Customer Reviews

Dreamweaver MX Complete Course

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am stunned by the number of high ratings for this book. If you knew next to nothing about Dreamweaver, you would never to able to understand how to use it. When you are given directions without rationales and then something crashes, you are stuck and have to try to figure it out for yourself. This book is a waste of money and your time.

Apart from Mirroring Michael Woznicki's review, I'd have to add that this book is a pleasant gem in a field of rocks. In a market where technical texts seem to be rated by the amount of content rather than quality of content, this book is a breath of fresh air. Yes, its a bit directive but it quickly takes the reader through the process of building and then extending a web site. No fuss, no muss, no mining for nuggets. It helps if you understand the fundamentals of what a website is made up of, but those are very simple concepts that might be worth a page or two of text and illustration. And yes, there are a few small errors in the book but nothing an experienced Mac or PC user shouldn't be able to figure out. For the purposes of learning how to use Dreamweaver MX, this book excells wonderfully.

BTW, the Macromedia suite of products really is a professional web development environment. If you're new to computers or web development in general I'd recommend using a product like Frontpage rather than Dreamweaver for creating your web page.

What a hoot! I came to review this book and the contrasts seem to be love it or hate it. Well I loved it and created my very first web site! I had to do some stuff over but most of it was because I had my cursor in the wrong place or I didn't read an instruction carefully enough. Yes, I found some errors--jeesh people do we expect authors to be perfect. I wish but unfortunately I've discovered they are human LOL

Oh, and yes, I did finish the entire book and I did so pretty quickly. I like the fact that there isn't a lot of underlying explanations. If I want underlying I'll buy a Bible or other such book. I also like the casual writing style--but that's me. I felt like the author was really trying to help me personally build a website--and she did just that.

This was worth every dime I spent and I'm now going to purchase her Web Design Complete Course book. I love this teaching style, pictures and numbers.

I am a graphic designer learning web design software. I gave this book several tries, but quit the Complete Course tutorial after the third lesson. I found I was not learning much I could use outside the tutorial as the approach was directive without explaining the underlying logic. Without that basic understanding, I did not have enough information to trouble-shoot beginner errors. Several times I just quit the program when I couldn't figure out how to undo something. Most of my questions were answered either accidentally by random clicking or through a web-search. (Examples from early chapters: the books instructs you to type in the hex color numbers for various attributes, but does not tell you that if you eliminate the # in front of the numbers that the color will show in Explorer but not in Netscape. Or, it does not define what an S or V value is, but rather tells you about a problem they can cause if an object is left or right justified.) I switched to Dreamweaver MX Hands-On-Trainin. The tutorial is much more basic but provides a much fuller base of information.

Do not waste your time or money on this poorly written book. You will spend a lot of time trying to figure what you are supposed to do because the examples in the book do not match up with what is on your screen. I do not understand how this book was ever published the way it is because if somebody like an editor actually went through this they would see that it does not work.

I got this book reading others reviews and decided it would be a great start for me. The book is way to inconsistent and could have you lost a little at times. I am not too critical on reviews and actually pretty nice about them, but this book I did not even finish after I got through about half of it. I consider myself very knowledgable with PC's in general and this book left me wishing I would have spent my money else where.

If you are like me and want to have an awesome understanding of DW, then this book does not go that in depth. The author just walks you through it with very little teaching along the way. It shows you how to build a website with all her pre-made pictures, but I felt as if I was just plugging in things the whole time, not really developing a great site. My biggest gripe was the lack of instruction, the authors way of teaching was basically do this and do that, but not telling my why I am doing this and doing that.

... The 'Dreamweaver MX Hands-On-Training' as well seems to have a great rep for great books. I regret not getting that book instead of this one. Save your money and get another book if you really want to learn the ins and outs of developing great sites with Dreamweaver.

Joyce Evans's Dreamweaver MX the Complete Course is an excellent resource for simple web design. I've read all the negative reviews concerning this tutorial. All concerns are valid concerns, but my overall objectives for purchasing this book have been acheived. I am able to comfortably navigate throughout the Dreamweaver environment and I am confident I can use each of functions the book teaches to make a successful website. I have completed two websites of my own since completion of the book!

I do agree this book should not be used in a classroom setting. You need flexibility and time to fight through the errors in the book, but the errors are so minor, they actually helped me become more confident with the software. I was able to complete each session successfully! Don't rush through this one. Enjoy and understand the Dreamweaver MX environment, and you will acheive great results as a beginner!

Before I read this book, I read all the reviews and corrected the printed errors. More importantly, take a short amount of time to review Joyce J. Evans' website and correct the errors she posts. This should clear most of the major problems.

This book is an excellent hands on resource and I highly recommend it to all Dreamweaver MX beginners!

I made my first website! What's really cool is that I now have a neat design I can change and use again.

This has been one of the best books I've purchased yet. I don't understand some of the things I've been reading about this book because I'm 14 years old and did just fine. My high school class used it.

We did check on the errata which is posted at the authors website which is at the authors full name (no spaces) dot com.

If you learn by doing like I do then you'll like this book.

I bought this book based on other positive reviews, but can only conclude that there must be multiple versions of this book in circulation. How anyone could claim to have worked through the entire book and not have encountered an incredible number of errors is a complete mystery to me.

The author confuses files throughout the book. Files are referenced with incorrect names, are misplaced on the CD, or names are misspelled. These errors are numerous and lead to much frustration while completing the exercises. A brief, simple example occurs on p. 244, where the author asks you to create a link to the "instructor.htm" file. The correct name of the file, however, is "instructors.htm" (with an "s"). Some minor errors like these are easy enough to figure out, but there are so many that I felt like I was doing the editor's job while working through the book. Other problems involve incomplete instructions, the most common being when you are instructed to open multiple documents simultaneously, but the author is not careful to instruct you to switch to the proper document before performing a task.

One reviewer made reference to an errata page included with the book, but no such information was included with my copy nor on the CD. If errata information were to be included, it would probably have to contain an amount of text equal to the size of the book itself, so numerous are the errors.

I am no newcomer to computers and have taught computer technology in the classroom for many years. While this book is attractively laid out with helpful illustrations, it just doesn't make the grade due to sloppy editing and numerous mistakes. Beware of the overly positive reviews. There is no way anyone could have diligently worked through the entire book and claimed that everything worked smoothly and only a few errors were encountered. The book needs a complete overhaul.

i found this book really over-complicated and difficult to use. the language used to write it is a totally bizairre mix of technical jargon and casual writing. the book, although claiming to be mac friendly is not at all and only shows images of PC interfaces, leaving mac users to figure things out on their own. i've gone back to using the skinny little manual that came with dreamweaver. this book is useless to me; it's one for the circular file.