trial error should take place after you're finished with the book, not while reading it. Once you get to toying with your own site is when you make the errors, and then you can go back to the book and find out where you went wrong. Great book, don't hesitate, buy it if you're a beginner...it's worth it.

The book is mapped from beginning to end on an imaginary site, Newland Tours; the reader follows along, doing the steps given, to turn the site from static into dynamic. The problem for me was two-fold. I learn by understanding the fundamentals, and theory, first, and then by trial-and-error. This book allows for neither.

The author barely scrapes the theory or "why" behind any of what is shown; in fact at one point he states that it would be beyond the scope to do so - which is precisely the trouble with much of the book, everything one might want to know seems to be beyond the scope. Much of the book is "do this, do that, save and close." If you make a mistake, you can fix it easily enough by loading the completed page - but this proves to be a double-edged sword. Since the fundamentals of structure and syntax have not been thoroughly realized, the reader may feel as if he has no idea of what went wrong in the process, and it becomes tempting to load the finished pages and move on. In fact, the author encourages this in several spots. So those like me, who like to explore and learn from our mistakes are rather left by the wayside, ironically, in the book's attempt to make itself more newbie-friendly.

Additionally, the pages are bloated with disruptive screenshots, but the code is often obscurely placed, with its attendant notes even more buried inside a paragraph of "advice." This advice follows every single step in the book, but is so overwritten that it fails to convey its intentions in many cases. A paragraph may read like this: "You have to ... You have to ... You have to ... And you have to ..." Again, for a person who learns by trial-and-error, this is slog-through material.

Finally, it was an unfortunate publishing choice (and perhaps not the author's) to try and cover all three scripting languages in one introductory book, particularly one so overly simplified as this - in fact it doesn't make any sense at all. It's akin to trying to learn algebra, geometry, and trigonometry concurrently. It's confusing, annoying, and most often results in skipping or skimming over large chunks of text, even pages and sections. The fact that every one of the author's examples is given in ASP, and that PHP is on several important occassions almost ignored (the form-to-mail script, for instance, is hugely underwritten, with the flimsy excuse that it is too involved to go into) doesn't help.

If you -really, really, really- are clueless in the realm of dynamic web programming, and you like to have someone map everything out for you, and you don't necessarily feel the need to apply this to your own site, but rather just want a general overview to gain some familiarity, this book will be useful (if not helpful). However, if you are actually hoping to build your own site dynamically after going through this book, you might want to consider buying one of these, instead:

Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All-in-One ;
PHP and MySQL Web Development, by Welling/Thomson, second ed.

-- or any other book suited to your language of choice (ASP, CFML).

Both are much more informative and far more open-ended.